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[FORMATION OF SOCIALIST JEWS] Yidn in FSSR = Evrei v SSSR = Jews in the USSR

Item #2348

Moscow: Aroysgegebn fun "Mezshdunarodnaya kniga" un Farlag "Emes", 1935. 288 pp.: ill. 30x22,5 cm. In original cloth with silver lettering in Yiddish on front cover and silver stamped emblem on back cover. Soiling of binding, narrow and pale water stains on upper and lower margins, some light traces on first faded pages. Signatures (dated 1935) in Yiddish and Russian written in blue pencil on endpapers.

Edited by Shimen Dimansteyn (1886–1938, executed), known as a representative of Jews in the Soviet government.

This Soviet propaganda book praises favorable national poliсy toward Jewish culture in the early USSR. The collection comprises texts on Jewish settlements and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO), Soviet Yiddish culture, literature, theater and publications, Jewish input to socialist construction, etc.

The period of the 1920-1930s was the heyday of Jewish culture on the territory of the former Russian Empire. It was based on communism and tended to promote ideology among Jewish
people through printed materials in Yiddish. At the same time the idea of consolidating the Jewish population on the territory of the USSR and creating its national statehood was being developed. The public organization OZET complemented the official Committee (KOMZET) since 1925 aiming to encourage Jews to take up agricultural work. Locating the Head Office in Moscow, OZET had offices all over the country, including UkrOZET (Kharkov), BelOZET (Minsk), TatOZET (Kazan), GruzOZET (Tbilisi), etc. In different years, the OZET focused on establishing Jewish agricultural colonies in the Crimea, Ukraine and Birobidzhan region in the Far East.

In this particular book, portraits of the two party leaders are followed by a portrait of Shimen Dimansteyn who was the head of OZET since 1925. One of the sections opens with a portrait of Pyotr Smidovich (1874–1935) who headed KOMZET in 1924–1935, until his death. The section on Soviet Jewish literature is proudly illustrated with photographs of prominent Soviet Jewish writers. Most of them were later executed, as being related to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. The book shows pictures of David Bergelson, Itzik Feffer, Izi Kharik, Peretz Markish, Shmuel Godiner, Moyshe Litvakov, Aron Kushnirov, Shmuel Halkin, Isaak Nusinov, Natan Lurie, Leib Kvitko, Dovid Hofshteyn.
The Jewish Theater Section features photographs of contributors: Solomon Mikhoels, Moyshe Rafalskii, Benjamin Zuskin, as well as Moscow and Minsk GOSET productions: Sholem Aleichem’s play ‘Dos groyse gevins’ [The Big Lottery] staged as “200 thousands”, Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, etc.

Photographs of different sections show migrants to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Jews as drivers of 1930s tractors and other agricultural machinery, Jews at a carpentry factory, the building of the
Pedagogical College in Birobidzhan, happy and prolific life in Jewish collective farms in Crimea, Ukraine and JAO, electrification of their dwellings, students of a school in JAO, local pioneers and socialist raising of younger children, Yiddish newspapers, the first coal mine in the JAO, a thermal spring within a local resort “Kuldur” in JAO. The book also contains a close-up picture of an old railway station in Minsk where the name of the city was duplicated in four languages: Belarusian, Russian, Polish and Jewish.

One of the sections is devoted to research studies of Jewish culture. For it, the Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture (IEPK) was founded with two branches in Kyiv and Minsk, as centers of the major
Jewish communities. The branches officially were parts of Ukrainian and Belarusian Academies of Sciences. The first director of the Institute was ambitious professor of history Yoysef Liberberg (1898–1937, executed) who strove to turn it into an All-Union Institution. The section preserves photographs of the main building of the Institute located in Kyiv and scientific publications of both branches.

In early 1936, IEPK was closed down. Some of its staff members were arrested on charges of Trotskyism. A new, much smaller scholarly institution was created on its ruins, the Office for the Study of Soviet Jewish Literature, Language, and Folklore, which was completely ruined during the state antisemitic campaign (YIVO Encyclopedia).

Worldcat shows copies located in LoC, YIVO and Spertus Institutes, American Jewish University, Hebrew Union College, also California, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Cornell, Wisconsin, Ohio, New York, Albany, Washington, Florida Atlantic, Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt, Hartford, Texas Tech, Brandeis, Maryland, Duke, Pittsburgh, John Hopkins and Wayne Universities, Cleveland Public Library.

Price: $2,250.00