Overview

Yiddish Literature Under Surveillance: The Case of Soviet Ukraine gives a broad view on Soviet Jewish literary life, and on the repression suffered by Yiddish writers under Stalinist rule. It moves from the paradigm of writing almost exclusively about the most prominent authors, whose execution in Moscow on August 12, 1952 is tragically known as ""The Night of Murdered Poets."" Instead, the narrative is built as a group biography of five writers whose literary home was in Kyiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine from 1934 to 1991. Those authors are as follows: Avrom Abchuk (arrested and executed in 1937), Chaim Gildin (arrested in 1940; died in a camp in 1943), Itsik Kipnis (arrested in 1949; released in 1955), Rive Balyasne (arrested in 1952; released in 1955), and Hirsh Bloshteyn, an enthusiastic agent of the secret police. In addition, this book is populated by other Yiddish, Ukrainian, and Russian literati. Kyiv was the primary fountainhead for Yiddish literary creativity in the early postrevolutionary period for seven decades and remained a leading Soviet Yiddish literary center, second in importance only to Moscow. Attention is paid to the victims’ rehabilitation, posthumous or otherwise, in the mid-1950s and onwards.

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9781666938005

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""This is a scrupulously researched history of Yiddish literature in Ukraine. It charts an evolution that began under the Ukrainian People's Republic, when the promise of national-personal autonomy for Jews fueled dreams of a high culture in Yiddish. It then describes the fate of Yiddish-language writers in the 1920s, drawing parallels with the fate of Ukrainian-language writers: a brief flowering strangled by forced compromises with the demands of 'proletarian culture' and by Stalin's repression of writers. Eventually Stalin dismantled almost all Jewish institutions. The final act in this history was the long, gradual, but incomplete 'rehabilitation' of writers that followed the dictator's death. Some surviving figures were allowed to return to literary life, without being allowed to describe their persecution or to publishing in Yiddish. Gennady Estraikh tells this story masterfully. Focusing initially on Kyiv as the fountainhead of Yiddish writing in post-revolutionary years, a time when the Kultur-Lige developed its remarkable network of institutions, he then moves to narrating the biographies of five writers -- Avrom Abchuk, Hirsh Bloshteyn, Chaim Gildin, Itsak Kipnis and Rive Balyasne. Based on materials culled from Ukraine's archives, each of these makes a fascinating story of interaction with secret police informers, adaptation to Soviet demands, intense enthusiasm for literary creativity, and contacts with centres of Yiddish cultural life outside Ukraine -- including Warsaw, Moscow, Minsk and Vitebsk. The book explores the logic of Stalinist repression, the paranoia that generated ubiquitous accusations of nationalism, Zionism and anti-Sovietism. It introduces readers to a remarkable, long ignored and important episode in Jewish and Ukrainian cultural history, one that enriches our understanding of the Soviet experience, of how Yiddish and Ukrainian writers interacted, and how the dream of national modernism inspired literary creativity in the twentieth century."" --Myroslav Shkandrii, University of Manitoba

"""This is a scrupulously researched history of Yiddish literature in Ukraine. It charts an evolution that began under the Ukrainian People's Republic, when the promise of national-personal autonomy for Jews fueled dreams of a high culture in Yiddish. It then describes the fate of Yiddish-language writers in the 1920s, drawing parallels with the fate of Ukrainian-language writers: a brief flowering strangled by forced compromises with the demands of 'proletarian culture' and by Stalin's repression of writers. Eventually Stalin dismantled almost all Jewish institutions. The final act in this history was the long, gradual, but incomplete 'rehabilitation' of writers that followed the dictator's death. Some surviving figures were allowed to return to literary life, without being allowed to describe their persecution or to publishing in Yiddish. Gennady Estraikh tells this story masterfully. Focusing initially on Kyiv as the fountainhead of Yiddish writing in post-revolutionary years, a time when the Kultur-Lige developed its remarkable network of institutions, he then moves to narrating the biographies of five writers -- Avrom Abchuk, Hirsh Bloshteyn, Chaim Gildin, Itsak Kipnis and Rive Balyasne. Based on materials culled from Ukraine's archives, each of these makes a fascinating story of interaction with secret police informers, adaptation to Soviet demands, intense enthusiasm for literary creativity, and contacts with centres of Yiddish cultural life outside Ukraine -- including Warsaw, Moscow, Minsk and Vitebsk. The book explores the logic of Stalinist repression, the paranoia that generated ubiquitous accusations of nationalism, Zionism and anti-Sovietism. It introduces readers to a remarkable, long ignored and important episode in Jewish and Ukrainian cultural history, one that enriches our understanding of the Soviet experience, of how Yiddish and Ukrainian writers interacted, and how the dream of national modernism inspired literary creativity in the twentieth century."" --Myroslav Shkandrii, University of Manitoba"

Author Information

Gennady Estraikh is professor at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University.

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