Was the Word Mestechko Borrowed from the Polish?1

Lawrence A. COBEN Washington University in St. Louis

WAS THE WORD MESTECHKO BORROWED FROM THE POLISH?1

Introduction

In the literature on the shtetl, the Russian word for small town — mestechko — (which is the equivalent or near-equivalent of the word shtetl),2 is said to be derived from the Polish word miasteczko (small town).3 Such a derivation is plausible, since the Russian mestechkos were acquired by annexation of lands containing Polish miasteczkos in the three Polish partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795. However, because no documentation has been supplied to support this derivation, it seemed of interest to assess the relationship of mestechko to miasteczko by comparing them in terms of their etymologies and the histories of their usage.

1. For translation assistance, I am grateful to Ms. Masha Sapp, Librarian, Olin Library, Washington University in St. Louis (Russian); and to Ms. Joanna Epstein, Librarian, Widener Library, Harvard University (Polish). For linguistics help, I thank Prof. Michael J. Connolly, Program in Linguistics, Slavic & Eastern Languages & Literatures, Boston College. Special thanks go to Asst. Prof. Kit Condill, University of Illinois, Urbana, Slavic and East European Library, for detailed etymologic information and insight. ,M. ZBOROWSKI) ”(עירה .Shtetl (pl. shtetlakh; Russ: mestechko; Pol. miasteczko; Heb“ .2 Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem, 1972, q. v. “Shtetl”); J. D. KLIER, “What Exactly Was a Shtetl?”, in G. ESTRAIKH and M. KRUTIKOV (eds), The Shtetl: Image and Reality, Oxford, 2000, p. 23-35; “Mestechko (ot Polbskago ‘myastechko’ — gorodok; idish — shtetl)”, Krat- kaia Evreiskaiia Entsiklopediia, Jerusalem, 1976; “Mestechko (from Polish myastechko — gorodok; in Yiddish — shtetl)” (Elektronnaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopedia, q. v. “Mestecho”, vol. 5, col. 314-321); “Although not all of the shtetls were included in this official category [mestechko in the 1897 census] those included do represent the bulk of the shtetls in the region” (B.-C. PINCHUK, “How Jewish Was The Shtetl”, Polin, 17, 2004, p. 109-118, p. 112). 3. “Gorod, posad, and mestechko… It is the last, a variation on the Polish, that most closely resembles what came to be known as a shtetl — a sort of lesser city with commercial rights but without the urban charters that marked a gorod.” (S. J. ZIPPERSTEIN, “The Shtetl Revisited”, in Shtetl Life: The Nathan and Faye Hurvitz Collection, Berkeley, 1993, p. 17-24, p. 18.) “Russian: mestechko; from the Polish miasteczko” (J. D. KLIER, “Polish Shtetls Under Russian Rule”, Polin, 17, 2004, p. 97-108, p. 98). See also “Mestechko…” (Elektronnaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopedia, q. v. “Mestecho”, vol. 5, col. 314-321); “Mestechko (mestewko, from Polish miasteczko; Yiddish shtetl), a small town in Western Krai annexed during the Partitions of Poland; typically with Jewish majority” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Types_ of_inhabited_ localities_in_Russia, accessed 3-29-2011.)

Revue des études juives, 172 (1-2), janvier-juin 2013, pp. 201-210. doi: 10.2143/REJ.172.1.2979747

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I. The etymology of the words mestechko and miasteczko

