Sovetish Heymland and the Making of Socialist Yiddish Culture after Stalin by Dr. Miriam Chorley-Schulz Assistant Professor and Mokin Fellow of Holocaust Studies School of Global Studies and Languages University of Oregon with the help of Mandi Garcia Creative Content and Communications Specialist, UO Libraries Heghine Hakobyan UO Librarian for Slavic, German & Scandinavian Studies, Interim Subject Specialist for Religious & Judaic Studies, UO Libraries 2 INTRODUCTION 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 Peopleʼs Order, a secular and socialist Jewish organization supporting the Yiddish-speaking workersʼ 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 ( הײמלאַנד סאָװעטיש , Советская родина, Soviet Homeland) and it was distributed globally. According to Putermanʼs step-daughter, Esther Frank, this journal “was the fulfillment of a hope they thought was lost.” Having looked to the Soviet Union for guidance for their organizing in Montreal, the ties of the United Jewish Peopleʼs Order to the Soviet Union had ended in 1952 when the murder of the most-prominent Soviet Yiddish writers and intellectuals became known. With it, the promise for a future of Soviet Yiddish politics, life, and culture seemed to have been destroyed as well – until August 1961. In its inaugural issue, editor-in-chief Arn Vergelis vowed that Sovetish Heymland would “reflect at a high level the most important problems of our time,” and it delivered. For thirty years, the journal showcased prose, poetry, literary criticism, and academic works on Jewish and non-Jewish folklore, history, linguistics, art, anthropology, politics, and music. It covered current events, fostered international dialogue between the Second, Third, and First Worlds, and played a key role in Holocaust memory and antifascist, anticolonial activism. The end of the USSR in 1991 also marked the end of Sovetish Heymland, but it was briefly revived as Di Yidishe Gas ( גאַס יידִישע די , The Jewish Street) in 1993, with support from donors in the United States, France, and Argentina. The publication ceased after the death of Vergelis in 1999 but Sovetish Heymland remains influential in the development of modern Jewish literature and global left Yiddish cultures.1 Puterman lovingly preserved each copy hoping to share the journals with others. He had them bound professionally and, before he passed away on June 13, 1995, bequeathed them to his step-daughter, when Esther Frank started to teach Yiddish and Jewish Literatures in the 1 Gennady Estraikh, Yiddish in the Cold War (Leeds: Legenda, 2008); ibidem., “Sovetish Heymland,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (online edition), accessed on March 3, 2025, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Sovetish_Heymland; “Sovetish Heymland: Its History and Legacy,” Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage, https://yiddish-culture.com/category/press_en/sovetish-heymland_en. 1 http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Sovetish_Heymland https://yiddish-culture.com/category/press_en/sovetish-heymland_en Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University. It is Putermanʼs collection that is today housed in the University of Oregon Knight Library thanks to Frankʼs generous donation. This exhibition aims to highlight its impact and honor the creators of the journal and the local and international culture(s) it represents. It was conceived as part of the course JDST 354 “Russian Jewry – Histories and Imaginaries.” “ For many years Sovetish Heymland was part of a large collection of books housed in the home of my parents – Annie Tannenbaum-Kisilevsky and Norman Puterman. It is indeed my good fortune to have found Miriam [Chorley-Schulz]. Norman Puterman would surely have been overjoyed to know that the volumes have now found a home on the bookshelves at the University of Oregon. He would have been delighted by the thought that they will be studied by scholars, assessed for their value, and made available to the wide range of readers they were initially designed to reach.” Esther Frank to the Curator, 19 February 2025 DID YOU KNOW? Yiddish is my thing | schtick | שטיק Have you heard someone use the word “schtick” in English? What about “klutz,” “schlep” or “tuches”? “Schmooze” or “chutzpah”? Many Yiddish words such as these have entered English and other languages. ● Yiddish originated around the year 1000 C.E. and is about as old as most other European languages ● It was once the primary language of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, an area historically known as Ashkenaz. ● Yiddish is a hybrid language: written using the Hebrew alphabet, it originates from Middle High German, incorporating elements of Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages, Latin/Romance languages, and even Turkic. ● “Yiddish,” meaning literally “Jewish,” became common as its name among Yiddish-speakers and in English around the mid-19th century with Jewish immigration to England, and later to the United States. 