In present-day Komi, the genitive seems to have been replaced by the instrumental everywhere, but the former usage can be found in the texts of certain writers; it appeared in the spontaneous dialectal speech in the 1940s as well:

In other non-finite verbal constructions as well, as in gerundials, the genitive may express the agent of the action [Fedjunjova 1998].

With certain verbs, the genitive expresses the non-active subject, as with the verbs byrny «to be finished», vunny «to be forgotten»: menam vunöma I-GEN forget-PERF-3SG «I have forgotten» [Fedina 1997:10]. All these usages may have served as analogical basis for the possessive impersonal with — öma. |

The bare impersonal form without any expression of the agent is nowadays very common, possibly influenced by the literary Russian past passive predicates with — no/- to[M. S. Fedina, paper presented at the International Congress of MAPRIJAL, June 1998, Syktyvkar].

The newness of the Komi possessive impersonal construction can only be presumed, since there is no mention of them in old grammars and descriptions. Perhaps accidentally, there seem to be no examples in the folkloric texts available, which represent the state of the language at the beginning of the XXth century. In the Komi prose of the 1930s, the construction becomes more common in the texts of individual writers. Earlier grammars written by native linguists do not mention it, except the grammar of 1949 by D. V. Bubrih. He gives examples of the 2nd past (=perfect) transitive and reflexive verbs and translates them by using the north Russian impersonal constructions with passive participial predicates:

The new Komi grammar lists the uses of the genitive agent as follows:

1) a real active subject:

a) in an attributive construction with the participial form:

b) with the perfect:

2) a passive subject: someone does something because of being told to do so, or someone is in a state:

a) with verbs of passive meaning ( vunny «be-forgotten», byrny «be finished», mynny «pass (about time)», artmyny «come out (of state)», vošny  «vanish, be lost» etc.

b) with the reflexive suffix — s' :

c) with modal predicates:

d) the subject of certain phraseological predicates indicating non-voluntary state ( vež petö «to want something», lit. «desire comes out») [Fedjunjova 2000: 66].

To illustrate the difference between the possessive impersonal construction and the impersonal construction expressing involuntary action with the reflexive suffix, some citations and an excerpt from the history is in order. The eminent Komi linguist, V. I. Lytkin (Illa Vas'), was arrested in 1930 and accused of national bourgeois tendencies and espionage. He had just returned from Hungary, and, occupied as he was with studying, writing poems and publishing them he had no idea about what was going on at home. On returning to the USSR, he was publicly criticized, and he made a full «confession», explaining his motives with all the possibilities of subject demotion available in the language.

First, he wrote that he had answered the critics, but the text had not been published:

Lytkin continues to excuse himself by thanking the critics who had opened his eyes to many blemishes in his text Munflny: it was neither a poem or a poema, but something in between, and it would not produce any great ideas.