In the linguistics literature, the general outline of the derivations of the modern Russian words for “place” (mesto), and “small town” (mestechko), is clear. Both modern words descend from the Common Slavic (c. 700-900 CE4), word mesto (“place”). These derivations do include one feature requiring explanation, which is that both modern words have dual meanings. Modern mesto usually means place, but may also mean town. Similarly, modern mestechko usually means small town, but may also mean small place. One of the steps in the descent from Common Slavic mesto explains how the single meaning of “place” changed to a dual meaning of “place” and “town.” The Common Slavic mesto descends to the Old Russian (900-1200/1400 CE) written word mesto (place),5 which then has its meaning enlarged by a loan translation6 from the Middle High German (1050-1350 CE), word stat, a word meaning both “place” and “town.”7 From Old Russian mesto, now enlarged to mean both place and town, the lineage descends both to modern mesto, (which, inheriting that enlargement, means both “place” and “town, although usually “place”8); and to modern mestechko (which inherits the same double meaning — both “small town” and “small place,” although usually “small town”).9

4. These dates apply when Common Slavic is equated to Late Proto-Slavic, and is thus ca. 8th-9th centuries CE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Slavic_language; http://en.wiktionary. org/wiki/Common_Slavic; accessed 3-29-2011). 5. Old Russian mesto may have arisen in the 14th or 15th century, because a 15th century message to Vasily II, Grand Prince of Moscow, already uses mestechko to mean an urban site (“Sbornik Kirillo-Belozerskogo monastyria”, in S. G. BARKHUDAROV et al., Slovar’ Russkogo Iazyka XI-XVII vv, Moscow, vol. 9, 1975, p. 109-110). T. L. B. WADE, Russian Etymological Dictionary, London, 1996, assigns the Old Russian word mesto to the 11th century. 6. A loan translation, or calque, is the adoption by a receiving language of a word in a donating language, an adoption carried out, for example, by translating the donor word directly into the receiving language; e. g., the Russian pravopisanie (“orthography”) is a calque of the Greek donor word orthografia. In Greek, orthos means “correct” and grapho means “I write.” In Russian, pravo means “correct” and pisanie means “I write.” 7. M. VASMER, O. N. TRUBACHEVA, B. A. LARINA, Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka, Moscow, 1964, 4 vol. See also http://vasmer.narod.ru/ (accessed 3-29-2011). 8. The double meaning (town, place) of the 14th century Middle High German word stat persists into modern times for both the Russian mesto and mestechko. Thus, despite the fact that the dominant meaning of modern Russian mesto is “place,” Kurakin (1705) used mesto for miasto, town: “nennt eine Stadt häufig mesto, p. miasto.” (See W. A. CHRISTIANI, Über das Eindringen von Fremdwörtern in die russische Schriftsprache des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1906, p. 17.) The meaning of town for mesto is not found, however, in 20th and 21st century dictionaries. 9. L. SEGAL, New Complete Russian-English Dictionary, London, 1953; V. I. CHERNYCHEV, Slovar’ Sovremennogo Russkogo Literaturnogo Iazyka, Moscow, 1950-1965; D. USHAKOV,

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II. The etymology of the word miasteczko

The Polish miasto (“town”) and miasteczko (“small town”), descend from the same Common Slavic mesto as did the just-described Russian mesto and mestechko. The steps in the lineage of miasteczko, however, are not known, a gap in knowledge symbolized by the fact that etymologists differ in identifiying the word of which it is the diminutive.10 Thus although the general outline of etymology for the Polish and the Russian words is roughly similar, not enough details have been filled in to speak of a strictly parallel development. The lineage of miasteczko differs from the Russian lineage for mestechko, in that mestechko has the dual meaning, but modern miasteczkco has always meant only small town.11

III. The written usage of mestechko from the 15th century

The earliest known written use of mestechko, in the sense of a small urban settlement,12 is found in a monastery’s collection of documents, in the form of a 15th century message to Vasily II, Grand Prince of Moscow

