Getting the lay of the verbal landscape is quite a chore in Russian history. Many terms simply do not translate. And sometimes, they translate so poorly that the meaning is obscured or even confused with more familiar historical terms. The most obvious example of this is the conflation of the medieval European serf with the serf of 18th and 19th century Russia. Moreover, no historian with literary pretensions would willingly employ the clunky translations that many of these historical terms spawn. Rare is the historian that would consistently render the social and legal category raznochintsy as "variously ranked people," and I will not deign to discuss the inelegant problems associated with units of weight and measure. Fortunately, Pushkarev has provided us with a guide to these particular languages of the past.

Sources

• Pushkarev, Sergei G. Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms From the Eleventh Century to 1917. Edited by George Vernadsky and Ralph T. Fisher, Jr. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. Located in Davis Library Reference: DK36.P8. This work is an indispensable resource. It was expressly designed to be a constant companion to English-speaking students as they struggle to understand the specific and often archaic jargon that populates Russian history. The extended definitions it provides are a necessary corrective to the ahistorical and all too brief entries that can be found in more conventional Russian-English dictionaries.

 

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