Chapter 2. The Story of the Destruction of the “Jewel in the Crown” of Yiddish Culture: Kyiv Jewish Scholars on the Eve and During the Great Terror

Efim Melamed

This chapter analyzes the events that led to the liquidation, in May 1936, of the Kyiv-based Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture, one of the two Soviet academic institutions specializing in the study of Jewish history, language, folklore, literature, demography, and economy. The majority of the chapter discusses the repressions conducted by the punitive organs of Stalin’s regime against the institute’s staff in the second half of the 1930s. Documents found in Ukrainian archives, which were previously inaccessible to scholars, form the basis for the observations and conclusions presented in this study. Two reports in particular are featured as attachments: one on the academic activity of the institute and one on its publications, both prepared by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine shortly before the closure of the organization, which was once called the “Jewel in the Crown” of Yiddish Culture.

Chapter 3. “In Search of a New Man on the Banks of the Rivers Bira and Bidzhan”: The Jewish Section of the State Ethnographic Museum in Leningrad (1937–1941)

Alexander Ivanov

This chapter focuses on the work of a small Jewish research unit at the Leningrad-based State Ethnographic Museum in the years leading up to World War II. Special attention is paid to the history of preparing and running the so-called “Birobidzhan expedition,” which the museum dispatched to the Far East in 1937 with the aim of collecting data about the Jewish Autonomous Region – its environmental conditions, economy, and the daily life of its population. The collected material was later used for the exhibition “Jews in Czarist Russia and the USSR,” displayed in the Leningrad museum from 1939 to 1941. This chapter gives a detailed analysis of the ideological motivations behind this exhibition, which purported to demonstrate the “success of the Leninist-Stalinist nationalities policy towards the Jews.” Two documents are published as attachments to the chapter: first, a transcript of the lecture describing the exhibition; second, the report on the trips to various Soviet localities, undertaken by Isaiah Pulner, the unit’s head, on behalf of the museum with the aim of collecting artefacts of Jewish material culture.

Chapter 4. A National Unity with Lethal Consequences: The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR, Its Remit, Going Beyond the Remit, and Final Fate

Gennady Estraikh

This chapter analyzes the establishment (in 1941–1942), short life, and ultimate liquidation (in 1948) of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC). Formed as a bureau for conducting Soviet propaganda for foreign audiences, the committee, contrary to its remit, essentially developed into a central organization of Soviet Jewry with broad international contacts and ambitious plans, including the establishment of a Jewish republic in Crimea. The visit to U.S.A., Canada, Mexico, and U.K. of Solomon Mikhoels, an actor and chairman of the JAFC, and Itsik Fefer, a Yiddish poet, provided a strong push for such a transformation. The liquidation of the JAFC was part of the methodical destruction imposed by the Soviet regime on the entire infrastructure of Jewish cultural life in the country. The attachments to this chapter contain two documents: the JAFC s report on its activity during the war, and an overview of positive comments, collected by Eynikayt, the newspaper of the JAFC, as feedback to the establishment of the State of Israel and its recognition by the Soviet government.

Chapter 5. “Withdraw Your Hand!” Letters Written in Hebrew from Birobidzhan in 1958

Ber Kotlerman

This chapter analyzes a group of letters written in 1958 in Hebrew (and partly in Yiddish) and found in the archive of the National Library of Israel. The letters were written by Yehuda Helfman, an elderly Birobidzhan resident and a former Hebrew teacher. In his letters to Joseph Cherniak, a Soviet scholar of Yiddish folklore, Helfman describes many interesting details of life in Birobidzhan in the late 1950s. He appears to have been a fine connoisseur of Hebrew literature and an ardent opponent of the secular Yiddishism championed by his addressee. Of particular interest are Helfmans recollections about the pre-revolutionary period, most notably his encounters with Hebrew literati and important religious figures, including Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brest and Rabbi Yisrael Kagan of Radun (Chafetz Chaim). Russian translations of nine letters by Helfman are published as attachments.

Chapter 6. Was The Bloody Hoax Ever Banned in the USSR? Observations on the History of Sholem Aleichem’s “Extraordinary Novel”

Alexander Frenkel

Sholem Aleichem was writing his novel Der blutiker shpas (The Bloody Hoax) in 1912, under the impact of the notorious Beilis case. Critics of various stripes and at various times wrote off the novel as the writer’s creative failure. In post-Soviet academic discourse, however, The Bloody Hoax has gained a reputation as a significant literary achievement, banned in the USSR because Soviet censorship ostensibly considered it ideologically unsuitable. With the view to dispelling the mythology built up around the novel, the author of this chapter reconstructs the history of its creation and publication, as well as of its Russian translations. The attachments contain excerpts from the internal correspondence of the State Publishing House of Belles-Lettres, or Goslitizdat, covering the period from 1959 to 1970. The documents published here show clearly that Soviet ideologues did not have a problem with The Bloody Hoax and that the limited page-count of the publication was the only reason for not including the novel in Sholem Aleichem’s six-volume Collected Works that were published in Russian three times in the post-war years.

About the Authors

Victoria Gerasimova — a research fellow at the Fyodor Dostoevsky Omsk State University, where she heads the Laboratory for the Study of Jewish Civilization. Her publications focus on Jewish-Christian relations in the Russian Empire