‘Ofeni’: The traveling salesmen of Tsarist Russia who invented criminal jargon

In the 19th century, people in brightly colored clothes and carrying boxes on their backs would frequent the roads of Russia. They sold icons, books and haberdashery, but when they needed to communicate among themselves, their speech became completely incomprehensible to outsiders. These were the ‘ofeni’ – traveling merchants, who basically invented their own language.

The origin of the word ‘ofenya’ isn't entirely clear. Most researchers believe it shares the same root as the name of the city of Athens. So, initially, these were the ‘Athenians’, who appeared en masse in Russia at the end of the 16th century. The ‘ofeni’ sold goods door-to-door, often delivering needed items to the most remote corners of the country.

They were also dubbed peddlers – those with a box of goods on their backs – and ‘Suzdalians’ – since their trade originated in the Vladimir-Suzdal lands, between Nizhny Novgorod, Ivanovo and Vladimir, although they did not live in Suzdal itself.

The ‘ofeni’ trade began with the icon trade and was closely linked to the 17th-century church schism. After Patriarch Nikon's reforms, the Old Believers, anathematized, were forced into hiding. The official church persecuted not only them but also their icons, creating a gigantic black market, which the ‘ofeni’ occupied.

In the fall, the ‘ofeni’ left their homelands with boxes full of goods and returned in the spring. Their routes extended throughout Russia – Little Russia, Poland, the Caucasus, Siberia – and even abroad – to Serbia, Bulgaria and Slovakia.

The need to conceal their true intentions from clients and authorities forced the ‘ofeni’ to create their own language, which they called ‘fenya’. Some words later migrated into thieves' slang and modern Russian: ‘lokh’ (‘simpleton’), ‘busat’ (‘to drink’, today's ‘bukhat’), ‘klevyi’, ‘lik’, ‘remny’ and ‘khlyava’.

The ‘ofeni’ dressed brightly and often dandyishly – in plush trousers, fine cloth undershirts and silk sashes, a stark contrast to regular peasant attire. They decorated their huts with carved frames, curtains and flowers on the windows, while bunches of feather grass hung from the gates –  supposedly a sign of their distant travels.

Almost all the ‘ofeni’ were literate, a rarity among peasants. They didn't just sell books; they could recount their contents in an engaging manner and knew about the lives of many saints. They were, in effect, disseminators of culture and literacy in the Russian hinterland.

In the mid-19th century, the ‘ofeni’ language attracted the attention of the state. A secret committee was created, which commissioned linguist Vladimir Dahl to study the language, believing that the Old Believers were using it for secret correspondence. Dahl compiled a dictionary of over 5,000 words. However, the study failed. It turned out that the ‘ofeni’ language didn't even have words for ‘faith’, ‘Gospel’ or ‘God’. The language was used exclusively for commercial matters. Therefore, the ‘ofeni’ dictionary was never published.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the ‘ofeni’ trade had declined. The construction of railroads, the development of stores and the spread of libraries basically rendered the traveling merchant obsolete.