Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development 0198184794, 9780198184799

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OXFORD MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE MONOGRAPHS Editorial Committee

D.J. CONSTANTINE I. W. F. MACLEAN

G. C. STONE

E. M.J£FFREYS R. A. G. PEARSON

R. W. TRUMAN

H. WATANABE-O’KELLY

J. R. WOODHOUSE

Soviet Yiddish LanguagePlanning and Linguistic Development

GE

NNADYWAIKH

CLARENDON PRESS 1999

-

OXFORD

Oxford Universigr Press, Great Clarendon Street, Org/ord 0x2 6D? Oxford NewI’orIc

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Oxford is a registered trade mark of OJord Universiy Press Published in the United States by

Oxford Universiy Press Inc., New York 0 Gennady Estraikh I999 The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First publishedI999

All High“ reserved. No part of this publication my be reproduced, stored in a retrieval 9stem, or transmitted, in anyform or by any means, withoutthepriorpermimon in unitorgofoybrd Unions-i9 Hess. Within the UK; exceptions are allowed in respect of myfair dealingfor the purpose of research or private shut}, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs andPatents Act, I988, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright LicensingAgency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

British Librapr Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data flow, 6. (Gennadfl') Soviet Tiddxsh .- language planning and linguistic development / Gennady Estrailth. (Oxford modern languages and literature monographs) Based on the author’s thesis (docbral—Orgfmd) presented under the title: Origin andfeatures ofSoviet Yiddish. Includes bibliographical rJerences and indexes. I. Yiddish language—Soviet Union—Histoy. I. Title. II. Series. H5119.SGE77 I999 98—44256 439'.I7—1ic2l ISBN0—19418479—4 [3579108642

hinted in Great Britain on paper by

«are:

Bookcrafi [1d,

Midsomer Norton, Somerset.

dew

3/ 7744a 0 L144;

r‘M/‘rs Acknowledgments Iam grateful to the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for awarding me a grant to facilitate the preparation of this book, which is based on my doctoral thesis Origin and Features of Soviet Yiddish (University of Oxford, 1996). A significant part of the book was prepared at the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies. For practical help, Iowe a great debt to my colleagues and friends Marie Wright and Mikhail Krutikov. The support of my wife Elena was

inestimable.

Contents List of Tables

ix

Note on the transliteration

Introduction 1. Yiddish in late Imperial Russia 1. 1 Sociolinguistic pattern of Jewish society 1. 2 Urbanization, modernization, and acculturation 1. 3 Languages of Kievjewish students 1. 4 Change processes inYiddish

2. Yiddish proletarian language 2. 1 Inside new boundaries 2. 2 Yiddish language retention 2. 3 Yiddish proletarian literature as a sociolinguistic source 2. 4 Yiddish Soviet-speak 2. 5 Ukrainianisms and Belorussianisms 2. 6 Lejzer Vilenkin’s corpus

23 23 30 38 45 53 56

62 62 68

73 79 85 90

typhon:

3. Language planning of the 19305 3. l The Soviet Yiddish Empire of the early 19305 Language discussions The Odessa language The Kiev conference Soviet Yiddish and Soviet German: Some parallels 3. 6 A conference which did not take place

10 16 20

4. Soviet Yiddish in the 19405 to 19805

98

4. l Ejnikajt (Unity): The 19405 4. 2 The era of Sovetish heimland

98 101

viii

Contents

4. 3 The 1984 Russian-Yiddish dictionary

108

5. Soviet Yiddish orthography 5. 1 Preliminaries 5. 2 The first steps towards reform, 1918—1920 5. 3 Implementation of reform, 19205 5. 4 Latinization 5. 5 The 19305 and after 5. 6 Perception of the Soviet spelling reform

115 115

6. Soviet Yiddish word-formation

141 141 142 152 155 157 158 161 164

Preliminaries

Stump-compounds

Semi-abbreviations

9 @ a-r w o u n c q

Acronyms

Univerbs with the suffix Jae

Adjectivalization

The sumx mil: in Soviet Yiddish The verbal prefix der-

117 122

127

131 136

Conclusion

169

References

176

Index of Yiddish lexical items

201

Index of names and subjects

211

List of Tables 1.1 Percentages of linguistically assimilated Kiev Jewish students, 1910 1.2 Kievjewish students’ views on Jewish national languages: percentage distribution by party afliliation, 1910 2.1 Retention of Yiddish in different age brackets, 1926 (% of the whole Ukrainianjewish population) 2.2 Yiddish retention among Ukrainian trade-union members, 1926 (%) Yiddish as a medium for Ukrainian trade-union 2.3 activities, 1926 and 1928 2.4 Yiddish in Ukrainian trade-union clubs, 1927 and 1928 (%) 2.5 Yiddish in Ukrainian trade-union local organizations, 1927 and 1928 (%) The planned distribution of Yiddish periodicals in 2.6 Belorussia in 1926 3.1 Yiddish schools in the academic years 1927-8, 1929-30, and 1930—1 3.2 Yiddish teachers' training colleges in Ukraine,

1928—34 3.3 Hebraisms in Mojshe Litvakov’s works 3.4 Examples of gender assignment by Mojshe Shapiro’s respondents

18

19 31

32 33 34 35

52 63

63 69 93

Note on the transliteration GenerallyIhave employed the Standard Yiddish Romanization system (the YIVO transcription system). However, in order to avoid confusion between the transliterations of Yiddish and Cyrillic scripts, j is universally used in the transliteration of Cyrillic n, to, a; y is reserved for Russian and Belorussian H and the Ukrainian H. Although Yiddish does not distinguish capitals from lower case, Ihave in transliteration capitalized the first letter in titles and personal names. Forms which are common in English publications are retained for some personal names, such as Sholem Aleichem, Asch, Hofshtein, Achad Ha-Am.

Introduction Soviet Yiddish, especially various peculiarities of its lexicon, has attracted the attention of many scholars and writers. Books and periodicals published in the Soviet Union, coupled with immense archival material, give a picture of this variety of modern Yiddish as well as of the theoretical and practical approaches of its architects. For all that, the history of Soviet Yiddish language planning and the features of Soviet Yiddish have not yet been comprehen-

sively studied. Yiddish linguists in the Soviet Union concentrated their efl‘orts mostly on practical, ‘real time’ issues of language planning. Due to the political situation and the official linguistic tenets of the 19305 and 19405, they could not discuss the links between language change and Soviet jews’ language behaviour. In fact, in 1937—8 and 1948-9 several of these linguists became the target of Stalinist persecution. After 1948 Yiddish linguistics in the Soviet Union was virtually extirpated. In the 19605 and 19705 the few surviving linguists, who contributed to the Moscow Yiddish monthly Sovetish hejmland, discussed exclusively problems of literary Yiddish usage and never broached any sociolinguistic issues. For Western students Soviet Yiddish remained normally an ideological (anti-communist, pro-puristic, or pro-traditional) rather than a scientific problem. Rakhmiel Peltz’s M. A thesis may be the only example of the study of some sociolinguistic aspects of Soviet Yiddish (Peltz 1981; see also Peltz 1985; Peltz and Kiel 1985). This study will attempt to abstract and analyse the major sociolinguistic and linguistic features of Yiddish Soviet-speak. As main constants which have determined the peculiarities of Soviet Yiddish, the study will consider the following: 1.The changes in the social structure of Sovietjewry and the associated acculturation and assimilation. 2.The decline of Yiddish in contact situations with dominant languages—Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian.

2

Introduction

3. The impact of overall Soviet language-planning policy. 4.The Soviet Yiddish language planners’ efi‘orts as a by-product of

government-sponsored activity among Yiddish-speakers. To a considerable extent, the study is based on primary sources, that is, contemporary publications and materials from Moscow archives and libraries, and my own experience as a Soviet Yiddish journalist is also reflected. In Ch. 1 a sociolinguistic profile of the pre-1917 RussianJewish community is presented. Various language—related data show that by the end of the nineteenth century Yiddish began to be superseded by Russian. The concurrent modernization and expansion of literary Yiddish was associated with numerous borrowings from other languages, among which Russian played the paramount

role. Ch. 2 shows the sociolinguistic situation and the languageplanning activities which gave rise to Soviet Yiddish. In the 19205 Yiddish gained in the Soviet Union a functional diversity of usage which has no precedents in the history of the language. Correspondingly, the vocabulary of Yiddish was modernized, to enable new political, scientific, legal, and other terminologies to be used in a consistent way. Discrepancies between the Bolshevik slogans ‘Proletarians of all countries, unite!’ and ‘The right of nations to self-determination’ led to two extremes in language planning. The most radical part of Soviet Yiddish bureaucrats and literati demanded ‘internationalization’ (or, in fact, Russification) of the literary language, arguing that a proletarian language should follow the spoken language of the Jewish workers. Their opponents advocated a ‘national', or more conservative and puristic, model of Soviet Yiddish construction. Since there have been no significant contemporary studies on spoken Yiddish, an attempt is made to use contemporary literary works as a source of linguistic and sociolinguistic information. Also, it is shown that a direct influence of the Ukrainian and Belorussian languages on Soviet literary Yiddish was minimal. Chronologically, Ch. 2 discusses the language-related problems of the period when the Bolshevik party’s Jewish Sections played a central role in political and cultural work among Soviet Yiddish

speakers.

In 1930 the Jewish Sections were closed down, though the

net-

Introduction

3

work of Yiddish institutions continued to grow. Meantime, wrangles between competing groups of Yiddish language planners became embittered. Ch. 3 describes in detail the discussions of the 19305, when adherents of the further Russification of Yiddish (at the expense of Hebrew-Aramaic and German components) crossed swords with the Kiev and Moscow cultivators of a ‘pure proletarian Yiddish’. The climactic event was the 1934 conference in Kiev which accepted basic principles of lexical innovation in Soviet literary Yiddish which, as a matter of ideology, rejected massive direct borrowings from Russian. Despite the ostensible rejection of Russification, the conference demonstrated that, in practice, nearly all lexical innovations, whether coined on the basis of Hebrew, German, or Slavonic elements, were loanwords or calques from Russian. Three years later, in 1937, various aspects of Soviet Yiddish language planning were once again discussed on the eve of a conference, scheduled to be convened in Birobidzhan. The conference never took place, due to the purges of 1937, when many Yiddish activists perished in the Gulag. In 1938 many Yiddish institutions were closed and the system of Yiddish education was curtailed. At the same time, the proportion of Soviet Jews who declared Yiddish as their first language dropped to 41 per cent in 1939 as opposed to 72.6 per cent in 1926. A5 for the language perse, during the 19205 and 19305 Soviet Yiddish became a distinct and—from the viewpoint of the Yiddish speaker and reader in the West—even partly ambiguous variety of modern Yiddish. The lexical and morpho-syntactic features of Soviet Yiddish corresponded to idiosyncrasies of the new society; first, to life in Soviet urban surroundings where it was, as a rule, the Russian language that predominated in all forms of linguistic communication. Moreover, Russian was the primary source of virtually all lexical innovations associated with the realities of Soviet life, in particular with the names of political and state bodies, various institutions, offices, and campaigns. The Holocaust and the post-war liquidation of the Jewish intellectual élite in the Stalinist Soviet Union dramatically marginalizedYiddish culture. Even when Nikita Khrushchev’s government allowed—under pressure from numerous foreign campaigners— the resumption of Yiddish publishing and theatrical performances, the number of Yiddish speakers (let alone readers) was doomed to a steady reduction, because there were no possibilities

4

Introduction

for Yiddish schooling. Ch. 4 discusses the sociolinguistic problems of the 19405 to 1980s, concentrating mostly on the period of the Moscow magazine Sovetish hq'mland (1961-91). The history of Yiddish orthographic reforms proposed and implemented in the Soviet Union is presented in Ch. 5. These reforms were based on pre-1917 projects envisaging phoneticization of Yiddish spelling and its emancipation from the strong influence of Hebrew and German orthographic conventions. In 1920, the most radical part of the Soviet Yiddish orthographic reform was introduced—the naturalization of spelling of words and forms derived from Hebrew and Aramaic. Later, in 1932, the five special word-final consonant letters were abolished in all Soviet publications. At the same time, projects to Latinize Yiddish have never been realized, though they were suggested and supported by some language planners. In the West this breach with the traditional writing system was often considered to be the most striking mark of the moribund Jewish culture. In fact, the same reforms might have been widely accepted also in the West. However, being originally introduced by Soviet communists, they became imbued with binding ideological connotations. Some significant features and types of Soviet Yiddish wordformation are analysed in Ch. 6. Under the influence of Russian, Soviet Yiddish widely un'lized univerbalization, that is, compressing a phrase into one word. Four types of univerbalization are described: stump-compounds, semi-abbreviations, acronyms, and univerbs with the suffix 4w. Adjectivalization in Soviet Yiddish—a process which is, in a sense, contrary to compounding—is discussed too. As for aflixation, word-formation with the suffix -nik and verb-forms with the prefix der- are analysed. The aim of this book is to give a comprehensive picture of Soviet Yiddish, which has often been condemned or praised, but rarely studied.