Tolkovly Slovar Russkogo Yazyka, Moscow, 1938; V. K. MULLER, Bol’shoi russko-angliiskii slovar’, Moscow, 2008. Similarly, both Gotoskov (1703) and Dolgokurov (1702) use “mestechko“ for “miasteczko.” (See CHRISTIANI, Über das Eindringen…, p. 17, note 8 above.) It is not known whether mestechko took on the dual meaning in the same century as did mesto. However, mestechko had done so by the time of its first written usage in 1425-1462. Thus, although any Polish influence on mestechko is unlikely, any such influence should have occurred at or before this written usage. 10. A. BANKOWSKI, Etymologiczny Slownik Jezyka Polskiego, vol. 2, L-P, Warsaw, 1, 2000, p. 172; K. D¥UGOSZ-KURCZABOWA, Nowy S¥ownik etymologiczny jπzyka polskiego, War- saw, 2003, p. 345-346; W. BORYS, S¥ownik etymologiczny jπzyka polskiego, Krakow, 2005, p. 321-322. 11. W. KIERST and O. CALLIER, Burt’s Polish-English dictionary, in two parts, Polish- English [and] English-Polish, New York, n. p., n. d.; E. RYKACZEWSKI, A complete dictionary English and Polish and Polish and English, comp. from the dictionaries of Johnson, Webster, Walker, Fleming and Tibbins, etc. from the Polish lexicon of Linde and the Polish German dictionary of Mrongovius…, Berlin, n. p., 1849-1851; J. STANISLAWSKI. The great Polish- English dictionary, Warsaw, 1970. 12. The modern Russian word mestechko has been used in four different categories of meaning (Slovar’ Russkogo Iazyka XI-XVII vv, Moscow, 1975, vol. 9, p. 109-110). Three of these categories are from the 16th to 18th century, and concern meanings other than urban settlements, as follows: a) a small share of land; a corner or nook (citations to 1555; 1635); b) a portion, a specific space on the surface of a tangible object (1589; 1696); c) a small portion of land, a specific, limited place (1653; 18th century). An encyclopedic dictionary of 1890-1906 mentions, without citation, that mestechkos in Poland were “of long standing (as from XII century)”. “Zdes M[estechki] s davnikh por (nachinaya s XII v.).” (I. E. ANDREEVSKI, et al. Brockhaus-Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, St.-Petersburg, 1890-1906,

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(ruled 1425-1462).13 The message includes the passage, “Mestechko, a town with a place that has sunk into the earth.”14 Next, in the 16th century (circa 1594), a passage in an account of an embassy to Istanbul and Jerusalem reads: “And from that Polish landowner to the myestechko, in Russian to the posad [suburban settlement15], [that is to say,] to Gostinich, [the distance is] 10 versts.”16 Here we have one Russian, writing to another Russian, taking pains, circa 1594, to tell the recipient that the Polish word miasteczko, written in Cyrillic as mestechko, means an urban settlement, and thus something other than a town or city (gorod), and other than a village (selo or derevnya). This suggests that the meaning of the Polish word miasteczko and of the Russian word mestechko was unknown at that time to most Russians (Muscovites). However, with respect to the Russian use of the word mestechko, it is ambiguous.17 In the 17th century (1654), a writer uses the word mestechko in distinction from the words for town and village: “To everyone in general and anyone in particular… being in the towns, in the villages, in the mestechkos, to your fidelities [we extend] our royal affection.”18 Two 18th century lexicons (1746,19 and 176320) have entries of oppidum and oppidulum respectively,

