Russia. A History

Collective farm (literally, ‘collective enterprise’, where the peasants nominally own the land, fulfil state grain procurements, and receive compensation as ‘workdays’ that they have contributed)

Komsomol

Communist Youth League

Kulak

Rich peasant (derived from the word for ‘fist’ after 1917 formally used to designate any peasant who ‘exploited’ the labour of others)

Lishentsy

Disenfranched (those members of the former ‘exploiting classes’, such as nobles, bourgeoisie, and clergy, who were deprived of civil rights and subjected to various other forms of discrimination from 1918 to 1936)

Manufaktura

Primitive handicrafts and industrial enterprises in early modern Russia

MTS

Machine Tractor Stations (state units established in 1935 to provide tractor and technical services to the kolkhoz)

Narkomindel

People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs

Narkompros

People’s Commissariat of Education

NEP

New Economic Policy

Nepman

Traders and entrepreneurs who engaged in ‘free enterprise’ during NEP

NKVD

People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs

Nomenklatura

System of appointment lists, emerging in the first years of Soviet power and eventually coming to define the country’s political élite

Oblast

(pl. oblasti) Soviet territorial unit, roughly equivalent to a pre-revolutionary province

Obrok

Quitrent (payment of serf obligations in kind or money)

Oprichnina

The separate state ‘within a state’ established by Ivan the Terrible in 1565; more generally used to designate this reign of terror, which lasted until 1572

Orgburo

Organizational Bureau

Perestroika

Reconstruction (the term adopted to designate a fundamental reform in the Soviet system from the mid-1980s)

Pomest′e

Conditional service estate in Muscovy, but by the eighteenth century equivalent to hereditary family property

Posad

Urban settlement in Muscovy

Prikaz

Term for ‘chancellery’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Proletkult

Proletarian culture movement

PSR

Party of Socialist Revolutionaries

Rabfak

Workers’ faculty (special schools for workers with little or no formal eduction)

Rabkrin

Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate (organ to control state and economy, 1920–34)

RSDWP

Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party

RSFSR

Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic

SD

Social Democrat

Seredniak

Middle peasant (in Soviet jargon, a peasant who was self-sufficient, neither exploiting the labour of others nor working in the employee of others)

Smychka

Soviet slogan designating an ‘alliance’ or ‘union’ of the workers and peasants in the 1920s

Soslovie

Social estate (in the sense of the French état or German Stand)

Sovkhoz

State farm (literally, ‘soviet enterprise’, where the state owns all assets and the peasants provide hired labour)

Sovnarkhoz

Council of National Economy: provincial and district organ to manage industry and construction (1917–34); system for decentralized economic management (1957–65)

Sovnarkom

Council of People’s Commissars

SRs

Members of the neo-populist Party of Social Revolutionaries

Streltsy

Musketeers (military units of riflemen organized in the seventeenth century)

Sudebnik

Law code in medieval Russia

Third Section

Tsarist organ of secret police, established as a ‘section’ of the emperor’s personal chancellery in 1826

Ulozhenie

Title of first inclusive law code adopted in 1649 (formally called the Sobornoe ulozhenie)

Vesenkha

Supreme Council of the National Economy (central industrial organ, 1917–32)

Voevoda

District governor in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries

Volost

Township

Votchina

Hereditary family landed estate

Vyt

Unit of land area and taxation (of varying size)

Zemskii sobor

Council of the realm (informal assemblies convoked for purposes of consultation from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries)

Zemstvo

The provincial and district organs of elected self-government from 1864 to 1917; in the sixteenth century it refers to a system of community self-rule

Zhenotdel

Women’s section in the party

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND DATES

Transliteration follows a modified version of the Library of Congress system. For the sake of readability the ‘soft sign’ has been omitted for the better known terms (e.g. Streltsy not Strel’tsy). In the case of those names that have already achieved recognition in the West, that form will be followed here (e.g. Peter, not Petr; Trotsky, not Trotskii; Beria, not Beriia). The same applies to certain terms (e.g. soviet, not sovet; boyar, not boiar).