1

Yrddish in late Imperial Russia 1.1 Sociolinguistic pattern of Jewish society

The 1897 census portrayed Russia’s Jewry as a linguistically homogeneous group: it reported that 97 per cent of the Jews considered the ‘Jewish language’ (that usually meant Yiddish) to be their mother tongue. Only about 1.3 per cent claimed Russian as their first language, 0.9 per cent Polish, 0.4 per cent German (Brutskus 1909: 35). In some cases, however, the respondents’ national and political consciousness rather than the actual situation determined their answers, particularly in the year 1897, which Simon Dubnov characterized as a ‘crucial year in the history of RussianJewish society’. During that year a number of significant Jewish national and cultural events, each imbued with political perception of language, occurred: (1) the first meeting of the World Zionist Organization took place in Basle; (2) the Bund was founded in Vilna; (3) Simon Dubnov promulgated the idea of cultural autonomy in the Jewish diaspora; (4) Achad Ha-Am launched the periodical Ha—Shiloah, which became the standard-bearer of modern Hebrew literature (Dubnov 1929: 118; Niger 1990: 99; Harshav 1990: 125—6).

Reacting to the reign of terror engulfing the Jews of Russia after

the assassination of Alexander 11 in 1881, Zionist and Socialist circles endeavoured to save theirJewish brethren and take control of their own destiny. Even those intellectuals who were culturally Russified began to have serious doubts about the efficacy of assimilation. National consciousness permeated all strata of Russian Jewry and manifested itself in a renewed loyalty to Jewish language, particularly Yiddish. In 1889 Sholem Aleichem described this new attitude (quoted in Levenberg 1991: 109): ‘Every objective person will have to admit that the revival of Yiddish is the best proof of the fact that the self-awareness of the Jewish people is

6

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

growing.’ Arcadius Kahan (1986: 185) gave a laconic, albeit somewhat idyllic and oversimplified, picture of Russian Jewish cultural and linguistic homogeneity: The sons of Baron Ginsburg, serving in the cavalry guard regiments, or children of the Rabbi of Moscow, the offspring of the tea, sugar, and lumber merchants, or of the tailors and cobblers of Lithuania and Belorussia, of the itinerant peddlers and agricultural colonists of the Ukraine, of the weavers and spinners of the Polish textile cities, or of the Odessa waterfront gangsters a la Benia Krik [a central character of Isaac Babel’s Odessa Tales]—all were Jews, thought of themselves as such, and behaved accordingly. . . . Does one need a better witness than . . . the amazing statistic [for 1897] that 157 members of the Russian nobility listed Yiddish as their mother tongue?

But did it really mean that the position of Yiddish was ‘97%strong’, notwithstanding the residential, cultural, and socioeconomical heterogeneity of Russia’s Jews? In fact, nineteenthcentury Ashkenazic Jewish society in Russia functioned along the same sociolinguistic lines as almost all sub-ethnic groups of the Jewish diaspora. Its sociolinguistic make-up comprised the following language triad: (1) the vernacular—Yiddish; (2) the language of the state—Russian, as well as the co-territorial (‘peripheral’) languages: Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Lithuanian, Rumanian, and others; (3) the language of religion and high-culture function—Hebrew (see Chernin 1986;J. Fishman 1991: 192—5). However,Yiddish was not only ‘the Jewish vernacular language, in which the whole mass of the people spoke and dreamt’ (Nejman 1907). It also had many established as well as evolving ‘higher’ communication and culture functions. Yiddish was the language of instruction and study on all levels of the traditional Jewish religious school. Yiddish played a special role in the Ashkenazic liturgical tradition which incorporated the phenomenon of thhines— Yiddish prayers intended for women (D. Fishman 1991). At the turn of the century, a fairly rich secular literature in Yiddish was available and a few periodicals, launched in Odessa, Warsaw, and St Petersburg, attracted a growing number of readers. The periodicals helped standardize the spelling and modernize the vocabulary. They also raised the prestige of Yiddish (Zitron 1923). At the same time, there was ‘probably no other language in existence on which so much opprobrium has been heaped’ (Wiener 1899: 41-2). It was only at the turn of the century that Yiddish

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

7

began to be seen as a language rather than ajargon, or an aberration of the correct German. In comparison with practically all other languages of the Russian Empire, its raison d’étre could not be based exclusively on romantic arguments, presentingYiddish as the main manifestation of the unique soul of East EuropeanJewry. It was Hebrew that traditionally had the prerogative to be imbued with romantic sentiments as the Jewish national language. Therefore a justification for Yiddish could only be found in some interplay of romantic and positivist (first of all, educational) arguments.

To a considerable extent, the shifting status of Yiddish mirrored the gap between the Yiddish-speaking masses and the influential status-makers, namelyJewish intellectual and social élite, as well as the predominance of Jewish self-hatred among these intellectuals (see Zhitlovski 1912: 119; Lazar 1916). Hence the significance of the 1908 Yiddish Language Conference in the then AustroHungarian town of Czernowitz (now Chernivtsy in Ukraine), where a group of intellectuals proclaimed Yiddish as ‘a national Jewish language'. This was a direct challenge to the advocates of the exclusive higher function rights of Hebrew or to a preference for acculturation (Roskies 1981: 29;J. Fishman 1991: 255—83). Not only did the Czernowitz Conference symbolize the culmination of increasing efforts to emancipate Yiddish from its subordination to Hebrew and non-Jewish dominant languages, it also showed the advent of a new type of East European Jew—secular, socialistminded Yiddishists, who would play a visible role, especially until the Second World War, in various radical movements throughout the world. The problem of aJewish national language highlighted the political struggle between Zionists and Jewish socialists both of whose thinking was very often framed in terms of a binary opposition of Hebrew versus Yiddish. Some indication of the relative popularity of Yiddish and Hebrew in the Russia of 1917 can be seen from the results of the election to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. The Jewish parties were given an aggregate of nearly 500,000 votes, including 417,000 for the Zionist and religious parties, 31,000 for the Bund, and about 50,000 for other Jewish socialists (Spirin 1987: 272-328; Radkey 1990: 19). These figures suggest a certain approximation to the contemporaneous distribution of views and opinions: the most popular were the ideas of the Zionist

8

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

and religious movements, which, as a rule, advocated Hebrew as the nationalJewish language, assigning Yiddish the part of, at best, a vernacular, which ‘the people . . . love as their own, intimate language, as the mmbshn (mother tongue), but they are far from considering this language and its literature to be the highest and the most valuable creation of their spirit’ (Geller 1917). Nevertheless, it was Russian rather than Hebrew that turned out to be the principal intrusive language. It is significant that, parallel with the impressive 97 per cent of Russian Jews who considered Yiddish to be their mother tongue, the census for 1897 displayed data (ostensibly much more modest) on Russian literacy among Jews—30 per cent of men and 16 per cent of women. In fact, however, the Russian literacy figures are not so modest when compared with the 21 per cent average standard of literacy in the Empire as a whole. The high number of Jewish pupils in Russian schools is also surprising: in primary schools alone there were more than 50,000 in 1899 and about 130,000 in 1911. This is to say nothing of the fact that it was Jewish males who had, in 1897, the highest educationalattainment indices in the Empire (see Pokrovskij 1916; Bogdanov 1964: 129; Schulman 1971a: 3; numerous telling statistics are also provided in Pozner 1914). Although quotas imposed in the state schools in the 18805 should have limited the number of Jewish pupils and students (see, for example, Hausmann 1993), it was difficult to keep back the momentum of Russian-language schooling launched amongJews by the tsarist government. Especially as the new regulations left some loop-holes; they did not apply, for example, to Jewish girls’ education. In this case the government acted like the Pentateuchal Pharaoh: ‘if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live’ (to borrow Simon Dubnov’s biblical image—see Dubnov 1923: 354). The educational Russification of Jews dated from the beginning of the nineteenth century when the tsarist government conceived the missionary idea of creating a network of Russian-medium schools for its Jewish subjects. From the 18205 this vision began to be put into practice: the government made efforts to herd the Jews into special state schools. It is a curious chapter in the history of Russian educational policy: access to secondary schools was closed to peasants, the backbone of the nation, while Jews fell under the special care of coercive enlightenment (Hans 1931: 88).

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

9

The secular education of Russian Jews was not caused by a natural trend of common cultural development, nor was it engendered by a recognition of its pressing necessity. On the contrary, education was imposed by the government as part of its struggle against Jews’ imaginary harmfulness, which, allegedly, sprang from their economic activities and was rooted in their obscurantism as well as in their religious fanaticism and its repoIn the reign of the emperors Alexander I and sitory—the Talmud to Nicholas Ithis longing render Jews harmless ran through the govern(Gets 1914: 2) ment’s legislative enactments in the field of education.

...

Initially Jews opposed Russian education. Change came largely in the 18605, when many Jews chose this way of education-foremancipation. A growing number of them discovered the usefulness of Russian schooling, and made an effort to obtain it, especially as new legislation of the 18605 and 18705 awarded Jewish graduates alluring opportunities, going even so far as to grant the right to be domiciled outside the Pale of Settlement as well as to have access to state services (see, for example, Kabinet Ministrov o wrcjskom voprose 1905; Evnjskaja entsihlopedija 1912: 49). On balance, it is possible to single out the 18605 and 18705 as the incubational period of Jewish Russification. Following Karl

Deutsch’s (1953: 99) definition of assimilation, Russification was progressing inasmuch as Jews were learning more Russian than was necessary for their day-to-day lives. Indeed, for shtetl-dwellers it was as a rule sufficient to know Polish, Ukrainian, or other coterritorial languages in order to communicate and trade with their neighbours. With Russians,Jews exchanged goods and services but relatively little information (Leshtshinski 1934: 27). The tzarist government’s policy of Russification received active encouragement from the Jewish intelligentsia. Both the intelligentsia and the quasi-intelligentsia (poluintelligentsija), or people with enough education to raise their expectations, adopted ideas from the German-Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), thus fostering, as a by-product, a deep attachment to the German language. But later, from the 18605 onwards, the maskilim, or followers of the Haskalah, became ardent admirers of Russian. (On the genesis of the Jewish intelligentsia in Russia, see Slutzki 1970: 13-36; on the quasi-intelligentsia, see Slutzki 1978: 13—14.) Some educated Jews welcomed Russian immediately after the partitions of Poland with its consequential annexation of their domiciles to the Russian Empire. For them Russian was a symbol of deliverance from the

10

Yiddish in late ImperialRussia

humiliation and victimization which had been for centuries associated with the Polish language (Zinberg 1970: 29). At the same time,Jewish intellectuals as a rule ‘were almost ashamed of Yiddish’ (Niger 1922: 310). Quite often even advocates of Yiddish were in fact not so much in favour of Yiddish per se. Rather they saw in it an important educational medium for the poor ignorant masses. In their opinion, Yiddish books and periodicals were just an interim literature which would serve its purpose only until all Jews learned to speak and read Russian (Dubnov 1929: 11-12). The history of the Society for Dissemination of Education AmongJews (founded in St Petersburg in 1863) is a glaring example of how the intellectuals, ecstatic in their illusion of liberation from the ‘atavistic ties’ of the ‘Jargon culture’, struggled for Russification (Zinberg 1909; Cherikover 1913; Frumkin 1966: 46; Klier 1995: 249—50). For all that, the combined eflorts of the government and a handful of Jewish intellectuals would have been devoid of success without other, socio—economic and demographic factors which contributed to the dissemination of the Russian language amongJews.