http://www.vehi.net/ brokgauz/index.html, q. v. “mestechki”). No other such mention has been found. (See http://www.vehi.net/brokgauz/index.html.) 13. Vasily II reigned 1425-1462 (J. D. CLARKSON, A History of Russia, 2nd ed., New York, 1969, p. 80). Vasily II was the son of Vasily I (Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, 1974, q. v. “Russia”, p. 44). 14. “Myestechko, gorod s myestom, takozh t’ vpal” v zemlyu.” [Posl. Feof. Vas.Vas. Sb. Kir.-B. m., 39. XV v.] ( “A 15th Century Collection of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery, at site 39, of epistle(s) of Theophane Vasily Vasil’ievich [ruler Vasily II]”), in S. G. BARKHU- DAROV et al., Slovar’ Russkogo Iazyka XI-XVII vv, Moscow, 1975, vol. 9, p. 110. 15. Gorodskiia poseleniia v Rossiiskoi imperii, St-Petersburg, 1860-1865, vol. 1, p. ix. 16. “A ot” togo pana do myestechka, po ruski do posadtsu, do Gostinich” 10 verst”.” Khozhdenie Trifona Korobeinikova, cited from a 17th-century version of the circa 1594 account of an embassy to Istanbul and Jerusalem, in S. G. BARKHUDAROV et al., Slovar’ Russ- kogo Iazyka XI-XVII vv, Moscow, 1975, vol. 9, cit., p. 110. 17. The passage can be interpreted in three ways with regard to the word myestechko: the writer is borrowing the Polish word miasteczko and writing it in Cyrillic as myestechko; he is using an already existing Russian word, myestechko, to translate the Polish miasteczko; or he is merely using an already existing Russian word, myestechko, and has no need to translate from the Polish. 18. “Vsyem” vopche i vsyakomu osobno…v” gorodyekh”, v” selakh”, v” myestechkakh” buduchim”, vyernostyam” vashim” lasku nashu korolevskuyu.” (SGGD III, 506. 1654g., Collection of state records and treaties preserved in the state board of foreign affairs, Moskva, 1813-1894, in S. G. BARKHUDAROV et al., Slovar’ Russkogo Iazyka XI-XVII vv, Moscow, 1975, vol. 9, p. 110.) 19. C. CELLARIUS, Christofora Cellarija kratkoj Latinskoj Leksikon s Rossijskim i Nemeckim perevodom, St-Petersburg, 1746, p. 221, 519. 20. Slovar na shesti yakikakh, St-Petersburg, n. p., 1763, p. 132.

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both of which list “gorodok [small town], mestechko” as their synonyms.21 Four other 18th century books (Miller,1750; Anonymous,1761; Lepechin, 1771; Dilthey, 1771),22 use mestechko in the sense of a settlement, all appear- ing before the first (1772) Polish partition. In one of the four, the equivalence of mestechko and small town is not made, because no word other than mestechko is used for the mestechko Shavli (Lithuania). (Anonymous, 1761) However, the history of the mestechko Shavli is at least compatible with its having been a small town in 1761, when the book was published, since Shavli was granted permission to build a synagogue in 1701, and by 1847, after a notable increase in growth, it still had only 2,565 Jews.23 In each of the other three books, a second word establishes the meaning of small town. In the case of Miller, the equivalent word used is gorodok, while in the case of Lepechin, the other word for mestechko is prigorodok. In the case of Dilthey, it is the French bourg.24

