World Notes Soviet Union

Tinker: "To work at something clumsily or imperfectly . . . to batter, maul." So says the Oxford English Dictionary. To their horror, the British publishers of the esteemed lexicon found last week that the definition applies to two of their own dictionaries. Editors in the Soviet Union have prepared special editions of the dictionaries that put political isms through a prism. Thus socialism, which is defined in the British editions as "a theory or policy of social organization . . ." in the Soviet version has become a "system which is replacing capitalism." And capitalism? Well, that is "an economic and social system based on . . . the exploitation of man by man."

The British publishers, Oxford University Press, have discovered that in permitting the Soviets to publish the editions, a "low level" employee also signed away Oxford's defined view of things. Now Oxford must live with imperialism as "the highest and last stage of capitalism," and fascism as "a bourgeois movement and regime typical of the era of imperialism." Perhaps Soviet editors should also have provided a revised definition of dictionary: "A compendium of words in which meanings can be changed to meet ideological dictates. cf. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Newspeak."