1.2 Urbanization, modernization, and acculturation In 1897 Russia’s Jews were the second-largest ethnic group in urban centres. This high level of urbanization was influenced by political rather than merely socio-economic factors: Jewish residence was limited not only to the Pale of Settlement, but, in particular, to towns and shtetls within the Pale (Lewis et al. 1976: 174). In the 18605 and 18705 industrialization attracted hundreds of thousands of Jewish village and shtetl-dwellers to the larger cities. In most cases the city provided a Russian-language environment that left its mark on the new inhabitants. (Exceptis excipiendis: in Warsaw, it was the Polish language and culture that left the most tangible imprint on the Jewish city-dwellers’ acculturation—see Corrsin 1990; in Riga, many of the Jews spoke German in preference to other languages—see Henriksson 1986.) Knowledge of Russian gave advantages at many levels of urban employment. In the 18905, according to a survey, Russian literacy was not a prerogative of white-collar workers; it was high also among people employed, for example, as urban coachmen (84%), bakers (86%), and in restaurant service (90%). All these were traditional occupa-

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

11

tions of many Jews. Moreover, the spread of Russian literacy was steadily increasing on the peripheries of the boom centres of industry and trade (A. Kahan 1971: 301). From the 18605 and 18705 Russian became the main rival language to Yiddish. Some Jewish urbanites, especially the intelligentsia, became fully integrated into the mainstream development of industrialization and its associated cultural processes. Their occupations and lifestyle became so estranged from the sphere in which Yiddish had been traditionally used that they partially or even totally lost their original language as they acquired full proficiency in the Russian language and absorbed Russian culture. This reinforced a high status of Russian among the Jewish population since ‘an ordinary mortal modelled himself upon the new worldly intelligentsia. . . . Thus the foreign language [Russian] became a symbol of nobility, culture’ (BenvAdir 1937: 141). In 1882 the magazine Russkoe slovo noted (quoted from Tomsini 1920): ‘It is interesting that once aJew has an education—even one worth no more than a brass farthing—he very rarely speaks Yiddish.’ At the same time, the rise of Jewish revolutionary and labour movements gave impetus to the demands for secular Jewish schools with Yiddish as the medium of instruction. However, until July 1914 Yiddish schools were illegal in Russia, therefore Russianmedium schools provided the only venue for secular education. In the three years between the abolition of this restriction and the Bolshevik revolution only a small number of Yiddish schools were opened. The development of Yiddish education was hindered by the First World War situation, the reluctance of local authorities, and the contending interests of Yiddishists and Hebraists (Aronson 1916; Kazdan 1916; see also Kazdan 1956; for an analysis of the government policies towards Yiddish see D. Fishman 1989). Nor was the development of a Yiddish press in Russia ever very stable. In addition, from June 1915 until the February revolution the government banned all Yiddish periodicals. An exception was allowed only in Odessa, where at the end of 1916 the publication of the newspaper Undzer lebn was resumed (Niger 1917). As for Yiddish book publishing, its condition was undoubtedly much better than the publishing activity in languages of the majority of other Russian subjects (Shevelov 1989: 41; cf. Reizen 1931: 181). Until the 18905Jewish publishers mostly offered cheap novels. The most prolific and popular writer of this literature was

12

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

Nakhum Meier Shaikevitch, better known under his pseudonym Shomer (Zitron 1924: 148-50; Vmer 1940: 50; Liptzin 1985: 53—4); some editions of his novels sold a record-breaking 9,000 copies (Reizen 1931: 184—5). In addition to this kind of literature, at the turn of the century the readership of a Jewish library was contented with Yiddish translations of works by Jules Verne, Emile Zola, and Leo Tolstoy (Referat o ‘zhargonnoj’ literature iee chitateljalth 1903; Poljakov 1918: 5). A historian of Russian-Jewish literature has stated: ‘In the reports of Jewish libraries and in published articles it was invariably noted that even in libraries containing Hebrew and Yiddish books, besides Russian ones, the most popular works were by Russian authors, above all Tolstoy’ (LvovRogachevsky 1979: 73). The works of Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Moicher-Sforim, Y. L. Peretz, and Sholem Asch became popular shortly before the First World War. Two annual reports of the Jewish library in the shtetl Shirokoe (Kherson gubernija) provide revealing information. Even in this shtetl, which presumably was not overcrowded by intelligentsia, the readership of the library (in 1911-12: 185 readers including 121 children; in 1912—14: 271 readers including 147 children) preferred Russian to Yiddish books. Thus, among the 11,000 books which the readers borrowed in 1912—14, only 200 were in Yiddish and 8 in Hebrew (Library Report 1913; Library Report 1914). It is, however, important to note that their choice cannot be attributed solely to language preference, but also to what was available in the library. Only 10 per cent of the books were in Yiddish. The choice of books may also be attributable to the curriculum in the Russianmedium schools. As for the native language of Jewish pupils, the One-Day Census of Primary Schools in the Russian Empire conducted in 1911 showed that, among 134,000Jewish pupils, 7 per cent failed to claim aJewish language as their mother tongue (9% in urban areas, and 4% in rural areas) (Pokrovskij 1916: 14—16). All in all, at the turn of the century, Russian began to rival Yiddish for the position of the language of preference among educated Jews (Friedberg 1984: 95; Stampfer 1993: 137). It is no mere coincidence that in the same year (1908), when a group of intellectuals organized the historic Yiddish language conference in Czernowitz, the Russian writer Kornej Chukovskij opened a discussion about the role of Russian-language Jewish literature (Serman 1985). Important measurements of the language behaviour of

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

13

Russian Jews can be found among the returns of various local polls, as well as in non-census data sources. The following are but a few examples (Estraikh 1996a): St Petersburg and Moscow. In 1869 in St Petersburg there were almost no Jews whose native tongue was Russian. During the following years, their number began to grow: in 1881, 2,000 (13% of the capital’s Jewish population), in 1890, 4,400 (29 per cent), in 1910, 14,800 (42 per cent) (Jukhneva 1984: 208-10). The same pattern can be observed in Moscow (Kupovetskij 1987: 66). As regards the Jewish migrants to Moscow, statistics of the Moscow Labour Exchange give some notion of their language competence in 1914—16. Out of about 3,000 Jewish males and females who gave language-related information in their registration forms, 15 per cent were literate only in Russian, 11 per cent only in aJewish language, and 70 per cent in both Russian and aJewish language (Braude 1917). Odessa. In 1892 almost 6,000 (5 per cent) of Jewish city-dwellers claimed Russian as their mother tongue (Borinevich 1894: 66-73). In 1897 Russian already had over 14,000 Jewish claimants (Brutskus 1909: 41). Since the heaviest language shift (15 per cent in 1892) took place amongJewish schoolchildren and students, it is possible to consider schooling as the preponderant factor in Russification, which for most Odessa Jews occurred in late adolescence and early adulthood. Kiev. Outwardly, in this city the language change was not very impressive: 96 per cent of Kiev Jews were Yiddish claimants in 1874; 94 per cent in 1897; 92.6 per cent in 1917. However, this does not mean that all of them still used Yiddish. Therefore the 1917 census questions on ‘mother tongue’ and ‘everyday language’ are of crucial importance. Indeed, 92.6 per cent of Jewish respondents claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue and only 5.4 per cent claimed Russian. However, answers to the question on ‘everyday language’ presented a different pattern: Yiddish, 70 per cent, Yiddish and Russian, 4.5 per cent, Russian, 23.7 per cent (Leshtshinski 1925: 53). These data support Kirk’s (1946: 224) generalization that the language-related information is prone to error: (1) the question about the ‘mother tongue’ usually records the original language of the respondents and not their updated linguistic practices as influenced by schooling and adjustment to

14

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

the dominant language; (2) the question about the ‘everyday language’, on the other hand, favours the dominant language. In Kiev there were also adherents of Hebrew: 1.3 per cent of the Jewish respondents claimed it as their mother tongue and 0.7 as their everyday language (Leshtshinski 1925: 53). One cannot but wonder, however, how much Hebrew they actually knew and what language they spoke at home. A contemporary’s diary exemplifies a characteristic discourse of that time (1908): ‘Why do you speak Russian?’ ‘1 am a Hebraist!’ (Niger 1973: 117). Baku. In 1913 about 16 per cent (1,500) of Baku Jews claimed Russian as their mother tongue. The incidence of Russian literacy in this Jewish community was 83 per cent (Baku Census 1916: 4—5). Vologda. In 1909 in this small Jewish community 68 per cent of 320 adults and teenagers were literate in Russian, 55 per cent in Yiddish, and 15 per cent in Hebrew. It is interesting that the community boasted 28 subscribers to the Russian-Jewish magazine Rassvet and only five subscribers to the Yiddish daily Frajnd (Berlinraut and Raskin 1911: 42-6). Irkutsk. Among 7,500 Jews who lived in 1897 in this Siberian gubernija centre and in the whole Irkutsk gubemija almost 6 per cent (8.5 per cent in Irkutsk itself) answered that they did not know any Jewish language. Only 7 per cent of the Jews reported theirJewish literacy, while about 34 per cent were literate in Russian (Vojtinskij and Gornshtejn 1915: 64—9). Krasnopolje and Mogileu. In the shtetl Krasnopolje (Mogilev gubernija) in 1909 the population consisted of 2,834Jews and about 400 Gentiles; 7 per cent of the Jews claimed to be literate only in Russian, 32 per cent only in aJewish language, and 25 per cent in both Russian and aJewish language (Rokhlin 1909: 28). These data show that the Russification of Jews was not confined to cities. As regards the gubernzja centre proper, Mogilev, we find that in 1915 among 719 Jewish artisans 18 per cent read Yiddish books, another 18 per cent favoured Russian books, and 3.5 per cent Hebrew books. Among the same artisans, 25 per cent read periodicals in Russian, 40 per cent in Yiddish, and about 2 per cent (mostly in cohorts aged above 40) in Hebrew (Gol’dshtejn 1915).

All in all, at the turn of the century, in urban areas (at least in the cities and towns for which there is information available), Rus-

Yiddish in late ImperialRussia

15

sia's Jewish population had begun to change its language. After an incubation period of Russification in the 18605 and 18705, the years 1880—1917 saw a pivotal change in the language behaviour of Russia’s Jews: from Yiddish-Russian diglossia-without-bilingualism to diglossia-with-bilingualism. (According to J. Fishman (1972: 135—52), ‘bilingualism’ means the alternate use of languages by the same individual, whereas ‘diglossia’ describes a community with a complementary system of languages for intrag'roup communication.) Moreover, the diglossia-with-bilingualism had already shown some signs of unstable bilingualism (cf. J. Fishman 1987: 52—3)—as a temporary stage to the loss of Yiddish to the encroaching Russian language. It is the 1897 census to which they all refer, pointing out that only one per cent [ofJews] admitted Russian as their mother tongue. On the contrary, it means nothing of the kind. It proves that there was a microbe. Since one per cent was recorded (although even then the real percentage was higher), it was bound later to become 5 per cent, and so on. (Evrq'skaja nedelja 1916: 7)

Four factors ensure language stability: (1) culture, (2) territory, (3) state, and (4) economy (Tkachenko 1990). For centuries the language stability of Yiddish was assured by the unique Ashkenazic culture. The Pale of Settlement became the Jewish national territory, while the kehile (the organizedJewish community) served as a surrogate Jewish state. A specific role played by Jews in the European feudal world highlighted their unique situation. The modernization and particularly the industrialization of the Russian Empire dismantled Jewish ‘national sovereignty’ and cleared the way for acculturation and assimilation. A knowledge of Russian prepared the ground for a shift of language and even ethnic affiliation. It can safely be said that Russification would have been more expansive, had there been ideological support from the different Jewish political currents. And, more importantly, the Jewish community made possible ‘vertical substitutions’ in the competitive economy (Deutsch 1953: 76). According to Arcadius Kahan (1986: 10—17), such vertical relations did exist in tum-of-the-century Russian Jewish society. A high degree of co-operation linked Jewish traders, entrepreneurs, and artisans offering the only viable alternative to either the abolition of the Pale or emigration. Yiddish

16

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

was the main language of communication in this co—operative

of ‘national economy’. Jakov Leshtshinski wrote about Jewish labour ghettos in Russia’s industrial centres (Leshtshinski 1941: 22; on this phenomenon in Odessa, see Weinberg 1986: 3—4). There were many localities where Yiddish was the only medium of communication. Iventure to give the example of my grandmother who was born in 1880. Until 1941 she lived in aJewish (linguistically, a Yiddish) village, Novozlatopol. She never spoke anything but Yiddish, even in the 19505 and 19605 when my family, having moved to an industrial city, lived in an apartment house with mostly non-Jewish neighbours. Her husband, my grandfather, did know some colloquial Russian. To the best of my knowledge, he had learned Russian while serving in the tsarist army, which became a peculiar kind of Russian-medium school for tens of thousands ofJews. structure

1.3 Languages of KievJewish students We have at our disposal the results of two polls taken among Kiev Jewish students, in 1909 and 1910 (Shejnis 1911; Students’ Poll 1913; Estraikh 1992a). The 1910 poll is more substantial, both in respect of the scope of the questionnaire and the number of respondents—about 1,500 as against 510 in 1909. What is more, while the 1909 poll encompasses only students of the University and the Polytechnic (Higher Technical) Institute, the 1910 poll also provides information on both male students and hursisthi (female students) at the Commerce Institute and three women’s higher educational establishments. According to the 1910 poll, 84.5 per cent of the students interviewed claimed they knew Yiddish; 62 per cent could speak, read, and write it, 7 per cent could speak and read it, and the remaining 15.5 per cent could do neither. Furthermore, the poll showed that another 15.5 per cent were, in linguistic terms, completely assimilated. Only 32 per cent of the respondents spoke Yiddish on an everyday basis, 46 per cent spoke it rarely, and 22 per cent never spoke it at the time investigated. Respondents were also asked to indicate the language in which they thought. What is most remarkable is the tiny proportion of students who thought in Yiddish, only 4 per cent; another 10 per cent thought in Yiddish and Rus-

