English

Alternative forms

• tovarishch
• tovarisch
• tovarich

Noun

tovarish ‎(plural tovarishes)

1. Comrade, especially with reference to the former USSR.
   • 1919, The Times, 6 Dec 1919, p.10 col. C,

     Instead of addressing them according to revolutionary etiquette as Tovarish (comrade), he asked them their Christian names and that of their fathers, while telling them his own.

   • 1938, Margaret Sanger, Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography:

     Touching one of them on the shoulder, she said, “Tovarish, these tovarishes want to know who you are.”

   • 1940, Jan Valtin, Out of the Night, 2005, Kessinger Publishing Company, page 436,

     Jensen laughed, “My wife complains: ‘All day long they ring our door bell. Tovarish here, tovarish there. They come from Moscow, from Leningrad, from Berlin and Hamburg. They don't speak one word of Danish. Comrade Jensen, they say, fix us up with Danish passports.’ So it goes.″

   • 1988, Anthony Burgess, Any Old Iron,

     His Russian was derived from a fortnight’s crash course. ‘You’d better see what this, ah, tovarish thinks he wants.’

   • 1999, Livia Bitton-Jackson, I Have Lived A Thousand Years: Growing Up In The Holocaust (ISBN 0689823959):

     The tovarishes bring along their harmonicas and balalaikas, their good voices and their good humor.

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