21. Although in classical Latin oppidum means “town,” and oppidulum means “little town,” both words are being used in these lexicons, in late Latin, as synonyms for the Russian word gorodok (small town). 22. 1) G. F. MILLER. Opisanie Sibirskago tsarstva i vsyekh proizshedkshikh v nem dyel, ot…, St-Petersburg, 1750, p. 168 [Translated from German ms. by V. LEBEDEV and I. GOLUBTSOV]: “in my opinion this [Siberian] myestechko should be considered the same as what the chronicle calls Nazym gorodok”, “moemu mnyeniu sie myestechko za obvyavlennoy v” lyetopistsakh” Nazmskoy gorodok” pochitat” nadlezhit””. 2) Anonymous. Journal des campagnes de l’armée impériale russe en 1757 et 1758, St-Petersburg, 1761, p. 285: “In camp at the myestechkye Shavli [Lithuania] from May 22, 1757.” “V lagerye pri myestechkye shavlye ot 22 Maiya 1757 goda.” “His Excellency the General Feldmarshal [and] I departed for myestechko Vengrovetsb, located two miles and a half from Ktsina.” “Ego Siyatelbstvo General Felbdmartal otpravilsya v myestechko Vengrovets, razstoyaniem ot Ktsina dv mili s polovinoyu.” 3) P. H. DILTHEY and J. HUBNER, Atlas des enfans: ou methode nouvelle, facile & demonstrative pour apprendre la géographie, vol. 4, L’empire russe, Moscow, 1771, p. 201 [French and Russian on opposite pages.] “Pistritz, market town well known for its good wine.” “Pistritz, bourg fort connu à cause de son bon vin.” “Pchetrits, a myestechko very famous for… good wine.” “Pchetrits”, myestechko vesbma slavnoe dlya… khoroshie vino- grad.” 4) I. I. Lepechin, Mémoires des voyages dans diverses provinces de l’empire russe en 1768 et 1769, St-Petersburg, 1771, p. 302: “Mountains make up the shore of Volzhsk, from which the myestechko Tetyushi is situated no more than one quarter verst”, “Gori sostavlyayutsiya Volzhskoy bereg”, ot” kotorago myestechko Tetyushi ne bolyee kak” na chetvert’ versti otstoit””. (The page heading of p. 303 reads: “prigorodok” tetyushi”.) 23. See http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0018_0_18446. html (accessed 9-22-2011). 24. In an 18th century French dictionary, among the first one hundred entries (of the total of 986 entries for “bourg”), the following four are representative: 1) “38. Billet de santé (p. 2:255) Diderot: … Ce billet contient… l’état de santé de la ville, du bourg ou village d’où il vient”. 2) “89. Coûtume (p. 4:413): environ trois cents coûtumes locales qui ne sont observées que dans une seule ville, bourg ou village.” 3) “72. Cité (p. 3:486) Diderot: à Prague & à Cracovie, … on dit en toute autre occasion, ou ville, ou faubourg, ou bourg, ou village.” 4) “66. Chemin. (p. 3:277): … mais qui alloient seulement d’un bourg ou village à un autre.” “48. Bourg (p. 2:370) Diderot: Aujourd’hui par bourg, on entend un endroit plus

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The existence of these three books in the two decades immediately pre- ceding the first Polish partition suggests that mestechko, in the sense of a small town, was in active use in Russian during this period. Although the existence of these three books does not assess the relative frequency of usage for gorodok and mestechko, it suggests that mestechko was far from obsolete. As part of her reorganization of Russian government, Catherine II issued in 1775 the “Statute for the Administration of the Gubernii of the Russian Empire.”25 Russia had neither the number of urban sites mandated by the statute to serve as administrative centers (“district towns”26), nor the number of people with urban experience to staff them. As an expedient, therefore, some district towns were simply created by fiat, changing the designation of some small towns and large villages into “district towns,” to meet the need.27 The resident serfs and peasants were summarily moved into the legal category of townspeople (meshchane). The newly formed gorods, having been inhabited mainly by rural people, anomalously retained their rural char- acter. They were thus poorly equipped to be government centers requiring the kind of staff found in mainly urban populations. The term mestechko appeared in Russian law as early as 1776 — four years after the first Polish partition; and although it was not defined, its context clearly gave it the meaning of an urban center and a small town, as distinct from gorod (town, city), and from the two kinds of village (selo and derevnya). The law at issue concerned taxation of Jews living in Belorussia, i.e., in lands recently annexed by Russia in the first Polish partition.28 In the 19th century (1860-1865), the Russian government’s Ministry for Inte- rior Affairs published a seven-volume listing of all known urban settlements

