If you've got anyone helping you with Russian, have them explain the difference (culturally) between tovarishch and priyatel. Knew I had something on my mind that was actually on-topic since I heard Colossus was going to be in Chapter Two.
It's hard to say, because these words are almost never used nowadays, and even I, as a native speaker, probably can't explain them exactly. You can say that they are almost synonyms.
A "tovarishch " is something like people with whom you have to interact, for example at work. You don't talk to them about personal topics, you don't know what he likes, you don't even know the least about him, whether he's married or not, etc. You may know his first and last name and maybe his age, and at most you exchange "hi-hi" when you meet out of politeness, because you see each other every day.
A "priyatel" is already something close to an buddy, if you meet somewhere, for example a neighbor in a house somewhere in a store, you know something a little about each other, where you study or work, what you are interested in, and you can stand and talk about something for a while when you meet, but in ordinary life you don't specifically gather with him somewhere to communicate.
But in general these are almost dead concepts, only older people can communicate like this, because this is how they communicated during the USSR, and people born and raised at that time still use these words out of habit. Now we usually say buddy - familiar "znakomyy" For everyone with whom we communicate or communicated but who is not a friend.