Sovetish Heymland and the Making of Socialist Yiddish Culture after Stalin

Abstract

In August 1961, a significant event occurred for many Jewish left-wingers around the world. Among them was Norman Puterman, a Montreal Yiddish-speaker and member of the United Jewish People’s Order, a secular and socialist Jewish organization supporting the Yiddish-speaking workers’ movement in Canada. For the first time in thirteen years, a Yiddish periodical appeared in the Soviet Union amidst the cultural “thaw.” It was called Sovetish Heymland (סאָװעטיש הײמלאַנד, Советская родина, Soviet Homeland) and it was distributed globally.