considérable qu’un village, mais qui l’est moins qu’une ville.” (D. DIDEROT and J.-L. D’ALEM- BERT, The Artful Encyclopedia, 1751-1772, a complete on-line version of the first edition of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie with Panckoucke’s 4-volume Supplément à l’Ency- clopédie, accessed 9-22-2011). 25. The Statute was issued on November 5, 1775 (I. de MADARIAGA, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, London, 1981, 2nd ed. 2002, p. 281). The “Charter to the Towns” had been issued on April 21, 1775, together with the “Charter to the Nobility” (ibid., p. 296). 26. S. G. PUSHKAREV, G. VERNADSKY and R. T. FISHER, Jr. (eds.), Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1970, p. 22-23 and 28-29; de MADARIAGA, Russia…, p. 300-301; M. WHEELER, Oxford Russian- English Dictionary. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972, q. v. “gorodovoy”. 27. Some of the large villages (selos) were hardly distinguishable from the larger examples of small villages (derevnyas) (E. K. ANISHCHENKO, Cherta osedlosti: belarusskaia sinagoga v tsarstvovanie Ekateriny II, Minsk, 1998, p. 165). 28. L. O. LEVANDA, Pol’nyi khronologicheskii sbornik zakonov i polozhenii kasaiushchikhsia Evreev, ot ulozheniia Tsaria Aleksieia Mikhailovicha do nastoiashchago vremeni, ot 1649- 1873 g., St-Petersburg, 1874. (No. 31, October 17, 1776, p. 25-26.)

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in the empire, including mestechkos.29 No definition of the mestechko was given. The editor, in his preface, emphasized the lack of information on the subject. Not only did the government have scant record of the decrees affect- ing individual settlements, but it also had no complete and correct record of all urban settlements. In some cases the government did not even know, for a given settlement, whether it was a gorod (town, city), a posad (suburb), or a mestechko (small town). Concerning the mestechkos in particular, most did not have documents recording their establishment, which had occurred when they were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, so that their rights were merely based on their having been founded so long ago in a different nation.30 Thus the word mestechko developed from its earliest known written usages, in the sense of town or suburb, to became ultimately established in the sense of a specific small town that was differentiated from a town, and from the two kinds of village.

IV. The written usage of miasteczko from the 15th century

Miasteczko appears in Polish writing, in the sense of small town or small city, in each century from the fifteenth throught the eighteenth. The meaning of miasteczko is equated to “small town” (male miasto, oppidum), in passages from four 15th century Polish works, the earliest in 1438.31 In the 16th century, a 1564 lexicon32 equates miasteczko to “small city” (urbicula).33 In

29. Gorodskii poseleniia, 1860-1865. See note 15 above. 30. Ibid., vol. 1, p. iii; ix-x. See note 15 above. The 1897 All-Russian Census found that in the Pale of Settlement plus the Kingdom of Poland, there were 1,522 mestechkos and 324 gorods, for a total of 1,846 settlements. (B. BRUTZKUS, Statistika evreiskago naseleniia:raspredielenie po territorii, demograficheskie i kul’turnye priznaki evreiskago naseleniia po dannym perepisi 1897 g., St-Petersburg, 1909; see also I. LEVITATS, The Jewish Community in Russia, 1844-1917, Jerusalem, 1981, Table 1, p. 2.) 31. The four passages (excerpts from works published respectively in 1438, 1471, 15th century, and 15th century), are listed in K. NITSCH, Slownik Staropolski, Warszawa-Wroclaw, 1953-1993, vol. 4, p. 195.) In Polish, male miasto means both ”small town” and “small city.” In classical Latin, oppidum means “town,” and oppidulum means “small town” (C. T. LEWIS and C. SHORT, Harpers’ Latin Dictionary: A New Latin Dictionary. New York, American Book Co., 1907). However, in late Latin both oppidum and oppidulum have been used to mean small town (gorodok). (1746, Cellarius; 1763, Slovar na shesti yakikakh, St-Petersburg, n. p., 1763, p. 132. 32. I. MACJEWSKI, Lexicon Latino-Polonicum. Köln, 1973, p. 1015 (p. 1015 of the 1973 Bohlau Verlag reprint, or leaf 508 in the original). The entry reads, “ Urbicula, lae, dimin. fem. pri. Miasteczko.” For “urbicula,” see note 34 below. 33. The word urbicula is absent in classical Latin, in which urbs is restricted to the city of Rome, and oppidum is used for all other towns. In late Latin, urbicula means “a little city” (W. YOUNG, A New Latin-English Dictionary to Which Is Prefixed a New English-Latin,

