The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

We have spoken of Russians and Russian culture without any attempt at academic definition of the terms. We intentionally leave that to the reader. However, several points should be made. The English language, unfortunately, has only one word to designate people who are ethnically Russian and those who live in Russia, or more properly, the Russian Federation. This insufficiency makes for misapprehension and an awkward ambiguity. Rossiia (Russia) is the name of the state; the adjectival form is rossiiskii (of the Russian state). A citizen of Rossiia is called a rossiianin. A person who is ethnically Russian is called russkii, likely derived from Rus, the medieval Slavic principality and its people. As an entity Rossiia is analogous to Great Britain. Not everyone living in Great Britain is ethnically English and not everyone living in Rossiia is ethnically Russian. Yet in both nations a language is shared: English in Great Britain, Russian in Rossiia. The pieces chosen for this anthology were written by men and women who saw themselves as largely belonging to Russian culture and for whom the Russian language was the primary means of expression. These are the people of the Russian Century.

George Pahomov

NOTE

1. A.L. Kroeber, An Anthropologist Looks at History, University of California Press, 1963, p. v.

Glossary of Russian Terms

artel—a cooperative association of workers, craftsmen, or traders within a particular profession

borshch—a kind of vegetable soup usually made with a beef stock and with beets, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, and occasionally other vegetables

brichka—a carriage, heavier than a drozhki, with a collapsible leather or canvas top

dacha—a summer home, frequently having a glass enclosed veranda

desiatina—a square measure equivalent to 2.7 acres or 1.09 hectares

drozhki—a light, open carriage usually drawn by one horse

gimnazium—a classical high school, featuring the classical and foreign languages and a liberal arts curriculum as opposed to real’noe uchilishche, a vocational high school; pronounced with a “hard” g as in gimlet

Gulag—the system of prison camps throughout the Soviet Union; the administrative body of those camps

izba—a rural, peasant house in central and northern Russia constructed of logs either round or square in cross-section

kolkhoz—collective farm; largely the product of forced collectivization in Soviet times

kolkhoznik—collective farm worker

kulebiaka—fish baked en croute; an open-face Beef Wellington filled with filet of sturgeon instead of beef tenderloin

kvas—a kind of beer made by fermenting rye bread or rye flour, yeast, malt and, sometimes, sugar; served chilled

muzhik—an adult male peasant; also a term of derision

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Glossary of Russian Terms

name(s)day—a holiday celebrating the patron saint bearing the same name as the celebrant, e.g., 23 April is St. George’s day

Okhrana—the secret police in tsarist times

papirosa (plural: papirosy)—a cigarette with a long cardboard mouthpiece, widely smoked before the advent of the modern cigarette during WWI

pirog (plural: pirogi)—a generic term for pies, usually deep-dish and rectangular, with fillings ranging from berries and fruit to mushroom and egg, sautéed cabbage, and ground beef. Pirozhok (plural: pirozhhki) is the palm-size version of a pirog, similar to a hot pocket or the English pastie

primus—a heating apparatus with a single flame similar to a Bunsen burner but with fuel pressurized by manual pumping; from Primus, the name of the Swedish manufacturer of the device; used for cooking when nothing else functioned

samizdat—underground publishing of materials forbidden by the Soviet government; a compounding of the Russian words “self” and “publishing”

sarafan—a full length, freely cut, sleeveless dress worn almost exclusively by peasant women

sazhen—a linear measure equivalent to seven feet, or 2.133 meters

shchi—a soup made of pickled cabbage (sauerkraut) usually on a beef stock

stanitsa—a large southern Russian/Cossack village; also an administrative unit

tachanka—a two-axle wagon drawn by two horses, similar to a buckboard

taiga—the unbroken forest belt of Siberia

tsarevich—crown prince

verst—a linear measure equal to .663 miles, or 1.06 km. (The proper form is versta, we use the anglicized variant.)

zemstvo—rural self-governing body established in the reign of Alexander II