2 ● For most of its history, the language was referred to with varying other names: Taytsh (German), Yidish-taytsh (Jewish German), Loshn-ashkenaz (Language of Ashkenaz), or, dismissively, as Zhargon (Jargon). ● Before the Holocaust, it was spoken by an estimated 12 million Jews. The majority of Holocaust victims were Yiddish-speakers. ● Today, Yiddish continues to evolve, adopting new words and expressions from languages of regions where it is spoken, particularly English and modern Hebrew ● Most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives today are Haredim, ultra-orthodox Jews; there is a growing number of secular Yiddish-speakers as well. IF YOU WANT TO STUDY YIDDISH OR LEARN MORE ABOUT YIDDISH CULTURES, contact: Prof. Miriam Chorley-Schulz, Assistant Professor and Mokin Chair of Holocaust Studies, School for Global Studies and Languages, University of Oregon at miriams@uoregon.edu. 3 mailto:miriams@uoregon.edu Caption 1: Cover page of Sovetish Heymland’s inaugural issue in 1961. It says: Sovetish Heymland Bimonthly literary-artistic journal Organ of the Writersʼ Union of the USSR 1st issue July / August 1961 Publishing House “Sovetskii Pisatelʼ” Moscow DID YOU KNOW? Sovetish Heymland set records, becoming the first Yiddish literary periodical in history to reach a global circulation of 25,000 copies in the early 1960s. 4 Caption 2: YIDDISH AUTONOMY Arn Vergelis (1918–1999) was a Yiddish poet and writer raised in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast Birobidzhan. He was appointed both the editor and the censor of Sovetish Heymland – likely due to the journalʼs relative unimportance to the authorities. This made Sovetish Heymland quasi-autonomous, bypassing Glavlit (the Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs), the usual censorship body overseeing printed material.2 After the destruction of the Soviet Union, in an interview with Mark Kupovetsky, Vergelis reflected on his role, saying: “You, like others, will in the future evaluate what I did or did not do in the course of my life. But one does not have to see everything as either black or white. Keep in mind that I acted under specific conditions, at a specific time and place… What is true is that I was and remain a committed Communist. However, I also was and remain a Jew who has felt the pain of his people. I defended them and devotedly served our mameloshn [mother tongue]. I did what others could not do or did not want to do… As for the authorities, they were occupied with their matters and I — with mine.”3 3 Interview with Vergelis conducted by Kupovetsky in September 1994, quoted in Mark Kupovetsky, “Aron Vergelis: Survivor of the Destruction of Soviet Yiddish Culture, 1949–1953,” Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe 58, no. 1 (2007): 41–42. 2 Estraikh, Yiddish in the Cold War, 82. 5 “Yiddish Wins a Round,” The New York Times, 26 August 1961, p. 16. Caption 3: MOST REVIEWED YIDDISH JOURNAL OF ALL TIMES Sovetish Heymland stands out among Yiddish journals for several reasons, notably becoming the most reviewed Yiddish publication in history – though rarely positively in the West, due to Cold War ideological tensions.4 This New York Times report is one example of this. 4 Estraikh, Yiddish in the Cold War. 6 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES & FURTHER READINGS Online Resources Some digitized issues of Sovetish Heymland can be accessed at the Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage, https://yiddish-culture.com/category/press_en/sovetish-heymland_en/ The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe: https://yivoencyclopedia.org/ The Yiddish Book Center: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/ The Digital Yiddish Library: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/digital-yiddish-library The Ruth Rubin Archive of Yiddish Folksongs: https://ruthrubin.yivo.org/exhibits/show/ruth-rubin-sound-archive/home Anna Shternshisʼ project Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II, Six Degree Records, at https://www.sixdegreesrecords.com/yiddishglory/ Yiddishkayt: https://yiddishkayt.org/ The National Center for Jewish Film: https://www.jewishfilm.org/Catalogue/yiddish.htm The Online Collections of the Jewish Historical Institute: https://www.jhi.pl/en/collections/online-collections The Archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/ Library Resources הײמלאַנד סאָװעטיש , Sovetish Heymland, Knight Library: Available, 2nd Floor, DK1 .S5465, https://alliance-uoregon.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01ALLIANCE_UO/1ej399r/alma99 901014566501852 The UO Library Research Guide in Judaic Studies: https://researchguides.uoregon.edu/judaic Chorley-Schulz, Miriam, Alexander Walther, eds., Socialist Yiddishlands: Language Politics and Transnational Entanglements between 1941 and 1991. Düsseldorf: dup/De Gruyter, 2024. 