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

17

sian; 82 per cent claimed that they thought in Russian. This did not, however, exhaust the linguistic repertoire of the respondents, 4 per cent of whom thought in German, Polish, and other lan-

guages. These Jewish students may be divided into four cohorts on a scale of language retention/assimilation: Cohort A (32%): students genuinely bilingual, using Yiddish as their colloquial language along with Russian. The commonsense assumption would be that most Yiddish-thinkers (4%) and Yiddish-and-Russian-thinkers (10%) were members of this

cohort. Cohort B (46%): respondents who rarely spoke Yiddish. Cohort C (6.5%): respondents who claimed they knewYiddish but did not speak it at the time investigated, if ever. Cohort D (15.5%): non-Yiddish speakers, or Jews completely assimilated in linguistic terms. For reasons best known to themselves, the pollsters failed to ask the students about their mother tongue. It is possible that, besides the 15.5 per cent of linguistically assimilated Jews (Cohort D), a number of other respondents would not have declared Yiddish as their mother tongue. The students’ responses clearly demonstrate the process of the declining use of Yiddish. It is likely that some of the respondents (Cohort D) had been assimilated from birth. At the opposite extreme, almost one-third of the students (Cohort A) used Yiddish frequently, and some of them thought in the language. The data also suggest that the students of Cohort A were more or less widely read in Yiddish literature. We can only guess at the composition of Cohorts B and C. In general, it is understood that roughly two groups of respondents belong to these cohorts: one group composed of marginal or ‘lapsed’ bilinguals, whose use of their first language, Yiddish, was restricted by the increasingly frequent use of Russian; and one group, for which Yiddish could have been the second language. The ratio of these groups is unknown. Hypothetically, Cohort B comprised mainly lapsed bilinguals. Most students with Yiddish as their second language comprised Cohort C. Table 1.1 throws light on the age and gender composition of Cohort D. The age-grading shows a steady process of language

18

Yiddish in lateImperial Russia

loss, with the process much further advanced among students born in the late 18805 and 18905 than among older cohorts. The transition of the kursistki from Yiddish to Russian was more marked than that of the male students, the reason being the different approach to the upbringing of male and female children among the Jews. The 1910 poll data show this clearly. Only about 10 per cent of the male students had not had aJewish religious education, whereas over 32 per cent of the kursistki lacked this kind of education. As said earlier, the entry of Jewish girls to state schools, including gymnasiums—the most advanced type of Russian secondary school—was less restricted by the numerus clausus than that of boys. (Indeed, the polled kursistlti included 93 per cent of former gymnasium pupils, in comparison with only 37.5 per cent of former gymnasium pupils among the male students.) Therefore, a girl would normally begin secondary education earlier than a boy. Consequently, she had to master Russian early on as a precondition of educational progress and was likely to have discontinued herJewish studies earlier (if they ever began). Table 1.1. Percentages of linguistically assimilated KievJewish students, 1910 Age

Male

Female

17-19 20—22 23—25 26-28 29 and over Total

30.0 16.0 6.5 4.5 7.0 14.0

25.0 19.0 13.0 6.0

—

18.0

Judging from the data of the 1909 poll, Yiddish retention was a function of one more dimension: the social or occupational background of the student’s family. The divergence in the proportion of students who retained their native language ranged from 94 per cent of the offspring of petty traders and 90 per cent of the offspring of clergyrnen to 67 per cent of the offspring of employees in industrial concerns and 45 per cent of the offspring of men engaged in liberal professions. This testifies to the distinct boundaries between the societal functions allocated other languages.

to

Yiddish and

Yiddish in late ImperialRussia

19

Over 40 per cent of respondents claimed membership of political parties, including 15.5 per cent Social Democrats and 4.4 per cent Bundists, 6.3 per cent Zionists, and as many again of various Jewish Socialist parties (Poale Zionists, Zionist-Socialists, Sejmists), 3.8 per cent Social Revolutionaries, and 3.6 per cent Kadets. There is a correlation between political sympathies and language preference (Table 1.2). For example, Yiddish or Hebrew was very often a condition of membership to the Bund or Zionist party

respectively.

KievJewish students’ views onJewish national languages: percentage distribution by party affiliation, 1910

Table 1.2.

Language Hebrew Yiddish Hebrew and Yiddish Other languages ‘Jews have no national language’ No opinion

expressed

Total

Zionists

JS

Bundists

SD

73.6

11.3

27.1 52.3

10.0 80.0

32.9 30.4

45.0 23.0

39.1 30.5

4.7

7.4

5.0

1.1

0.5

3.2

1.9

0.9

2.5

7.5

7.5

3.3

—

1.9

—

6.4

3.0

4.4

8.5

10.4

2.5

21.7

21.0

19.5

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

Non-party Total

Note:JS =Jewish Socialists, excluding the Bundists; SD = Social Democrats.

Beyond all question, this correlation between the students’ political affiliation and their language preference also reflected the complex relationship between the respondents’ rootedness inJewish and Russian culture, their gender and age, social and territorial origin. However this may be, we have a revealing pattern. It shows, for example, that the language-related attitudes of Social Democrats (apparently both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks) were close to those of non-party students. Quantitatively, these two groups were predominant among students who repudiatedJewish languages and, probably, distanced themselves from Jewish national values. Although many students indicated Hebrew as the (or a) Jewish national language, no respondents mentioned Hebrew as their

20

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

vernacular or as the language in which they thought. This is not to say that nobody would have declared Hebrew as their mother tongue, at least as a demonstration of political preference—especially as about one-third of respondents read Hebrew periodicals and books. We may safely assume that the use of and proficiency in Hebrew were more limited than its role as a national symbol. 1.4 Change processes in Yiddish

Despite migration to the larger cities of the Empire, Yiddishspeaking society consisted primarily of shtetl-dwellers, that is, artisans, petty merchants, and clergy. A Yiddish-speaking wealthy bourgeoisie and intelligentsia were scarce, and the working class was rather underdeveloped. The social structure of speakers had a bearing on the language: Yiddish used in written and in oral speech did not encompass all aspects of modern life and thought. Also, there were no specialists or institutions which could collect and standardize the existing terminology; therefore, ironically enough, Yiddish writers were sometimes less well equipped than the language itself. Yiddish used in writings was supplemented by borrowings from other languages, mainly from Russian, German, and Polish. Moreover, in the nineteenth century some Jewish intellectuals imagined that their proper language was, or should be, German, or at least a very Germanized Yiddish. German, a language of international currency, offered them a cachet of what they regarded as European refinement. This trend left an imprint on the Yiddish vocabulary. Although at the turn of the century a reaction against relatively recent German borrowing set in and a number of German loanwords in Yiddish fell into disuse, many Yiddish writers and translators kept going back to German to enlarge the stock of words, especially as many Gerrnanisms fitted in perfectly with the language. For all that, the most important borrowings were from Russian. The fact that an appreciable part of the Empire’s Jews knew Russian well and that most contemporaryJewish writers were Yiddish—Russian bilinguals could not but leave its imprint on the character of Yiddish literary language at the turn of the century. In fact, even the majority of internationalisms (or words coined from components of Greek and Latin origin) entered Yiddish by way of

Russian.

Yiddish in late Imperial Russia

21

In 1907 Mojshe Olgin, then a Bundist (he later became a leading American Jewish Communist), saw two tendencies in the development of literary Yiddish. The first, which he associated with mainstream Yiddish literature, was a further complication of the language and an accumulation of modern words, terminology, and expressions. At the same time, the language of illegal, politically radical publications tended towards simplification and to incorporation of lexical items from the spoken language (Nejman 1907). Indeed, Yiddish was of such little aesthetic value in the eyes of the first radical propagandists that they did not even try to ‘beautify’-cum-Germanize it (cf. Kobrin 1976). Later, the socialist and nationalist currents attracted many writers who advocated the emancipation of Yiddish from other languages, primarily from German and Russian. These writers employed a lexical strategy of purging loanwords in favour of calques from German and Slavonic. In general, loan translation became the most tolerated method of lexical borrowing (see Schaechter 1984: 210). The modernization of Yiddish was not confined to lexical innovations. Literary Yiddish was in many cases also restructured in accordance with the grammatical principles of Russian, making use of the possibilities provided by the already existing fixed set of rules for the integration of Slavonic loans. For example: 1.Yiddish subordinate clauses became more adaptable to their Russian counterparts owing to the increasing use of new conjunctions (see Fridberg 1970), such as: derfar vos, cf. Ru. potomu chto (because); ni(sh)t gehuht af dern vos or ni(sh)t kukndih deruf vos, cf. Ru. v to vremja hogda /v to uremja halt (while). 2.Yiddish writers started using heterogeneous expanded attributes, which were normal in Russian but not in Yiddish (examples from Olgin 1915: 51—2): durkhW estsimer (through WW dining-room), cf. Ru. cherez W Mstolo'uuju; in WWW bet (in the white mthsilkandflmrtcts bed) cf Ru vhduymuhefimumm krovat’; Wilts hem (staincdmthsar handS) cf Ru limb.hammdegte mki. 3. Another factor facilitating the acceptance of Russian modes in Yiddish was the fairly stable semantic and aspectual correspondence between a number of Yiddish and Russian verbal prefixes (Zaretski 1928a: 25-6): arajn- = v-; arojs- = vy—; (ar)ojs- = iz-; map= s-; ba- = o-; der- = do-; durirh- =pro—;far- = za-;for- =pred-; on— =

22

Yiddish in late ImperialRussia

na-; op- = ot-; tse- = raz—; tsu- =pri-; zikh tsunajf/zikh uf- = s— -sja This system, which had developed—often involving loanblends (U. Weinreich 1955: 608)—from a relationship of high correspondence between Germanic and Slavonic prefixes, invited numerous borrowings based on Russian models. The correspondence between prefixes frequently efl‘ected other parts of speech, in particular verbal nouns. There were also other parallels between Russian and Yiddish affixes, which allowed the replacement of Russian morphemes with corresponding Yiddish morphemes. For example: the Russian verbal suflix -ova- and its Yiddish equivalent -eue- , resulting in Yi. bunteven, cf. Ru. buntouat’ (to rebel/revolt); Russian noun forrnation with -ha andYiddish noun formation with -kein both feminine agentives and in diminutive inanimate nouns, resulting in Yi. gimnazisthe, cf. Ru. gimnazistka (female student of a gymnasium); Yi.

tshashke, cf. Ru. chashlta (cup). 4. Yiddish, which had long ago integrated the Slavonic suffix -nih for words denoting persons, began to extend the use of this suflix to inanimate objects. Drejzin’s Russian-Yiddish dictionary already lists a number of such words, for example: dushnik, cf. Ru. dushnik (air-hole/ventilator); gradusnik, cf. Ru. gradusnik (thermometer); pastronih, cf. Ru. postromha (trace/pulling-strap); pudnih, cf. Ru. pudovik (weight of one pood (16.38 kg)); tshajnik, cf. Ru. chajnih (tea-pot) (Drejzin 1909; for more examples, see Holmshtok 1932: 52).

2 Yiddish proletarian language 2.1 Inside new boundaries As a consequence of the tsarist policy to modernize and enlighten Russian Jewry, thousands of Jewish intellectuals were able to appropriate for themselves the white-collar jobs made vacant after the Bolshevik revolution. The Jewish Bolsheviks, too, were comprised chiefly of graduates or half-taught students of gymnasiums and universities. Some of them, together with former members of the disintegrating Jewish socialist movements, staffed the institutional framework set up in 1918 for the Jews: the Jewish Commissariat in the Soviet government and the Jewish Sections in the Communist Party. The Party’s Jewish Sections lasted longer, their Russian abbreviation Evsektsija became better known, particularly as a term of opprobrium in the non-communistJewish world (for a detailed chronology and analysis of the Soviet Jewish governmental and Party institutions, see the monographs Gitelrnan 1972 and Altshuler 1980). From the very beginning, the evseks (members of the Evsektsija) steered the SovietJewish education and propaganda in the direction of Yiddish and made it the only language of their activity. At the same time, they did not realize (or did not want to realize) that—despite the impressive statistics of Yiddish dominance among Russia’sJews and the successes of modern Yiddish culture—without a separate Jewish territorial and sociocultural infrastructure, Yiddish would become an unstable system. By establishing new frontiers and by redrawing the political map of Eastern Europe, the Bolshevik revolution dismantled the territory where Jews had lived for generations. Jewish communities in Ukraine, Belorussia, and Russia could not compensate for the loss of the national energy that the Warsaw and Vrlna communities had provided before 1917 (Aronson 1991: 24). Indeed, among the 407 Yiddish books published in Russia in 1912 only about fifty

