Dizionario delle parole russe che s'incontrano in italiano (review)

This ‘dictionary of Russian words encountered in Italian’ is appreciably more than a mere dictionary: it is a handy, one-volume encyclopedia of Russian terms that denote concepts and objects specific to Russian and Soviet history, culture, cuisine, language, literature, society, and government. If the prospective user has a reading knowledge of Italian, the contents of this ‘dictionary’ are not even confined to Italian: the entries include Russian (and Russian-based) words that can be found in publications in almost any language where reference is made to things Russian or Soviet. Indeed, the only apparent reason why che s’incontrano in italiano is part of the work’s title is that at the end of each entry Nicolai indicates in which of nearly 500 Italian-language publications (including Italian translations of Russian works) the Russian term under discussion is attested.

Each of the dictionary’s entries appears either in Italian adaptation (‘italianizzazione’) or in international scholarly transliteration: Italianized entries include dácia ‘dacha, country house’, bolscevíco ‘Bolshevik’, and sóvcos ‘sovkhoz (Soviet state farm)’, while among the transliterated entries we find izvózčik ‘coachman; carriage for hire’, léšij ‘wood demon’, and šči ‘fresh-cabbage and sauerkraut soup’ (an acute accent on a vowel indicates the stressed syllable in a word and does not necessarily occur in actual Italian spelling or scholarly transliteration). The dictionary includes Russian words of foreign (i.e. non-Russian, non-Slavic) origin that have a particular denotation or connotation in a Russian or Soviet context, such as prospékt ‘avenue, main thoroughfare’, nomenklatúra ‘Soviet or Communist-Party elite’, pionéry ‘(young) pioneers [state-controlled boy and girl scout troops]’. Also included are Italian terms as they relate to Russia, such as insalata russa ‘Russian salad’ and notti bianche ‘white nights’, among many others.

An individual entry can be quite long, including not only an Italian definition of the term but also its etymology and exhaustive information on its sociohistorical use and background. The entry bánja ‘bathhouse’, for example, takes up the equivalent of three full pages (49–52), while stalinísmo ‘Stalinism’ takes up about four (396–400).

The dictionary includes a table of contents (5), an introduction by the author (7–15), comments on transliteration and pronunciation (17–18), and 452 pages of alphabetized entries (19–470). These are followed by a 33-page list of publications cited, an index of proper names (505–18), and an index of Russian terms (‘russismi’, 519–29). Overall I consider this dictionary a very useful, informative, and easy-to-use reference tool. It will, no doubt, be particularly valuable to both instructors and students in Russian history, culture, and political science courses.