7 https://yiddish-culture.com/category/press_en/sovetish-heymland_en/ https://yivoencyclopedia.org/ https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/ https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/digital-yiddish-library https://ruthrubin.yivo.org/exhibits/show/ruth-rubin-sound-archive/home https://www.sixdegreesrecords.com/yiddishglory/ https://yiddishkayt.org/ https://www.jewishfilm.org/Catalogue/yiddish.htm https://www.jhi.pl/en/collections/online-collections https://collections.ushmm.org/search/ https://alliance-uoregon.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01ALLIANCE_UO/1ej399r/alma99901014566501852 https://alliance-uoregon.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01ALLIANCE_UO/1ej399r/alma99901014566501852 https://researchguides.uoregon.edu/judaic Bibliography and Further Readings Babiracki, Patryk, Austin Jersild, eds. Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War: Exploring the Second World. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Baldwin, Kate A. Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963. Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press, 2002. Bayerlein, Bernhard, Kasper Braskén, Uwe Sonnenberg, ed. Global Räume für radikale transnationale Solidarität: Beiträge zum Ersten Internationalen Willi-Münzenberg-Kongress 2015 in Berlin/Global Spaces for Radical Transnational Solidarity: Contributions to the First International Willi Münzenberg Congress 2015 in Berlin. Berlin: Internationales Willi Münzenberg Forum, 2018. Bemporad, Elissa. “Behavior Unbecoming a Communist: Jewish Religious Practice in Soviet Minsk,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 14:2 (Winter 2008): 1–31. –––––––. Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. –––––––. Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Ben-Yosef, Avraham. “Bibliography of Yiddish Publishing in the USSR during 1941–1948,” Yad Vashem Studies 4 (1960): 135–167. Braskén, Kasper. “Making Anti-Fascism Transnational: The Origins of Communist and Socialist Articulations of Resistance in Europe, 1923–1924,” Contemporary European History 25:4 (2016): 573–596. –––––––. The International Workersʼ Relief, Communism, and Transnational Solidarity: Willi Münzenberg in Weimar Germany. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. –––––––. Anti-fascism in a Global Perspective : Transnational Networks, Exile Communities, and Radical Internationalism. London: Taylor & Francis, 2021. Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism, translated by Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000. Chatterjee, Choi and Karen Petrone. “Models of Selfhood and Subjectivity: The Soviet Case in Historical Perspective,” Slavic Review 67:4 (Winter, 2008): 967–986. 8 [Chorley-]Schulz, Miriam, 2021. Keyner iz nit fargesn: Soviet Yiddish Antifascism and the Holocaust, PhD Dissertation. Columbia University. –––––––. “From Kiddush Hashem to the Rise of Heroines in Soviet Yiddish Literature of the 1940s,” Yad Vashem Studies 47:1 (Spring 2019). –––––––. “ʻWe pledge, as if it was the highest sanctum, to preserve the memoryʼ: Sovetish Heymland, facets of Holocaust commemoration in the Soviet Union, and the Cold War,” in Growing out of Antifascism's Shadow: Holocaust Memory in Socialist Eastern Europe since the 1950s, edited by Kata Bohus, Peter Hallama, Stephan Stach (Vienna: Central European University Press, 2021). –––––––. “ʻThe Deepest Self Denies the Faceʼ: Polish Jewish Refugee Intellectuals and the Birth of Soviet Marranos,” in Polish Jews in the USSR (1939–1959), edited by Katharina Friedla and Markus Nesselrodt. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021. Dekel-Chen, Jonathan L. Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924–1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Djagalov, Rossen. From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema between the Second and the Third Worlds. Montreal: McGill-Queenʼs University Press, 2020. Estraikh, Gennady. “The era of Sovetish Heymland: Readership of the Yiddish press in the former Soviet Union,” East European Jewish Affairs 25:1 (1995): 17–22. –––––––. Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. –––––––. “The Portrayal of Palestinian Arabs in the Moscow Yiddish Monthly Sovetish Heymland,” in Jews, Muslims and Mass Media: Mediating the ʻOtherʼ, edited by Tudor Parfitt and Yulia Egorova, 113–143. London: Routledge Curzon, 2004. –––––––. In Harness: Yiddish Writersʼ Romance with Communism. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005. –––––––. Yiddish in the Cold War. Leeds: Legenda, 2008. –––––––. “An Opportunist Anti-Zionism: Sovetish Heymland, 1961–1991,” in Rebels against Zion: Studies on the Jewish left anti-Zionism, edited by August Grabski, 157–170. Warsaw: Jewish Historical Institute, 2011. 