entuziast
Michele A Berdy
maberdy at ONLINE.RU
Mon Jun 26 20:02:23 UTC 2006
This is probably not very helpful, but:
The Tolkovi slovar' yazyka Sovdepii, which has decent definitions and
sometimes good illustrative quotes, unfortunately does not date the quotes
or cite time periods for usage. It has entuziast in the sense of "someone
acting with enthusiasm (building socialism)" with quotes from Gorky and
the song Marsh Entuziastov (from the film Traktoristy, 1938).
The wonderful Yazyk revoliutsionnoi epokhi by Selishchev, a reprint
edition of a work that looks at language changes 1917-1926, doesn't
mention it all. That, of course, doesn't prove anything, but it might mean
that the "builder of socialism" usage came a bit later.
Just for the heck of it I ran "entuziast" through the search engine of a
disc of Russian literatue, and it pops up in Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy,
Turgenev, Hertzen, Platonov and a few others, though the sense is
not "revolutionary" except in Bulgakov (although you'd have to check that -
- I was flying through).
BTW, the Selishchev book is a gem. My favorite part is a section on the
understanding of "new words" in rural areas, in which they asked people in
a Yaroslavl' village to define "Soviet words (in 1925). Their answers are
presented with their pronunciation: "Mars, Karlo-Mars: eto kak
Lenin" "Mil'en, mil'yard: den'ga bumazhnaya"; Yelegatka -- eto bab na
sobranie vybiraiut"; Deklet -- eto praviltel'stvo bumagi pishet." My
favorite: Nalog - eto poprezhnemu obrok." And much more like this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the SEELANG
mailing list