24

Yiddish proletarian language

(12.5 per cent) were printed in St Petersburg, Odessa, Minsk, Kiev, Berdichev, and Zhitomir. The leading position was held by Warsaw (262 books), followed by Vilna (64). Warsaw and Vilna were also centres of Jewish journalism. Warsaw boasted two Yiddish daily newspapers, Hajnt and Moment, each of which had a circulation of up to 100,000 copies, to say nothing of various other daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals (Slutzki 1980: 279-80). In Poland, the Baltic countries, Romania, and elsewhere, hundreds of Yiddish writers remained cut OH from their colleagues and readers in the Soviet Union. In his attempt to describe the Soviet Yiddish literary world, the critic and chronicler of modern Yiddish literature, Nakhman Maizil (1959: 34), stressed that only a handful of authors, notably Dovid Bergelson and Der Nister, had substantial literary experience prior to the revolution. The Kiev literary group, comprising such authors as Osher Shvartsman, Dovid Hofshtein, Lejb Kvitko, Peretz Markish, Jekhezkl Dobrushin, Nokhem Ojslender emerged with the revolution. It is significant that the Bolsheviks had published few works in Yiddish before 1917 (Gitelrnan 1972: 105—11; Estraikh 1995a: 666). Even during the two first years after the revolution, despite the efforts of the Evsektsija, only eight out of more than eighty (usually short-lived) Yiddish periodicals were published by the communists (Jashunskij 1920: 6). The First World War, the revolution, and the ensuing Civil War, destroyed the shtetl life which was the central habitat of Eastern European Jewish culture. The old social and economic relationships, which had sustained a precarious but steady Jewish economy, were shattered. Moreover, throughout the 19205 and 19305 it was against the Jewish shtetl that the grievous blows of the new regime were directed (Bragin and Kol’tsov 1924: 6). In 1926, during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Shimen Dimanshtejn, the first Commissar in charge of Jewish affairs in Lenin’s government, admitted that the revolution had brought misfortune to the majority of Jews (Estraikh 1992b; 1994d: 38). Two possibilities remained: either to find a new role for the shtetl in the Soviet economy or to doom this ‘malignant tumour on the body of the young, weak Soviet country’ (Ja. Kantor 1935: 157) to extinction. The powers-that-be chose the latter course. The ‘productivization’ of Jews, or transformation of shtetl tradesmen into workers and peasants, an old skeleton rattling in

Yiddish proletarian language

25

the Russian closet, gripped the imagination of some Soviet leaders in the early 19205, as well as that of the architects of the Evsektsija. The idea of productivization received powerful backing even from certain circles in the Western Jewish diaspora overwhelmed by the romance of the Jewish man-with-a-hammer-and-sickle. The roots of this attitude can be found in Haskalah movement of the early nineteenth century and in Jewish socialist and Zionist thought of the late nineteenth century. In fact, it was chiefly the industrial centres of the country which attracted the young and active shtetl population. In Moscow, for example, the Jewish population grew from 28,000 in 1920 to 131,000 in 1926 (Goncharskaja 1929: 18). From the shtetls investigated in 1926 and 1931 more than 30 per cent of the Jews, mostly able-bodied elements, had migrated (Ja. Kantor 1935: 159). During the first ten years following the revolution at least one million Jews left the impoverished shtetls of Ukraine and Belorussia (Ju. Larin 1928: 35). Thus the former shtetl-dwellers, who were swept into the maelstrom of the dominant Gentile environment, were estranged from their national tenor of life. The ethno-transformational processes —assimilation and acculturation—of the Jewish urbanites proceeded very quickly. Especially as an occupational acculturation began to be far more widespread in the post-1917 years. With the removal of legal barriers, Jews streamed into administrative posts and universities; they disproportionately swelled the ranks of government organs, and flocked to large state enterprises in administrative and managerial positions. In 1922, Lenin lamented: ‘We have in the Ukraine too many Jews. It is the genuine Ukrainian workers and peasants who should be involved in governing’ (Estraikh 1992b; 1994d: 42). However, this pronouncement and its after-efi‘ect had to do chiefly with some key executive posts. Jews, the most literate, Russified, and urbanized ethnic group, continued to be prominent among oflice workers and professionals (see Slider 1985: 536-7). The influx of Jews into new fields, positions, and geographic areas touched off recurring waves of anti-Semitic feeling. In the press and pamphlets, numerous anti-Jewish incidents were reported. The Soviet secret service, OGPU, reported on anti-Semitic sentiments in all strata of society (Teptsov 1993; Davies 1997: 83—5). Jews, especiallyJewish ‘speculators’ (profiteers), were resented in

26

Yiddish proletarian language

Moscow, which came to be known as ‘aJewish city’. In November 1926 Mikhail Kalinin, the titular head of the USSR, said publicly that the Soviet white-collar worker was more anti-Semitic than his tsarist counterpart. A 1926 report about anti-Jewish feeling among the workers of a Moscow textile factory expressed the general opinion that ‘Jews should be expelled to Siberia or to some other outlying district—in order to organize there aJewish Soviet Socialist Republic and to equalize, in that way, their standing with that of other nationalities’ (Estraikh 1992b; 1994d: 42). Two years later, in March 1928, the most notorious experiment of the productivization of Jews was launched: the creation of the SovietJewish State (Birobidzhan) in the Soviet Far East. In fact, the ‘Birobidzhanization’ attracted fewer Jewish migrants than the five Jewish national regions, created in the southern Ukraine and the Crimea, and the agricultural settlements in the former Pale of Settlement. Chronologically, the first twelve post-revolutionary years, up to 1930, framed the initial phase of Soviet Jewish history (Orbach 1982). It was the period when the Evsehtsija strived to dominate the Jewish sphere. However, even in its heyday the Evsektsija was an amorphous structure. It was a hierarchical network only in outward appearance, because the provincial and republican Jewish sections were in point of fact subdivisions not of their Central Burcan, but of a corresponding Party Committee. Accordingly, the circulars of the Central Bureau could be accepted as recommendations rather than directions. The anaemic and ambivalent character of this organization scared away many Jewish communists as early asthe early 19205. Of 45,000 Jewish communists in 1927 only 2,000 belonged to the Party organizations where business was conducted in Yiddish (Reports of the Evsehtsija for 1922-3; Levitan 1926: 83; Smoljar 1978: 72-80). For all that, in the 19205, it was still permitted to have some more or less independent Jewish organizations, such as clubs, schools, and societies. The atmosphere was relatively free, partly because some leading Bolsheviks had egalitarian attitudes toward national culture, and partly because the regime had more urgent matters to worry about than the ideological acceptability of Jewish activities. Undoubtedly, the Soviets also did not want to alienate the Western Jewish diaspora which was sending large sums of money for various projects. Thousands of Jews, especially in Ukraine, were almost totally dependent upon remittances from

Yiddish proletarian language

27

the American JewishJoint Distribution Committee and other Jewish organizations. It is interesting to note, for example, that the Jewish Colonization Association promoted instruction in Yiddish in the vocational schools it supported, since the language barrier guaranteed the ‘appropriate' ethnic background of the pupils (Norman 1985: 137). Little by little, however, Jewish political and cultural life was monopolized by the Evsehtsija, for which Yiddish and any activity in this language played ‘the role of an auxiliary device for Socialist progress’ (Chemeriski 1927: 9). The Bolsheviks closed or confiscated not only Zionist and religious institutions, but also those run by Jewish socialists. Any ethnically organized public activities looked suspicious. For example, in 1922, a circular of the Ukrainian Komsomol’s Central Committee ordered a ban on all private sports clubs with exclusively Jewish membership (Estraikh 1992b, 1994d: 41). Synagogues and religious schools were being closed, and secular Hebrew literature and theatre were boycotted. This repression was triggered largely by former Bundists and other exsocialists now in the Evsehtsija who embraced their prerevolutionary ideological battles with zeal and urged Soviet officials to make war on Hebrew. While the language of the Bible was never declared illegal, the anti-Zionist zealots in the Evsektsija generated various regulations declaring Yiddish the official Jewish mother tongue in order to disqualify Hebrew. For the Evsektsija, its functional expansion was a pressing problem. An offspring of the Bolshevik party machinery, created for communist agitation and propaganda among the Yiddish-speaking population, that ad-hoc institution branched out in numerous domains of Jewish life. An amalgam of people with various backgrounds (cf. Bunzl 1975: 140), the Evsektsija floundered in a search for a raison d ’étre of its activities and was stratified into different fractions. At the extreme poles we find assimilationists, or—in terms of their critics—‘national nihilists’, and ‘national bolsheviks’; the latter strove to create a territorial, socio—economical, and cultural basis forJewish life in the Soviet Union. In fact, these two poles mirrored the general confusion among the Bolsheviks dealing with the nationalities problems. On the one hand, the leadership of the Soviet republics, in particular the Ukrainian Republic, pursued an indigenization policy, implementing the language of the titular population in all domains of life. At

28

Yiddish proletarian language

the same time, the internationally-minded communists preached that the national languages must be only used in the framework of international (not—perish the thoughtl—national) culture (Vaganjan 1927). The Evsehtsija in practice did not have theoreticians. Its Central Bureau was overloaded with tedious routine and could hardly play the role of a think-tank, especially as the Central Bureau members were, on the whole, middle-calibre ‘practical workers' and assiduous followers of the Party general line rather than original thinkers. For all that, one of them, Maria (Malka) Frumkin, alias Esther, possessed the intellectual daring to formulate a theoretical approach, trying to reconcile various scraps of Lenin and Stalin’s postulates with aspirations of many evseks to see a long-lived purpose in their jidishe arbet (Jewish/Yiddish work). Esther was a legendary leader of the Bund who had turned into a Lenin-worshipping communist apparatchik. By dint of her senior rank of the rector of the University of the National Minorities of the West and her generally good reputation among the Soviet oligarchs, she was regarded as an authority in the Leninist nationalities theory and especially in its application to the Jews (Smoljar 1978: 277; for a biography of Esther, see Shepherd 1993: 137-71). In her speech to the 1926 All-Union Conference of the Evsektsija, Esther presented a dual programme of the jidishe arbet: the proletarians and other productive cohorts of the Jewish population must be dispatched to socialism and all-but-certain assimilation, whereas some part of the non-productive elements who could not eke out a living in the economically ruined shtetls should be settled in rural areas, where they would eventually consolidate into a full-blooded socialistJewish nation. In step with this hybrid programme the national nihilists secured for themselves the vast majority of the worthwhile Jews. Still, some non-productive elements were snipped off for the national Bolsheviks. In general, the programme, which became part of the resolutions approved by the 1926 conference, looks like a desperate attempt to use official phraseology (particularly Stalin’s 1925 speech to the students of the University of the Peoples of the East) to preserve at least some Yiddish-speaking enclaves in the Soviet Union. Esther, who apparently still lived on the dregs of her once potent Yiddishist convictions, even entertained an idea that such enclaves would secure Yiddish mainte-

Yiddish proletarian language

29

nance in the diaspora of the proletarian industrial centres. However, the Central Bureau had excluded this part of her dream from the draft of the resolutions (All-Union Conference of the Evsektsija 1927: 119—44; 211-13). Ironically, the Evsektsija, as a servile structure, lowered the status of Yiddish. The cultural policy of this outfit combined with the social and demographic factors to ruin the intimacy of Yiddish, since national solidarity and shared values were illegal and punishable. As a result, for example, the Moscow Yiddish Workers’ Club attracted only a few hundred members (Goncharskaja 1929: 68). Although Yiddish remained the focal point and raison d’e‘tre for all the institutions administered by the Evsektsija, their leaders were afraid to emphasize its importance. Thus, the Evsektszja’s Central Bureau reported in 1922, after the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Jewish culture activists: Some of the activists did not have a clear enough notion about the meaning of Jewish communist activity. They attached a particular value to the language question. The members of the Central Bureau have managed to rectify this line based on principle and to rally the delegates round the resolution which attracted attention exclusively to the intrinsic value of the activity, that is, its communist content. (Reports of the Evsektsija, 1922-3: 30)

In fact, the Jewish communists pursued a sort of neo—Haskalah cultural policy, since, like maskilim, their objective was to reform and bypass traditional Jewish life (cf. Niger 1958: 172-88). This attitude left its imprint on the Soviet Yiddish educational system. Apart from the language of instruction, the curriculum of Soviet Yiddish schools differed little from that in Russian, Ukrainian, and other schools. Parents quite often regarded Yiddish schools as a link in the ‘poverty chain’: educational disadvantage could be equated with employment disadvantage. It is no coincidence that pupils in these schools were mainly from poor families. Some even protested against forcingJewish children into proletarian Yiddish educational institutions. A Soviet functionary of high rank pointed out in 1926: ‘there are no conditions for the development of this [Yiddish] language; a child who studies in a Yiddish school cannot later enter anything, neither a rabfak [workers’ faculty in an institution of higher education], nor a higher educational institution’ (Materials on Anti-Semitism, 1926: 40).