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Polish law as recorded in Volumina legum,34 the earliest use of the word miasteczko occurs in 1578, in reference to a tax on the sale of liquor. Here the meaning of “small towns” for miasteczkach is indicated by its position relative to that of “towns” (miastach) in the phrase “Tax on the sale of liquor in the towns and small towns” (Czopowe w miastach y miasteczkach).35 In the 17th century, a 1643 thesaurus equates miasteczko to “small town” (both oppidum and oppidulum).36 Adam Teller finds that a clear definition of miasteczko appears in the 18th century. The Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth had already undergone its first partition when the Sejm of 1775 produced this definition of the miasteczko (as part of a classification of towns for tax purposes): a small town “that engage[s] in agriculture and number[s] less than 300 chimneys.”37 Teller comments that the word agriculture here meant not that the townspeople were farmers, but that they commonly made their living from the town market, which largely dealt in agricultural produce. The criterion of fewer than 300 chimneys implied a total population of something less than about 2,000. (In a 1793 law, the criterion was increased to less than 400 chimneys, implying a total of something less than about 2,500 people.)

London, 1793; and “a litle cytie” in J. LELAND, T. HEARNE, Joannis Lelandi antiquarii De rebus Britannicis collectanea. Cum Thomae Hearnii praefactione notis et indice ad editionem primam, Londres, 1774). For urbicula, Bonaventura Vulcanius gives “polikhnion” [políxnion] (BONAVENTURA VULCANIUS, Thesaurus utriusque linguae: hoc est, Philoxeni, aliorumque, Lyon, 1600, q. v. “urbicula”). A Lexicon Abridged from Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford, 1963, p. 571 gives “polikhnion, Dim. of polikhne, a very small town;” and “polikhne, a small town.” A modern Polish encyclopedia repeatedly calls the settlement of Kleszczele a miasteczko (of Grodno gubernia) in relation to both King Zygmunt in c. 1523, and King Stephen Batory in c. 1578 (Wielka encyklopedya powszechna ilustrowana, Warsaw, 1904, q. v. “Kleszczele”, vol. 35-36, p. 705). 34. Volumina legum. Przedruk zbioru praw staraniem xx. Pijarów w warszawie, öd rokü 1732 do roko 1782, wydamego, St-Petersburg, 1859, vol. I-III. 35. Before this, only oppidum appears, the earliest being in 1420 (“in oppido Wartha”), and the latest in 1538 (“De nundinus civitatum et oppidorum”). 36. G. KNAPSKI, Thesaurus Polono-Latino-Graecus, Krakow, 1643, vol. 1, p. 400. In the 17th century also, a diary calls the settlement of Steblow a miasteczko, and its description makes it likely that Steblow was at that time a small town (judging from its comparison to neighboring Korsun), but the diarist does not name its type of urban settlement. S. OSWIºCIM. “Diarium 1643-1651”, Scriptores Rerum Polonicarum, 20, Krakow, 1907, p. 15. 37. “Perhaps the best of these [18th century definitions used in the Polish Commonwealth], was drawn up by the Sejm of 1775 in its classification of towns for taxation purposes. It defined small towns (Polish miasteczka) as those ‘that engage in agriculture and number less than 300 chimneys’.” [“miasteczka maia sie rozumiec te, ktore samym sie rolnictwem bawia, y mniey jak trzysta kominow licza”, Volumina legum, vol. 8, St-Petersburg, 1868, fols. 133- 134, p. 88.] (A. TELLER, “The Shtetl as an Arena for Polish-Jewish Integration in the Eigh- teenth Century”, Polin, 17, 2004, p. 24-40, p. 28.)

