Snow in May: Stories

Glossary

apparatchik A functionary in a politico-bureaucratic organization; from the Russian word apparat, meaning a collective of people working in this type of organization.

dacha A summerhouse outside a city, usually with a vegetable plot. Dachas could be large and fancy or a simple wooden shed, depending on the person’s status in the USSR and their financial situation afterward.

defitsit Lack or scarcity of most goods available for sale in stores.

grazhdanka Translated as “citizen” (female); a common officious form of address in the Soviet Union.

Great Patriotic War The portion of World War II fought in eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

Gulag Originally an acronym for Main Camp Administration; later used to indicate the countrywide web of labor camps from 1930 to 1955.

izba A traditional Russian house, often made of logs.

khrushchyovka A type of five-story cement-panel building with one- or two-room apartments with private bathrooms and kitchens, mass-produced during the years of Khrushchev’s leadership; they helped get millions of people out of cramped kommunalkas.

kolkhoz A collective farm owned by the State.

kolkhoznitsa A female member of a kolkhoz.

kollektiv A group of people, usually on friendly terms, working in the same company/organization, e.g., a teacher kollektiv.

Kolyma A region in the far northeast of Russia named after the Kolyma River, notorious for Gulag labor camps; Magadan is often called the capital of Kolyma.

kommunalka A communal apartment, where each family had a room and shared a kitchen and a bathroom. This was a solution to the housing shortage after people began to leave the countryside for the cities en masse in the early twentieth century. Older kommunalkas in the big cities were carved out of the big apartments and/or houses confiscated from the aristocracy and the rich during the revolutions of 1917; kommunalkas in other cities were designed as communal living spaces from the start.

Komsomol Youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Komsomolets A member of Komsomol.

Maslenitsa An Eastern Slavic holiday, with both Christian and pagan roots, celebrated the last week before Great Lent. Bliny (pancakes) are the traditional food of Maslenitsa.

medcarta A notebook where a patient’s medical history is recorded.

New Russians A term used for newly rich businessmen and entrepreneurs who had most likely gained access to wealth and property through criminal means in the economic and legal chaos of early post-Soviet Russia.

polyclinika A clinic with doctors of various specialties under one roof.

Starkhanovites Laborers (in the former Soviet Union) who worked fanatically to surpass production quotas set by the State.

Yezhovshchina Named after Nikolai Yezhov, once the head of the Soviet secret police, the period of the most intense political repressions characterized by arbitrary imprisonment and executions (1937–1938).

Young Pioneers Members of the Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, a mass youth organization for children ten to fifteen years old, with communist undertones.