30

Yiddish proletarian language

To a certain extent, the existence of Yiddish education exposed the aspirations of the authorities rather than of the laymen. Jewish urbanites, embedded in the country’s class structure as an irnport— ant constituent of white-collar workers, clamoured for Russian education. As early as 1918, a Ukrainian poll revealed that only about 20 per cent of Jewish parents wished to be served by Yiddish schools (Ukrainian School Poll, 1918). The natural milieu of many Jews became the milieu of Russian-speaking colleagues, neighbours, and customers. Even for many employees of Jewish institutions Yiddish was often confined to their professional activity, while every day, in their family life, they used Russian and sent their children to Russian schools. It would be wrong, though, to underestimate the positive accomplishments of the Evsektsija. Yiddish flourished as a language of literature, the press, and the arts, as well as a language of political and social activity. More than 50 per cent of all Jewish children studied in various Yiddish educational institutions. Hundreds of books and periodicals appeared, many Yiddish professional and amateur theatres functioned in the country, and Yiddish films were produced. Unfortunately, Soviet isolationism turned the greater part of these activities into Sisyphean toil: the new, Soviet Yiddish culture alienated the majority of the older generation and failed to attract many youngerJews who usually preferred the Russian medium.

2.2 Yiddish language retention The consequences of acculturation were not long in affecting Yiddish retention. Let us take a good look at the language-related statistics concerning the Ukrainian Jews—the biggest Jewish community in the Soviet Union. The statistical data are gleaned from: Kiev Census (1920); All-Union Conference of the Evsektsija (1927); Party Poll (1928); Tsukernik (1928); Vejtsblit (1930a); Vejtsblit (1930b);Ja. Kantor (1935); Leshtshinski (1941); Liber (1992); see also Estraikh (1993b). In 1926 the 1,574,000 Jews of the Ukrainian Republic constituted above 60 per cent of the entire Soviet Jewish population. The twentieth century, rife with wars, revolutions, pogroms, famine, and migration, brought tangible changes in the sociodemographic complexion of the community. Between 1897 and

Yiddish proletarian language

31

1926 itsJewish population (in the Republic’s interwar boundaries) decreased by 4.7 per cent. Crucial shifts occurred in territorial and occupational distribution. The stream of Jewish internal migration became directed chiefly from shtetls towards big urban centres, especially outside the former Pale of Jewish Settlement. In 1926, about 62 per cent of Ukraine’s Jews lived in cities and towns, 29 per cent in shtetls, and 9 per cent in villages. About 28 per cent of them were concentrated in Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, and Dnepropetrovsk. Relative to 1897, in Kharkov the number of Jewish dwellers had increased sevenfold, in Kiev it had quadrupled, in Donbass it had trebled. Table 2.1. Retention of Yiddish in different age brackets, 1926 (% of the whole Ukrainian Jewish population)

Age

0—4 5-9 10—14 15-19 20—4 25-9 30—4 35—9 40—4 45-9 50—4

In urban centres with population over 50,000

under 50,000

49.23 43.49 47.78 49.87 49.85 53.88 59.02 64.32 63.81 74.07 77.56

81.49 80.13 81.26 80.79 80.90 82.58 85.25 87.50 89.75 91.34 92.96

In villages

93.71 94.28 94.30 94.13 93.22 92.99 93.95 95.29 90.55 96.52 97.03

Total

71.89

69.89

72.65 71.63 69.55 70.99 73.51 81.94 81.94 85.32 87.76

According to the returns of the 1926 census of population, three-quarters of Ukrainian Jews claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue. The Jewish population of the industrial (urban) centres showed the highest level of language assimilation (see Table 2.1).

Thus, the Donbass Jews who claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue amounted to 50 per cent in the Artemovsk and Lugansk districts and only 38 per cent in the Stalino district. The figure for the Kharkov district was 41 per cent and for the Kiev district 63 per cent. The position of Yiddish was not very strong in other industrial regions either. For example, 49 per cent claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue in the Dnepropetrovsk district and 58 per cent in the Odessa district. It is also characteristic that in 1927

Yiddish proletarian language

32

less than one-third of Jewish communists from the industrial districts of Ukraine claimedYiddish as their mother tongue, whereas in the agricultural districts over 50 per cent claimed Yiddish as their first language. Table 2.2. Yiddish retention among Ukrainian trade-union members, 1926 (%) Trade unions

Jewish

unionists (IU)

Industry: Sewing industry Tanners Printers Woodworkers Food industry

Paper-makers Textile workers Chemical industry Builders

Sugar industry Metal workers Miners Transport and post Agriculture Intellectual professions Municipal economy and public service Total

12.0 73.4 48.6 39.4 29.7 28.6 17.5 16.9 14.1 9.8 9.3 6.9 0.5 3.9 2.9 21.4

11.6 12.8

Yiddish

speakers among the JU

LiterateJU who could read/ write in Yiddish

67.5 77.4 73.9 59.6 71.7 74.1 79.4 49.7 67.4 78.6

6.7/6.5 45.0/ 42.8 26.3/ 25.0 19.7/ 17.5 18.6/ 17.8

64.7 58.5

6.4/ 5.8 7.1/6.8

64.5 44.9 40.0 66.7 65.5 48.1

15.9/ 15.0 14.3/ 13.8

7.2/7.0

8.6/8.2 7.0/6.7 5.7/5.3 2.2/2.5 [P] 0.4/0.3 2.1/1.9 2.2/2.2 11.5/ 10.9

At the same time Yiddish retained its strongholds among the sedentary population of the Karnenets (97 per cent), Shepetovka (96%), Proskurov (96%), Tulchin (96%), Berdichev (95%), Vinnitsa (95%), Uman (95%), and Belaja Tserkov (92%) districts, and a few other districts which had been the heartland of UkrainianJewry for generations. However, following the devastation of the First World War and the Civil War, these linguistically retentive Jews began a mass flight from the backwaters to the urban

melting-pots. Rapid language assimilation in big urban centres was not a new phenomenon. However, the post-revolutionary Jewish urbanite

Yiddish proletarian language

33

was more likely to assimilate. The proportion of Jews among the

general urban population of Ukraine fell by half during the intercensus period 1897-1926 due to an even more rapid influx of non-Jewish migrants. Table 2.3. Yiddish as a medium for Ukrainian trade-union activities, 1926 and 1928 Trade unions

Yiddish as the language of

meetings

(% of all committees)

Industry: Sewing industry Tanners Printers Woodworkers Food industry Paper-makers Textile workers Chemical industry Builders Sugar industry Metal workers Miners

Transportandpost Agriculture Intellectual professions Municipal economy and public service Total

Yiddish as the language of clerical work (% of all committees)

1926

1928

1926

1928

2.6 32.1 6.5 1.8

1.9 33.8 8.6 0.9

2.0 27.5 4.9 0.6

27.0 5.7

— 0.1 — — — 03

— 0.2

—

1.5

— —

— — — — — — — —

0.9

02

— — 0.2

01

— — 23

02

— — 0.3 — — — 01 — 05

02

02

0.2

0.4

07

07

0.6

06

—

— — 01

—

— — —

—

—

04

In 1926 in the cities of Ukraine with an overall population of over 50,000 less than 50 per cent ofJews under the age of 24 listed Yiddish as their mother tongue (see Table 2.1). In other words, the majority of Jewish urbanites had not passed Yiddish on to the next generation as the first and most important language of communication. In addition, many people whose original language was Yiddish became increasingly non-Yiddish speakers as they passed through the educational institutions, migrated, and pursued employment. Having established careers, many Jews deliberately

Yiddish proletarian language

34

disengaged themselves from their national roots. They did not consider that their native culture and language suited the newly acquired lifestyle of the Soviet industrial worker, academic, professional, bureaucrat, and officer. Table 2.4. Yiddish in Ukrainian trade-union clubs, 1927 and 1928 (%) Trade unions

Industry: Sewing industry Tanners Printers Woodworkers Food industry

Paper-makers

Lectures

Amateur performances

Workshops

1926

1928

1926

1928

1926

1928

1.6 60.0

2.3 16.1 8.0 14.6

3.7 50.0 12.0 17.1 12.5 10.8

3.3 41.2 10.9 12.1 9.5 16.8 8.3 21.2 11.1 7.3 1.4 1.7

4.4

2.0

— — 11.1 15.4 n.a.

—

Textile workers 1.1 Chemical industry n.a. Builders 0.2 Sugar industry 0.8 Metal workers Miners 1.7 Transport and post Agriculture Intellectual professions 0.6 Municipal economy and public service

—

—

Total

—

1.7

2.7

9.9 4.6 6.4

4.7 6.4 1.3 0.5

— — 5.1

n.a.

—

18.4 n.a.

0.2 0.6

—

20.0 5.6 11.8

—

8.3

n.a.

—

9.9 n.a.

8.7

—

—

12.5 9.1 6.1 10.4 1.3 20.0 8.8

—

1.2 2,1

— — 4.2

0.9

0.8

—

0.4 0.3

4.9

12.5

4.6

3.3

—

9.3

—

2.9

3.3

3.9

0.5

3.9

3.0

0.9

—-

—

0.2

Note. n.a.: no information available.

The language-related findings of two Ukrainian polls, in 1926 and 1929, which included members of trade unions, gave the most impressive results. During the three inter-poll years, the percentage ofJewish trade-unionists who listedYiddish as their native language fell from 58.5 to 42.5. The Ukrainian trade-union statistics furnish some more telling indices and breakdowns (Tables 2.2 to 2.5; cf. Tsukernik 1928). In early Soviet society a trade-union card was a ticket to the new life. Soviet trade unions—a peculiar breed of unionism which Lenin billed as ‘schools of communism’—were, in fact, part of the communist state machinery rather than inde-

Yiddish proletarian language

35

pendent organizations of wage workers and, as a result, membership of them was a form of social mobility. Table 2.5. Yiddish in Ukrainian trade-union local organizations, 1927 and 1928 (%) Trade unions

Lectures

Amateur

performances

Industry: Sewing industry Tanners Printers Woodworkers Food industry

Paper-makers

Textile workers Chemical industry Builders

Sugar industry Metal workers

Miners

1926

1928

1926

1928

1926

1928

2.4 34.8 10.3 1.1 5.9 2.5

1.5 24.8 11.1 1.5 0.8 2.0

2.8 55.6 21.0

3.8 50.0 10.0 4.0

3.2 30.4 13.6 2.1 5.1 2.0

3.2 30.6 5.8 3.8

6.2 0.5 0.5

10.0

n.a.

1.4 3.6 n.a.

— — 0.9

0.4

Transport and post n.a. Agriculture Intellectual professions 0.3 Municipal economy 0.4 and public service Total

Workshops

1.6

—

— — 0.3

0.4

— — 3.6

n.a.

— n.a. 3.3 1.6

—

2.1 16.7 5.7 7.1 0.3

n.a.

—

1.6 n.a.

—

2.2 6.2 4.8 2.1 0.3

3.8 2.7

n.a.

5.6

n.a.

0.4

0.1

0.1

n.a.

— — n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

1.3

1.4

1.2

0.3

1.5

0.1

—

0.5

—

0.3

1.2

1.7

—-

2.1

—

2.3

1.7

—

1.7

Note. n.a.: no information available.

