Comrade
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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'"Comrades," he said, "I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacrifice that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour upon himself. Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills--Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal?"'--Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell |
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The term comrade is used to mean 'mate', 'colleague', or 'ally', and derives from the Spanish and Portuguese, term camarada, literally meaning 'chamber mate', from Latin camera, meaning 'chamber' or 'room'. Political use of the term was inspired by the French Revolution, after which it grew into a form of address between socialists and workers. Since the Russian Revolution, popular culture in the Western world has often associated it with communism. However, the term comrade is improperly attributed to Russian speakers, since Russians do not say comrade, but rather tovarisch.
In literature
In George Orwell's novel Animal Farm, the animals all refer to each other as comrade, as the story is a satirical look at the Russian Revolution. Also in Nineteen Eighty-Four, party members in Oceania refer to each other as comrade.
Alexander Pushkin's play Boris Godunov and subsequent opera have namedropping of "tovarishch", when two vagrant-monks reference the future False Dmitry I.
