Czarist and Soviet terminology in English

[R. M. Cleminson]

Of course one really does need to have access to the original before saying anything definite, but I imagine that the word in question is мещане, which in 20th-century Russian does have the same negative cultural connotations as "petty bourgeois" in English.  In the official class system in force in Imperial Russia, a person engaged in trade but with insufficient capital to enrol in one of the three guilds of купцы was classified as a мещанин.  This category also included artisans, shopkeepers and suchlike.  Etymologically, мещанин (< Pol. mieszczanin) is indeed the equivalent of bourgeois -- but the two words have gone their separate ways in Russian.

----- Originálna správa -----
Odosielateľ: "Jules Levin" <ameliede at EARTHLINK.NET>
Komu: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Dátum: nedeľa, november 28, 2010 09:38:01
Predmet: [SEELANGS] Czarist and Soviet terminology in English

Another question has arisen in my Genealogy listserv.  Unfortunately I 
do not have access to the
original Russian but am making inferences from the translations provided 
by paid translators of 19th Century
records.   The term "petty bourgeois" is being used to describe 
merchants who could not afford to pay their
annual license fees.  I suspect this is a Soviet era Russian-English 
dictionary translation of a phrase that would
have a more felicitous translation in modern English.  Any thoughts?
Jules Levin
Los Angeles

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