Contemporary Yiddish writings mirrored the juxtaposition of members of trade unions vis-d-vis other citizens. Thus, MejerJelin, the protagonist ofJudl Jofe’s story On the Direct Road, prizes highly his trade-union card and wage worker’s status. 80 highly, that he breaks with his beautiful and, till recently, beloved Jewish wife Berta and her petty-bourgeois family who have forced Mejer to go to a private business. Eventually, he finds happiness with Natasha, a young nonjewish communist (Jofe 1941). The Odessa correspondent of the American Yiddish communist daily depicted a young couple, Frejda and Matus Zarnaze. Former private ladies’ tailors, they have become instructors at a vocational school and (as state workers) members of a trade union. When the journalist met

36

Yiddish proletarian language

the couple, their hearts were overflowing with joy. Now they can spend leisure hours in the Yiddish club of their trade union. And when Matus runs into the finance inspector, an incubus of his preunionist life, he is not scared any more (Jakhnovich 1928). Mejer Jelin represented an extreme case. The vast majority did not break with their Jewish surroundings and language. On the other hand, as the statistics suggests, the Zamazes, who still took part inYiddish trade-union activities, were not archetypal either. It was no coincidence that members of trade unions were polled to discover their language preferences. Directives of the All-Union and Ukrainian trade-union congresses made it incumbent on the republican, regional, and local organizations to conduct their cultural activities in the languages spoken by their members (Dubnitski 1926: 97; Makagon 1926: 99). Hence such statistics were intended to provide information for practical decisions. Even the way in which the question concerning the respondents’ language was put indicated the purely practical aim of the survey. The pollsters were not interested in the mother tongue, an index imbued with claimants’ national consciousness. Rather, they wanted to find the quantitative, geographic, and professional distribution of workers who really used this or that language in their daily life, and, in particular, spoke it with members of their families (Dubnitski 1926: 98). The returns of the trade-union polls (Table 2.2) showed a correlation between Yiddish retention and the occupation of those polled. Thus, Yiddish retention was stronger among workers of the ‘old’ Jewish professions (sewing and tanning industries) and significantly weaker among the ‘younger’ Jewish professions (e.g. metalworkers and miners). Language assimilation was also associated with diflerent kinds of ‘intellectual professions’ which attracted a substantial number ofJews. The statistics suggest that Yiddish was much more widely used for cultural activities than for meetings and clerical work. Indeed, the KharkovYiddish daily Der shtern wrote on 28 September 1926 that Yiddish was used for clerical work in only fifty-seven out of the 1,696 local trade-union organizations with predominantly Jewish membership. These fifty-seven organizations involved 2,400Jewish unionists, or a mere 2 per cent of them (Leshchinski 1941: 268). In December 1926 Alexander Chemeriski, who headed the Gentral Bureau of the Evsektsija, used the results of the 1926 poll to

Yiddish proletarian language

37

report to the All-Union conference of the Sections that Yiddish activities among the workers were continually gaining in scope, with a good showing in Ukrainian trade unions. According to Chemeriski, Yiddish was the main language used by some district, town, and factory trade-union organizations in Kiev, Odessa, Uman, Zhitomir. Kremenchug, Konotop, Mogilev-Podolsk, Berdichev, Vinnitsa, Proskurov, Chernobyl, and some other places (AllUnion Conference of the Evsektsija 1927: 43—4). There was even some trade-union journalism in Yiddish: in 1928-9 the monthly Di garber un bershter shtime (Tanners and Brushmahers’ Voice) was published in Moscow, and the Minsk (later Kharkov) monthly Di rojte nodl (Red Needle) survived until 1930 (Shmeruk 1961: 345—6, 394). In addition to these trade-union journals, a number of Yiddish periodicals were joint organs of the soviet (or administration), Party committee, and trade-union committee. Some of the trade-union libraries had collections of Yiddish books; in 1925-7 they made up 0.9 per cent of the books available in libraries of the Ukrainian trade unions (22,000 Yiddish books in 1925 and 36,000 in 1927). It looks, certainly, minuscule compared with the percentage of the Jewish readers (15.3) (Tsukernik 1928: 160-1). At the same time, we know that the number of active Soviet Yiddish readers was not very substantial either and mirrored the general Jewish cultural vapidity (Liberman 1929; Gildin 1930; Litvakov 1931: 26—7). An insider of the Evsektsrja and its Central Bureau, Hersh] Smoljar, wrote in his memoirs that the Jewish unionists were an important constituent of the real mass basis for the jidishe arbet. Some factories (for example, in Nikolaev, Krivoj Rog, and Odessa) had a special instructor-ewe]: (a representative of the Evselrtsija), responsible for the jidishe arbet. Moreover, in some places the trade-union activity was, actually, completely in the hands of the Evsektsija functionaries, although it significantly exceeded the limits of their functions (Smoljar 1978: 219-20, 230). In Belorussia, the status of Yiddish was even higher than in Ukraine. A decree of 15 July 1924 confirmed that Belorussian, Russian, Yiddish, and Polish were of equal value (Vakar 1956: 142). In 1926, 90.7 per cent of Belorussian Jews declared Yiddish as their mother tongue (Zinger 1932: 28). In the Belorussian Republic 407,000 Jews represented the second largest national group and the largest group among the town-dwellers (Materials

38

Yiddish proletarian language

on Belorussia 1928: 20—1). Jewish workers predominated in the sewing industry (93.3 per cent of the trade-unionists), among the tanners (74.9%) and printers (66%). In the 19205 the Belorussian trade union of the sewing industry as well as many local organizations of other trade unions conducted their activities only in Yiddish (All-Union Conference of the Evsektsija, 1927: 35, 44-5).

Overall, in 1926, 72.6 per cent of 2,601,000 of Soviet Jews claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue (Zinger 1932: 28). In other words, more than a quarter of them had already changed their language affiliation. Another source (admittedly controversial) claims that by 1926 another 300,000 SovietJews had rejected their Jewish affiliation and espoused a non-Jewish (chiefly Russian) identity (In. Larin 1928: 33-4).

2.3 Yiddish proletarian literature as a soda-linguistic source In 1927 Ajzik Zaretski, the leading Yiddish linguist in the Soviet Union, published a pioneering study on the linguistic peculiarities of Soviet Yiddish political periodicals, where loan translations or direct borrowings from Russian predominated among the immediately post-revolutionary lexical innovations (Zaretski 1927a). In the article, defined as ‘a blue-print for subsequent studies’, nothing betokened the linguist’s perplexity, evident in some of his 1930 publications. In these he argued that aYiddish-Russian lingo appeared to be supplanting the old Yiddish-German language during the transitional period of the assimilation of SovietJews (see in particular Zaretski 1930a). The most plausible explanation for this pessimistic interpretation may be Zaretski’s comprehension of crucial changes in the Soviet Yiddish vernacular and its environment. Given the lack of comprehensive studies on the spoken Yiddish of that time and setting (cf. Gitlits 1938: 118—19; Peltz 1990), let us turn our attention to literary works. Belles-lettres are very important for an understanding of the language peculiarities of a particular epoch and milieu (Turbin 1959: 121; Shevelov 1989: 1). Characters engaging in discourse provide invaluable information, especially if the writer undertakes the task of reproducing a setting and depicts the characters by means of their own voices (Likhachev 1960: 56). Thus, the task is to select works with the voices of Soviet Yiddish speakers. Studies which have been written about Soviet Yiddish literature

Yiddish proletarian language

39

do not provide direct answers to our question. While Soviet literary criticism consists largely of extremely ideologized philippics or eulogies, Western students have mostly chronicled literary politics in terms of rival factions and interference from the authorities. Those Western scholars who have studied the literary works have concentrated on searching for the depiction of Jewishness, traditionalism, and nonconforrnism, and have almost disregarded the portrayal of mainstream Soviet Jewish life. However, much more material concerning the S0viet lexicon of the 19205 can be found in works by the so-called proletarian writers. Khaim Gildin and Mojshe Tajtsh were, it seems, the first Soviet Yiddish poets who joined this literary movement. Moreover, in 1922 they gathered in Moscow a small group of like-minded writers. In 1923 they even tried to launch a literary periodical, but without success (Abchuk 1934b. 91-3). This failure can perhaps be attributed to the weakness of Gildin and Tajtsh’s writings. In any case, they attracted only a few inexperienced writers. Gildin and Tajtsh’s poor literary style made them a target of the critics who refused to lower aesthetic standards in order to accommodate any politically correct writing. Even the leading Soviet Yiddish critic Mojshe Litvakov, editor-in-chief of the Moscow Yiddish daily Der emes, severely criticized their books published in 1922. The titles of his reviews speak for themselves: ‘Industrial Rhetoric’ about Gildin’s book, and ‘Without Language' about Tajtsh’s three books (Litvakov 1926: 105—12). Nevertheless, the rhetoric of Newspeak swept over the poetry pages of Soviet Yiddish periodicals. A prime example is the poem ‘An Order of Lenin—for Stalin’ by the mediocre proletarian poet Mojshe Tshemjavski (published in Der emes, 11July 1930):

Stalingrad rojtfoniker, ‘kuznetskboj’, ‘magnitogorsk’, ‘landmashinboj', un nohh rojtfonihe

fodem—

Stalinen,— a leninishn orden.’ (Stalingrad, decorated with the Order of the Red Banner, | ‘Kuznetsk Construction', l ‘Magnitogorsk [Construction]’, I ‘Agricultural Machine

40

Yiddish prabtarian language

Construction’, I and other [constructions] decorated with the Order of the Red Banner I demand— I for Stalin,— I an Order of Lenin!)

Such proletarian ‘poetic’ language is a rhythmic version of the language used in the Soviet Yiddish newspapers. In fact, the following sentence from an article in Der emes (30 April 1930) is no less ‘poetic’: A vort aza, a geprest, a shtoln, shporevdih, firzilbik un shtolts—klingendik—Azov-shtol-boj (Such a word: a compressed, an iron, efficient, four-syllabic and proudly sounding—Azov Steel Construction). To be sure, parallel with primitive rhymesters, proletarian literature attracted a number of more gifted Yiddish poets, such as Itzik Fefer and Izi Kharik. Thanks to the style of ‘ordinary speech’ (Lojtsker 1968), we can find in their poems a ‘lexical echo’ of that time. For all that, prose works can give the most valuable material. This study concentrates mostly on Avrom (Abraham) Abchuk’s novel Hershl Shamaj (Abchuk 1929; 1931a; 1934a; see also Estraikh 1994a), though both the author and the novel are not very popular in contemporary Yiddish scholarship. Esther Rosenthal-Shneiderman’s memoirs (1982: 183-255) throw considerable light upon Abchuk’s life and the history of his most important literary work, Hershl Shamaj. Abchuk was born in 1897 in Lutsk or, according to another source, not far from this town, in the shtetl Torchin. In the inter-war period, Lutsk was Polish territory (from 1939 the centre of the Volhyrrian oblast in Ukraine). As a member of a local communist group, Abchuk fled in 1921 from the secret police and stole across the Polish—Soviet border. In the Soviet Union he became known as one of the most militant Yiddish literary critics. Yiddish writers called Abchuk ‘the Kiev Mojshele’, drawing a parallel between him and Mojshe Litvakov, who was the pundit of the Soviet Yiddish literary world. In 1927 Abchuk was among the founders of the Association of Revolutionary Yiddish Writers in Ukraine. In a declaration of this Association we read: ‘The Association seeks to create an atrnosphere of team-work which will not put pressure on writers and will not force them to depict only positive sides of our reality. . . . The to of life Association considers the realistic depiction be the only correct route for literature’ (Abchuk 1934b: 213-16). In 1929 Abchuk formulated his own vision of proletarian literature: ‘Our literature must at last show a living worker, a factory, a positive man’ (quoted from Bejder 1989: 106). His contemporary, the

Yiddish proletarian language

41

leading Ukrainian proletarian writer Mykola Khvylovy, proclaimed: ‘Our slogan is: expose the duality of the person of today, reveal your true “ego”. . . . A writer’s organizational and community work lies primarily in his writings; secondly, in his trade-union activity; thirdly, in his living relationship with the masses’ (Khvylovy 1986: 70, 134, emphasis in original). Abchuk’s work complied with these demands. In addition to his literary and scholarly activity, he was a political instructor at the big Kiev tannery, Fasadka, which employed largelyJewish migrants from shtetls. In the mid-19205 the tanning industry ranked high on the Jewish communist agenda since tanners made up about 10 per cent of allJewish workers in Ukraine and about 15 per cent in Belorussia. Also, there was a high concentration of Jewish workers in this industry: approximately 40 per cent of Ukrainian tanners and 70 per cent of Belorussian tanners were Jewish. Yiddish retained its stronghold among them (see Table 2.2).

Workers in Fasadka were the prototypes for characters in Abchuk’s novel. Hershl Shamaj is a narrative which is more like a documentary than a novel. It is not by chance that it bears a strong resemblance to, say, Boris Anibal’s Russian documentary ‘At the Clothes Factory’ (Anibal 1928), as well as to scores of other writings ‘from life’ of that time. From Rosenthal-Shneiderrnan we know that the workers from Fasadka recognized many of the novel’s characters and that, due to its realism and humour, Hershl Shamaj was very popular among the workers who read Yiddish. The humour component in Abchuk’s prose was praised by the master Yiddish critic Shmuel Niger, who wrote an article in 1930 about Hershl Shamaj, entitled ‘A. Abchuk—Revolution and Humour’ (see Niger 1958: 58—62). In general, Hershl Shamaj is a relic of the proletarian prose of the 19205 with its positive hero who ‘passes in stages from a state of relative “spontaneity” to a higher degree of “consciousness”, which he attains by some individual revolution’ (Clark 1981: 16). At the same time, in terms of literary devices, Hershl Shamaj diflers from the standard Soviet proletarian novels with their strong protagonists sent by the Party into a situation of ideological and economic disorder (cf. Shkandrij 1982: 47—60). Rather, Abchuk’s novel rests on the tradition of turn-of-the-century Yiddish literature with its ironic, argumentative monologists and anthropological relish for linguistic detail (see Reizen 1934). It could be suggested that the

42

Yiddish proletarian language

socio—linguistic potential of Hershl Shamaj, a work rather short on artistic merit, is perhaps much more significant than its literary quality. The events of the novel begin properly in 1927, a decade after the revolution. Hershl Shamaj is an elderly tanner who migrated to the city in 1920, after a pogrom in his native shtetl, Korostyshev. The author does not mention the name of the city, stressing the generalized character of his narration: he relates facts of an unexceptional life in an unexceptional urban setting. Hershl Shamaj’s new bosses, colleagues, and neighbours are mostly Jewish, though it is clear that the Jewish tradition and Yiddish are declining in these surroundings. When Balan, the director of the tannery, tells the workers that they have enough time for a minkhele (a diminutive of minkhe,Jewish afternoon prayer), all of them understand this remark to be a joke. Moreover, the workers are amazed to hear that their ‘red director’ can speak and read Yiddish. A logical explanation of such a man’s proficiency in Yiddish is immediately found: Balan has a Bundist history to live down. Another character, Hershfeld, a Bolshevik since 1908, has already lost his skill in reading Yiddish, though he still understands it. Even the evselr, whose spoken Yiddish is too sophisticated for Shamaj, sends his children to a Russian school, in spite of the govemment-sponsored Yiddishization drive of that time. Shamaj complains that many of the workers (first and foremost the communists) are ashamed to read Yiddish newspapers. He does read a Yiddish daily, especially as his Russian is not very fluent. However, his day-to-day life has nothing in common with the Jewish tradition. Even his thoughts about how ‘it is so lovely outside and there is a holiday in my heart, as if it were the First of May’ are political and uninfluenced by his national background. The image of the May Day proletarian holiday rather than, for example, Passover, crosses his mind. The urban surroundings themselves have not crucially changed Shamaj’s life. Indeed, we find only a few distinctive marks of his city bit (daily life, from Russian byt). The most intrusive factor is his Party affiliation. Not surprisingly, the majority of neologisms are bound up one way or another with the Communist Party. Shamaj must follow directions of the tseka, Central Committee, and the tsekistn, members of the Central Committee. They draw up the lines of general policy and of each Soviet citizen’s conduct.

