Glasnost: a policy of political openness and transparency, from the Russian word for “publicity”ġ1. Cossack: a Russian ethnic group associated in popular culture with military prowess and a nomadic society the name, like the ethnic appellation Kazakh, derives from the Turkish word for “nomad”ġ0. Bolshevik: a revolutionary or radical, from name of the majority Communist faction in Tsarist Russia, ultimately from the Russian word for “majority”ħ. Babushka: in Russian, “old woman” in English, a type of scarf commonly worn by babushkasĥ. Apparatchik: a Communist Party member and/or functionary, from the Russian form of the word apparatusģ. Agitprop: artistic political propaganda, from a truncated form of the Russian forms of the words agitation and propagandaĢ. Familiar Russian Words (Absorbed into English)ġ. Some require no annotation, while others should be introduced carefully in context or even glossed which approach to take depends on the content and its audience. (Try referring, for example, to an elite cohort as the nomenklatura or to a petty bureaucrat as a namestnik.)Įither list can be mined for analogous meanings. The latter list is ripe for exploitation in English. Below that you’ll find another set, that one consisting of words known to few, if any, speakers of English who are not bilingual in Russian or familiar with Russian culture. Here is a list of well-known Russian words and their original meanings and later connotations, if any. Others were originally specific to Russian culture but can be applied to analogous Western concepts, such as a reference to an American politician retreating from Washington, DC, to his dacha, or to a comment about a troika of conspirators. Some, like mammoth and sable, are easily assumed to be from a more closely related language. Many Russian words have been appropriated by the English language. 25 Russian Words Used in English (and 25 More That Should Be) By Mark Nichol
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