The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

Glossary 273

prorok prophet, p. 109.

Prostakova “Mrs. Simpleton,” speaking name from Denis Fonvizin’s comedy The Minor (1781), p. 86.

Raskol 17th C. schism in the Russian Orthodox Church, p. 59.

samizdat lit. “self-publishing,” the underground circulation of texts in Soviet-era

Eastern and Central Europe, p. 238. samovar lit. “self-cooker,” a metal urn with spigot and internal tube for boiling

water for tea, p. 32. samozvantsvo lit. self-naming, pretendership, as in “pretender to the throne,”

usurper, p. 118. Shinel' “Overcoat.” Title of a short story by Nikolai Gogol, 1842, p. 117. shut (pronounced shoot) jester, p. 39. shutka joke, p. 41.

skaz the literary device of a folksy, oral, usually digressive narrator, p. 201. skazka folk tale; fairy tale, p. 60. skomorokh (pl. skomorokhi) traveling minstrel, p. 39. Skot´ınin “Mr. Pig,” or “Brute,” speaking name from Denis Fonvizin’s comedy

The Minor (1781), p. 86. Slavophile nineteenth-century writers and lay philosophers opposed to borrowing from other national traditions and favoring a uniquely “Russian” culture

untainted by the West, p. 12. sluchai chance, p. 105. smekh laughter, p. 41. sobor synod, assembly; cathedral, p. 61. sobornost' togetherness; a sense of spiritual, ideological, or cultural togetherness,

p. 31. Sofya “Wisdom,” speaking name from Denis Fonvizin’s comedy The Minor

(1781) and also The Brigadier (1769), p. 86. sotsial'nyi zakaz social command, p. 193. soyuz union, p. 198. Starodum “Old Thought,” speaking name from Denis Fonvizin’s comedy The

Minor (1781), p. 86. stolnik a high-ranking official responsible for serving the tsar at table, p. 48. strannik (f. stra´nnitsa) wanderer, p. 36. strastoterpets passion-sufferer, p. 62. Svoi krug “Our Crowd” (title of Lyudm´ıla Petrushevskaya’s short story),

p. 232.

tamizdat lit. “published elsewhere,” works smuggled out of the Soviet Union and

published in the West, p. 238. toska melancholy, grief, anguish, p. 50. tsarevich son of the tsar (prince, in the Western sense), p. 41. tselostnost' wholeness, p. 31.