Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture: 1918–1930

by David Shneer

• ISBN13: 9780521104647
• ISBN10: 0521104645
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-03-19
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture gives voice to the activists empowered by the state to create a Soviet Jewish national culture. These activists were striving for a national revolution to create a new culture for Jews to identify as Jews on new, secular, Soviet terms. This book explores the ways in which Jews were part of, not apart from, both the Soviet system and Jewish history. Soviet Jewish culture worked within contemporary Jewish national and cultural trends and simultaneously participated in the larger project of propagating the Soviet state and ideology. Soviet Jewish activists were not nationalists or Soviets, but both at once. David Shneer addresses some of the painful truths about Jews' own implication and imbrication in the Soviet system and inserts their role in twentieth-century Jewish culture into the narrative of Jewish history.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Soviet nationalities policies and the making of the Soviet Yiddish Intelligentsia

Ideology and Jewish language politics: How Yiddish became the national language of Soviet Jewry

Modernising Yiddish

Who owns the means of cultural production? The Soviet Yiddish publishing industry of the 1920s

Engineers of Jewish souls: Soviet Yiddish writers envisioning the Jewish past, present and future

Becoming revolutionary: Izi Kharik and the question of aesthetics, politics and ideology

Afterword: How does the story end?

Appendices

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.