The Russian language cannot be counted as lexical units that were long ago borrowed from the speech of other peoples, but so “accustomed” to a foreign linguistic environment that now and then one does not immediately find out whether this word is Russian or foreign.
The “proclamation" lexeme was actively used as early as the 19th century, and especially at the beginning of the last century, when revolutionary sentiments were expanding.
Main meaning
The word "proclamation" is literally translated from Latin as "an appeal, a popular announcement." It was such significance that the revolutionary leaflets were of an agitational nature and called for some kind of extraordinary action. Most often political in nature.
Leaflet-proclamation
She could campaign for a strike, a demonstration, any other form of civil disobedience. In the pre-revolutionary years, such printed or manuscript documents most often called for the overthrow of the autocracy. Agitation was published, as a rule, illegally, and their distribution threatened with punishment, arrest, and often exile.
History has preserved many episodes when a small proclamation could become the reason for expelling students from the university. This is often described in fiction.
In the Great Patriotic War, the term "proclamation" was no longer used. With the same internal content, it was replaced by a “leaflet”.
Other values
The word “proclamation” is also a lexical unit that is close in meaning to the declaration, as well as to the decree. The names of the following historical “papers” can serve as examples of its use in these meanings.
- So, in 1860, on behalf of Tsar Alexander II, Prince A.I. Baryatinsky proclaimed a proclamation that officially bears his name. It solemnly proclaimed that the peoples of Chechnya and Dagestan were forgiven for their hostile actions during the war in the Caucasus.
- In 1862, Abraham Lincoln drew up and signed a document called the “Proclamation of Liberation ...”, according to which slavery was abolished in the South of America.
In the XVIII-XIX centuries. the word in question was very widely used in the indicated meanings, where proclamation is both an official appeal to the population (usually in writing), and a decree issued by the ruling elite.