9 –––––––. “The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee,” East European Jewish Affairs 48:2 (2018): 139–148. –––––––. “Creating a Cold War Boogeyman: Aron Vergelis's Political Career,” Jewish Social Studies 25:3 (Spring/Summer 2020): 103-129. –––––––. “Sovetish Heymland,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (online edition), accessed on November 23, 2017, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Sovetish_Heymland. García, Hugo, Mercedes Yusta, Xavier Tabet, Cristina Clímaco, eds.. Rethinking Antifascism: History, Memory and Politics 1922 to the Present. New York: Berghahn, 2016. Gershenson, Olga and David Shneer. “Soviet Jewishness and Cultural Studies,” Journal of Jewish Identities 4:1 (January 2011): 129–146. Gilboa, Yehoshua A. The Black Years of Soviet Jewry, 1939–1953. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971. Glaser, Amelia M. Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, 222–237. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990. Jockusch, Laura. Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Jones, Polly. Myth, Memory, Trauma. Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953-70. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Kerler, Dov-Ber. “The Soviet Yiddish Press: Eynikayt during the War, 1942–1945,” in Why didnʼt the Press shout? American and International Journalism during the Holocaust, ed. Robert Moses Shapiro, 221–250. Jersey City: KTAV, 2003. Kupovetsky, Mark. “Aron Vergelis: Survivor of the Destruction of Soviet Yiddish Culture, 1949–1953,” Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe 1:58 (2007): 40–94. Major, Patrick and Rana Mitter. “East is East and West is West?: Towards a Comparative Socio-Cultural History of the Cold War,” Cold War History 4 (2003): 1-22. 10 http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Sovetish_Heymland Murav, Harriet. “Violating the Canon: Reading Der Nister with Vasilii Grossman,” Slavic Review 67:3 (Fall, 2008): 642–661. –––––––. Music from a Speeding Train : Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. –––––––. David Bergelsonʼs Strange New World: Untimeliness and Futurity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. Pinkus, Benjamin. The Soviet Government and the Jews, 1948-1967: A Documented Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Redlich, Shimon. Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia: The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR, 1941-1948. Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1982. –––––––. War, the Holocaust and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR. Oxon : Routledge, 2013. Reed, Touré F. Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism. London: Verso Books, 2020. Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Rubenstein, Joshua and Vladimir Naumov, eds., Stalinʼs Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, translated by Laura Esther Wolfson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Shneer, David. Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 1918–1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Shternshis, Anna. Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. –––––––. When Sonia met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish life under Stalin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Slezkine, Yuri. “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53:2 (1994): 414–452. –––––––. The Jewish Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 11 Weiner, Amir. “Saving Private Ivan: From What, Why, and How?,” Kritika: Exploration in Russian and Eurasian History 1:2 (Spring 2000): 309–310. –––––––. Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Witte, Ludo de. The Assassination of Lumumba. London: Verso, 2001. 12 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks go to Esther Frank for donating a full set of Sovetish Heymland. RESEARCH, TEXT, CURATION Miriam Chorley-Schulz, Assistant Professor and Mokin Fellow of Holocaust Studies, University of Oregon ASSISTANCE Mandi Garcia, Creative Content and Communications Specialist, UO Libraries Heghine Hakobyan, UO Librarian for Slavic, German & Scandinavian Studies, Interim Subject Specialist for Religious & Judaic Studies, UO Libraries Franny Gaede, Scholarly Publishing Librarian, UO Libraries 13 after Stalin INTRODUCTION Caption 1: Cover page of Sovetish Heymland’s inaugural issue in 1961. DID YOU KNOW? Caption 2: YIDDISH AUTONOMY “Yiddish Wins a Round,” The New York Times, 26 August 1961, p. 16. Caption 3: MOST REVIEWED YIDDISH JOURNAL OF ALL TIMES ADDITIONAL RESOURCES & FURTHER READINGS Online Resources Library Resources Bibliography and Further Readings ACKNOWLEDGMENTS RESEARCH, TEXT, CURATION ASSISTANCE