A Dictionary of Political Terms

Politishes verter-bukh (A Dictionary of Political Terms) is an anonymous work billed as “an interpretation of the strange words that are used in Yiddish newspapers, journals, and political and economic brochures.” There is little solid information about the ideology and intentions of its creators. From the content of the text itself, the terms of its self-presentation, and the tiny cheap pocket format in which it appeared, Politishes verter-bukh is likely best understood as a mostly neutral practical attempt by an intellectually up-to-date author or authors to offer a useful reference work to the very large potential Yiddish newspaper readership lacking any substantial modern European education. The booklet appeared in 1907 after two years of revolutionary tumult in Russia that, among other things, spurred the rapid expansion of Yiddish journalism and also an explosion of political writing of all sorts, as numerous parties of socialist, nationalist, and integrationist bent aimed to inform, instruct, and mobilize Russia’s large Jewish population. The booklet indicates its intended audience by invoking the word peyresh (peyrush) in its subtitle, associating the work of a dictionary with a traditional Hebrew-Yiddish word for properly interpreting a text; and it indeed seems to have been written in relatively simple and natural Yiddish. Yet there are also indications that the book sought to subtly transmit socialist ideas: some of its definitions seem permeated by Marxian ways of thinking about society in terms of class and class conflict, and it devotes much space to terms bearing on socialism, Marxism, and revolution.