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A Yiddishist cultural organization, the Kultur-lige was founded in Kiev in 1918 on the principle of umparteyishkeyt (non-partisanship). After successfully working in several cultural fields, even in the midst of revolution and civil war in Ukraine, it was coopted by Soviet loyalists, so its leadership relocated to Warsaw. In a manifesto published there in Spring 1921, the organization announced its intention to operate both within Poland and transnationally, calling for unified efforts across political boundaries. It attempted to establish centers of activity in Berlin and Paris during the early 1920s. In both cities, opponents of the idea of non-partisan cultural work competed to take over the Kultur-lige. precluding its success. The article assesses the extent to which the Warsaw leadership succeeded in giving guidance to the founders of the Berlin and Paris centers, and the limitations imposed by political strife and class conflict on the work of the Kultur-lige. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Osteuropa is the property of Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: Die Kinderkolonie in Malachowka, ein pädagogisches »Experiment«, das in die Zeit des Übergangs von den säkularen Schulen im Zarenreich des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts zu dem nach der Oktoberrevolution neu geschaffenen sowjetischen Bildungssystem fällt, markiert einen wichtigen Schritt in der Geschichte des säkularen jiddischen Bildungssystems wie auch in der jiddischen Kultur der 1920er Jahre überhaupt. In Malachowka wurden neue pädagogische Herangehensweisen verwirklicht, die weitaus bekannteren, ähnlich angelegten Experimenten wie beispielsweise der von Anton Semenowitsch Makarenko geleiteten »Gorkij-Kolonie« vorangingen. Der Aufsatz rekonstruiert die Geschichte der Kolonie anhand veröffentlichter Erinnerungen und Berichte von Lehrern und Schülern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article analyzes the Russian prose of Isaac Babel (1894-1940) as an example of Yiddish linguistic interference that introduces variant readings into the subtext. Such interference was characteristic of the Russian Jewish cultural polysystem and was particularly versatile in the Soviet period in referring to repressed or erased Jewish identity. The article discusses the implications of Yiddish linguistic interference for cultural identity and concludes that studying the dynamics of intercultural referentiality can teach us much about intertextuality in Soviet Jewish writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the literary career of the last Bessarabian Yiddish writer of his generation Yekhiel Shraybman (1913-2005). His loss is still deeply felt by the Moldovan Jewish community as his life and writings embraced the country's historic Jewish past. As his literary career was launched and developed in the Soviet Union his work, aesthetics and politics were affected by “Sovietisation,” a requirement of the Communist Party's standards in relation to literature. Yet behind the ambivalent glamour of the title “Soviet writer,” he managed to remain a Jewish writer and leave behind a printed memory of his home shtetl, Rashkov. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship between ideology and statistical knowledge in Soviet Yiddish scholarship during the first Five-Year Plan and Cultural Revolution in the Soviet Union. Yiddish demographic research was debated across geographical and ideological borders, which was exemplified by Jacob Lestschinsky's criticism of the preliminary figures concerning the Soviet Jewish population of Ukraine written by B. Rubshteyn. During this period, the bulk of Soviet Jewish statistical research was published in Yiddish, the official language of the Jewish working masses.

The article examines the popularization and modernization of the Jewish culture and identity through a state-sponsored Jewish scholarship in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, Yiddish language publishing houses, writers' groups, courts, city councils, institutes of higher learning and a secular school system flourished. The party hoped to spread Soviet ideology among Jews while simultaneously fostering a Soviet Jewish culture that would develop a strata of new Soviet Jewish citizens.

The article reflects on the notion of Yiddish scholarship and its institutionalization between 1890 and 1940. The author also added a short vignette addressing the history of science captured in the term yidishe visnshaft, specifically neuropathology and eugenics from the perspective of medicine written for a Yiddish readership. Yiddish scholarship encompasses literature written in Yiddish and studies on Yiddish language or on Jewish subject matter written in Yiddish or in any other language. Yiddish scholarship flourished and received strong support in the Soviet Union.

The article offers information on several notes on German-Jewish Publishing in the U.S. It mentions a bibliography of relevant German-language publications produced in the United States has so far been lacking; and also mentions the importation of this literature from Western Europe, Palestine and the Soviet Union remained uninterrupted until America's entry into World War II.

The article discusses Yiddish as the language of Jews residing in the Soviet Union in the census of 1939. It is observed that there has been a rapid and precipitous drop in the rate of Yiddish-speaking since 1897. The Yiddish school system and the other cultural institutions of Soviet Jewry were brutally suppressed in the late 1930s. The Yiddish theatre and the publication of Yiddish literature were allowed to continue until 1948. However, it is clear that the low rate of Yiddish speaking in 1939 and the evident continuing rate of linguistic assimilation did not bode well for the future of those institutions even in the absence of persecution. An indication of the rapid linguistic assimilation and the failure of the Yiddish school system to produce people who would regard Yiddish as their language of daily use was the low rate of circulation of Yiddish newspapers. The article concludes that the future of Yiddish in the Soviet Union as a living spoken language is very bleak. The revival of Jewishness among Soviet Jews has been directed into a desire to emigrate to Israel or to learn Hebrew.