The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

272 Glossary

noga foot, leg, p. 242.

novyi slog “The new style,” p. 94.

O´chered' The Queue, a novel by Vlad´ımir Sorokin, p. 239.

o´cherk sketch (as a literary genre popular duringthe second half of the nineteenth century, a brief descriptive narrative in the Realist style), p. 156.

ogon' fire, p. 62.

okno window, p. 61.

o´ko eye, p. 61.

Old Believer one who refused to accept the official reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Nikon in the seventeenth century, p. 30.

Orgbyuro acronym for the Organizational Bureau of the Union of Soviet Writers, p. 198.

o´ttepel' Thaw; period of diminished arbitrary government persecution, such as the post-Stalin years under Khrushchev, p. 220.

Ottsy i deti Fathers and Children (novel by Ivan Turgenev), p. 55.

part´ıinost' party-mindedness; a socialist realist concept whereby every act is a political act and the source for all correct knowledge is the Communist Party, p. 200.

Peresmeshnik ´ıli slavenskie skazki The Mocker, or Slavic folk tale, p. 91.

perestroika lit. “Restructuring”; liberalizing reforms in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, p. 18.

Petrushka tragicomic hero of Russian puppet theatre, related to the tradition of Pierrot, Punch and Judy, etc., p. 40.

pletenie sloves lit. word-weaving - an aesthetic technique associated with pre-modern Russian prose texts that involves assonance, alliteration, and repetition to produce a rhythmic, lyrical effect, p. 81.

plut (pronounced ploot) rogue, rascal, Russian picaro, p. 47.

Polovtsians pagan tribes to the southeast of Kiev in medieval times, p. 44.

poputchiki (pl.) lit. “fellow travelers,” a term coined by Leon Trotsky in the early 1920s to refer to non-Bolshevik or apolitical writers who were nevertheless not hostile to the new regime, p. 196.

poshlyi vulgar, trivial, banal, p. 49.

poshlost' vulgarity, banality, p. 50.

poshlyak a vulgar, banal or trivial person, usually with commercial or consumer values, p. 49.

Pravdin “Mr. Truthful,” speakingname from Denis Fonvizin’s comedy TheMinor (1781), p. 86.

pravednik (f. pravednitsa; pl. pravedniki) righteous person, p. 29.

proizvol arbitrary political will or license; the exercise of power for its own irrational sake, or to intimidate, p. 194.

Proletkult acronym for “proletarian culture,” a radical organization of writers from the urban working class that flourished for several years after the Revolution, p. 195.