Comrade - Russian Usage

Russian Usage

The original (archaic) meaning of the Russian version of this term (товарищ, tovarishch) from Old Turkic tavar ishchi, meant something like "business companion" or "travel (or other adventure) mate", deriving from the noun товар (tovar, i.e., 'merchandise'). In the late 19th century Russian Marxists and other leftist revolutionaries adopted tovarishch (abbreviated tov.) as a translation of the words for "Comrade" which were used as a form of address in international (especially German) Social Democracy and in the associated parts of the workers' movement. For instance, one might be referred to as Comrade Plekhanov or Comrade Chairman, or simply as Comrade. After the Russian Revolution, translations of the term in different languages were adopted by Communists worldwide. As a result, even though many other socialists would continue to use "Comrade" among themselves (e.g., German and Austrian social-democrats and, for a long time, members of the British Labour Party), it became most strongly associated in public consciousness with "Soviet-style" Communism of the Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist and Trotskyist varieties. This is exemplified in its mocking use in stereotypical portrayals of the Soviet Union in Cold War films and books.

In the early years of Soviet power in Russia, the Bolsheviks used "Comrade" when addressing or referring to people assumed sympathetic to the revolution and to the Soviet state, such as members of the Communist party (and originally of other pro-revolution leftist formations such as the Left SR) and people from the "working masses". The more neutral republican form of address was "Citizen". Accordingly, supporters of the White movement in the Russian Civil War would use "Comrades" mockingly as a derogatory term for their enemies - although at the same time, the various socialist anti-Bolshevik forces such as the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks also used "Comrade" among themselves.

By the mid-1920s, the form of address "Comrade" became so commonplace in Soviet Union that it was used indiscriminately in essentially the same way as terms like "Mister" and "Sir" are employed in English. That use persisted until the fall of the Soviet Union. Still, the original meaning partly re-surfaced in some contexts: criminals and suspects were only addressed as "Citizens" and not as "Comrades", and expressly refusing to address someone as "Comrade" would generally be perceived as a hostile act or, in Stalinist times, even as an accusation of being "Anti-Soviet".

The term is not used often in contemporary Russian society, but it is still the standard form of address in the armed forces and police, where officers and soldiers are normally addressed as "Comrade Colonel", "Comrade General", "Comrade Sergeant", or the like. The term is also used as part of idioms e.g., tovarishch po neschast'yu (fellow-sufferer, from German Leidensgenosse) or as a part of such words as tovarishchestvo (partnership) that do not associate with communism.