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In the late 18th century the written usage of the Polish word miasteczko had the meaning of “village church,”38 as well as the meaning of “small Town.” However, the word miasteczko had only one category of meaning — “small town” — in 19th century written Polish usage.

V. The hierarchy of Russian settlements

Despite the fact that the Russian word mestechko had been in use since the 15th century, it was a general word for a small town, and not an administrative term in the legal hierarchy of Russian settlements. The six pertinent official terms were gorod (town, city); prigorod (one kind of suburb); posad (another kind of suburb); the large village (selo), and the small village (derevnya); and the farmstead (khutor).39 Among the urban settlements, the legal category of the gorod covered not only cities, but also towns, and there was no separate category for small towns. The gorod stood, administratively, above and distinct from the two kinds of village. This was the system into which the Polish miasteczko would have to fit after the first partition. The solution chosen to incorporate the miasteczko was apparently to rename it by transferring to it the general term mestechko, and to insert it into the administrative hierarchy between the gorod and the selo. Three years after the first Polish partition, when Catherine II reorganized the empire’s municipal government, a number of district towns (uezdy goroda), were abruptly produced in the annexed Belorussian lands, as mentioned above. Thus some former Polish miasteczkos, presumably after initially being renamed mestechkos (small towns), became Russian towns, while others remained mestechkos.40 The term mestechko appeared in Russian law in the next year (1776), its location now clear among the terms in the administrative hierarchy: “gorods, mestechkos, selos, and derevnyas.”41 From the point of view of linguistics, of course, Polish and Russian were in contact as neighbors, and with significant Russian military presence in Poland intermittently over a long period. Russian could not avoid being

38. J. KAR¥OWICZA, A. KRYNSKIEGO and W. NIEDZWIEDZKIEGO, S¥ownik jπzyka polskiego, Warsaw, 1900-[1927], vol. 2, p. 944; S. B. LINDE, Slownik Jezyka Polskiego, Warsaw, 3rd ed., 1951, vol. 3, p. 81. 39. Gorodskii poseleniia, 1860-1865. See note 15 above. 40. KLIER, “Polish Shtetls…”, p. 99; de MADARIAGA, Russia…, p. 281, 287, 289; KLIER, “What Exactly Was…”, p. 26; Ekonomicheskoe sostoianie gorodskikh poselenii evropeiskoi Rossii v 1861-1862 gg, St-Petersburg, 1863, I, v. 41. “Gorodakh, myestechkakh, selakh i derevnakh” (LEVANDA, Pol’nyi khronologicheskii…, p. 25-26).

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influenced by direct contact with the Polish word miasteczko, which had existed alongside the Russian mestechko for centuries, and which had long been in use in Poland as the name for small towns with a substantial Jewish population when Russia annexed the first of the regions in which these miasteczkos already existed.

Summary and conclusions

According to shtetl literature, the Russian word mestechko (which is the equivalent or near-equivalent of the word shtetl), was derived from the Polish word miasteczko. In order to clarify the relationship of the Russian word mestechko (small town), to the Polish word miasteczko (small town), the etymology of both words was reviewed, as was the history of the written usage of both, beginning with the earliest known examples. Linguistic evidence beginning before the 15th century indicates that both words descended from the same Common Slavic (c. 700-900 CE) word mesto (“place”). The earliest extant use of mestechko in writing (1425-1462), dates to almost the same time as that of miasteczko (1438). Examples of the usage of each of these two words in each century from the fifteenth through the eighteenth show that both words were in use con- tinually before the first Polish partition of 1772, and that mestechko appeared in Russian law as early as 1776, when it was used in regard to a law on the taxation of Jews in newly-annexed Belorussia. These findings suggest that the word mestechko was not borrowed from the Polish. Instead, after existing for centuries in Russian as a general term, it was applied to a specific type of urban settlement new to Russian urban administration when the miasteczkos in Belorussia were annexed in the first Polish partition.

Lawrence A. COBEN [email protected]

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