IMAGE TEM PO RARILY U NAVAILAB LE

44

Yiddish proletarian language

common, however, to reveal among non-Party people a fremder element (alien element), such as a nepman (NEP-man), kustar on proves (disfranchized handicraftsman), klejnbirger (petty bour-

geois), or starorezhimnik (supporter of the old tsarist regime). Even spets (specialist) and inteligent (intellectual person) are potentially suspicious and often used pejoratively. Possessors of the partbilet (Party-membership card) constitute the cream of Shamaj’s society. Only a member of the Party —partejets, partejer; homunist, bolshevih—or, at least, a kandidat fun partej/partje (candidate-member of the Party) deserves to be a farantvortlehher mentsh (executive), a ratn-ongeshtelter (Soviet office worker), or a vidvizhenets (rank-and-file worker promoted to an administrative post). To be or not to be a member of the Party is the leitrnotif of the book. Shamaj must be reconstructed, otherwise he cannot be accepted even by his daughter, who has helped to bring about her father’s temporary expulsion from the Party.

‘Purification’ is, mutatis mutandis, a common theme in many proletarian writings of that time. Thus, Sergej Ivagin, a character of the model proletarian Russian novel, Fedor Gladkov’s Cement (1925), who has been ‘excluded as a typical intellectual and Menshevik, with demoralizing influence on the Party’, can return to the Party ranks only when he begins to understand ‘his political death’, that ‘he . . . as a personality did not exist. There was only the Party and he was an insignificant item in this great organism’ (Gladkov 1929: 295-6). In general, both the lexicon and the imagery of Hershl Shamaj and Cement are analogous. For example, one can compare the depictions of the Factory Committee, zavhom in Cement and fabkom in Hershl Shamaj: The door of the office of the Factory Committee was open; and there also was the same rancid smell and smoke, and the sweaty smell of the crowd (Gladkov 1929: 18) there.

During the dinner break the Factory Committee is crowded with workers. (Abchuk 1931a: 19) A dense smoke fills the office.

likewise, there are similarities in the representation of a Soviet

superior’s corruption:

[His office] was so comfortably carpeted and furnished. (Gladkov 1929: 239)

Yiddish proletarian language

45

Why did you spend, just a month ago, three thousand roubles buying furniture for your office and for the trust, whereas we have at our factory a lavatory which could tumble down at any moment? (Abchuk 1931a: 128)

Another cliché of the 19205, used in both the novels, is the pincenez worn only by an enemy or by a dogrnatist (cf. Borovoj 1974: 452—5). In fact, the list of parallel clichés, borrowed from Party periodicals, is too long to document here. It is significant that Abchuk and Gladkov were aesthetically dissimilar writers and their different characters acted in different spheres of Soviet existence. But both the writers and their characters used basically the same Soviet-speak, or its two linguistic forms—Yiddish Soviet-speak and Russian Soviet-speak.

2.4 Yiddish Soviet-speak As early as the mid-19205 it was clear that Yiddish in the Soviet Union had taken a peculiar lexical shape, adjusted to the idiosyncrasies of the new society. The process of lexical adjustment had ‘spontaneous’ and ‘regulative’ forms. The crux of the matter was the attitude of Soviet Yiddish to lexical innovation. Spontaneous lexical innovation consisted mostly in direct borrowing of lexical items from Russian. These were, first, postrevolutionary innovations and, secondly, political and special terminology, which Yiddish lacked. Concurrently some Yiddish intellectuals, in particularjournalists of the Moscow daily Der emes, started to invent Yiddish equivalents of Russian terms. Mojshe Litvakov (1926: 1) described this language laboratory: ‘The editorial staff of our periodicals spare no effort in trying to discover native words and in constructing new words after their pattern.’ In November 1923 the Jewish Bureau attached to the Gomel Province Committee made a declaration on what it termed the incomprehensibility of the central Moscow Yiddish daily Der emes. The declaration claimed that the language of Der emes was impeding its circulation. The Gomel Jewish communists attacked the attempts to modernize and Sovietize Yiddish by the Moscow journalists and especially by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Mojshe Litvakov. In Minsk, in the wake of the Gomel protest, the Yiddish daily Der veher took up the issue.

46

Yiddish proletarian language

In December 1923 Der veker triggered a heated debate about the ‘unintelligible language’ of their Moscow colleagues. Yiddish activists from Belorussia argued that Litvakov and his ilk had cluttered up the language with such innovations as, for example, daIeskomitet, cf. Ru. hombed (committee of the village poor), ratnmajonteh, cf. Ru. sovkhoz (State farm), meragiim, cf. Ru. hhodohi (envoys, delegates), and scores of other neologisms derived quite often from Hebrew. Aaron Volobrinski, a Yiddish activist and essayist, launched an open discussion, arguing that the vocabulary of Yiddish-speaking workers rather than the artificial lexicon introduced by Der emes should be regarded as the model, especially for newspapers. He wrote: ‘Art of word? Art of sound? Each is a nice thing, but they are no more than a side issue, a dessert. . . . Magazines and books exist for literary desserts. The mass newspaper has no great use for them.’ One of his supporters echoed: ‘We must write as we speak. It is a thousand times better and more worthwhile to use such [Russian] words as sovnarhhoz [Council of National Economy] and sovnarkom [Council of People’s Commissars] which shock our “mourners over Yiddish” . . . than to glitter with words and confuse the meaning’ (quoted from Zaretski 19310: 9). Revealing information about the extra-linguistic roots of the issue is provided by Litvakov in his article ‘The Language of our Newspapers’ published in January 1924 (see Litvakov 1926: 14958). Here Litvakov showed that the language planners were deeply uncertain over the nature of Soviet nationality policy. First and foremost, Litvakov stressed discrepancies between the Bolsheviks’ slogans ‘Proletarians of all countries (and peoples), unite!’ and ‘The right of nations to self-determination’. The latter slogan involved the egalitarian idea that all Soviet peoples must have boundless possibilities to individualize their national culture. Thus two extremes in language planning had evolved—an international model and a national model. The discrepancies between international (or, in practical terms, Russificational) trends and national (i.e. puristic) trends in language planning were discussed also by other Soviet authors (see, for example, Vaganjan 1927; Dimanshtejn 1929). It is likely, however, that Litvakov was the first Jewish communist to raise this question, especially in its application to Yiddish. Litvakov did not himself see the function of the Jewish communists as merely eas-

Yiddish proletarian language

47

ing the path to assimilation, as had been predicted in the prerevolutionary pronouncements by Lenin and Stalin (see Greenbaum 1988: 66) and was, in the 19205, accepted by many Soviet intellectuals. For example, Boris Larin, a Soviet linguist, wrote (1928: 180): All culturally and socially weightless languages are doomed to disappear, in spite of all efforts to preserve them, because they impede the economical and cultural development of the speakers and lead to the speakers’ isolation and backwardness. However, a vernacular will fall into disuse only after a transitional period of bilingualism (this is the case of Yiddish and other languages which are ‘dying away' in the Soviet Union).

Litvakov, by contrast, was one of those communists who believed in a golden age of all national languages in the Soviet Union. In accordance with his national approach to the development of Soviet Yiddish, not only the language of political periodicals was at stake but also the language in all its functions, since lexical innovations also had to meet the requirements of Yiddish belles-lettres and theatre. Litvakov regarded as unacceptable innovations such Russianisms as khozajstvenik (industrial or economic executive), jachey'ke (Party cell), shkumik (self-seeker), which appeared freely in Der veker. Generally speaking, Litvakov’s view was not that the level of the literary language must fall, but that the level of the readers should be made to rise to the necessary standard. Litvakov saw the fundamental change in Yiddish neologisms: the' pre-revolutionary Jew had mastered a new concept along with its Yiddish name, whereas the post-revolutionary Jew had separately assimilated a new Yiddish word and its associated concept. He failed, however, to mention the reason for this change, that is, the intensive intrusion of the Russian language into the daily life of Russian Jewry. For this reason new Yiddish coinages were obliged to compete with their powerful Russian counterparts. The 1926 All-Union Conference of the Jewish Communist Sections sided with the national language engineering of Der emes. At the same time, there was noted an ‘excessive number of linguistic irregularities’ in the Minsk Der veker, which earlier, in November 1925, had been given a new name, Ohtjabr (see All-Union Conference of the Evsehtsija, 1927: 258—9). The 1923-4 discussion gave rise to the term ‘Yiddish proletarian language'. Zaretski (1927a) saw the following ten factors contributing to

48

Yiddish proletarian language

Yiddish language change in the Soviet Union: (1) peculiarities of the Soviet social setting; (2) new fields for which Yiddish had not been used before the revolution; (3) a new generation of Yiddish writers; (4) new readers; (5) new subject-matters and forms of literary works; (6) assimilation and Yiddishization; (7) closer contacts between Yiddish speakers and Russian speakers; (8) alienation from Hebrew; (9) isolation from non-Soviet Yiddish; (10) the spelling reform. Zaretski proposed the following classification of Soviet Yiddish

neologisms: 1. Russian-international words. In this group we find words which, according to Zaretski, were part of an international lexicon, but in Yiddish they came from Russian rather than from other languages: antante (Entente [Cordiale]); leninizm (Leninism); fashist (Fascist); komisar (commissar); tsarizm (tsarism); sovet (Soviet). 2. International words, that is words from an international lexicon which came into Yiddish not from Russian, as for example ratsion (ration), and diskont (regard (for)) (cf. Ger. Ration and Diskont). 3. Russianisms. These words came from the Yiddish vernacular. According to Zaretski, they were ‘temporary’ in literary Yiddish; he gave a ‘literary equivalent’ for some of these temporary Russianisms (in parentheses): bit, cf. Ru. byt (shtejger): daily round; jatshejke, cf. Ru. jachejka (kemerl): cell; lgote/l(e)hote, cf. Ru. l’gota/Uk. l’hota (hanokhe): privilege, advantage, discount, allowance; otshered, cf. Ru. ochered’ (rq): queue; pajoh, cf. Ru. pajol: ration; povestke, cf. Ru. povestka: subpoena; propusk, cf. Ru. propusk: permit, pass; sojuz, cf. Ru. sojuz (farejn): trade-union; sojuznik, cf. Ru. sojuznik (farejnmitglid): trade-unionist; spravke, cf. Ru. spravka: reference, certificate; utshot, cf. Ru. uchet (diskont): regard (for); and many others. In written practice, these words were sometimes placed in inverted commas, in order to show that ‘this is not Yiddish, but we can’t find a translation and have no time to wait’. 4. Gerrnanisms. Zaretski gave only two examples: ongabn, cf. Ger. Angaben: data (concurrently with datn, cf. Ger. Daten, and gegebene, cf. Ger. Gegebene, the latter word was defined as unacceptable); and verblekhe (cf. Ger. gewerblich) kooperatsje (producers’ co-operation). 5. Hebraisms. Zaretski recorded the following examples: gidlbehejmes (cattle-breeding); megadl-behcjmes (cattle-breeder); hagzome

Yiddish proletarian language

49

(exaggeration); mavhhin zajn (to distinguish); majlrhldik (edible) (in contrast to the traditional meaning: delicious); mispalelim—hajzer (prayer-houses); mishmojre (shift, i.e. group of workers or the period for which they work); nisher-khojv, for Russian nedoimki (arrears); sug (sort, class); tsojrekh un jekhojles (demand and supply); tsimtsem (frugality). 6. Local words. For example nitl and rizlekh instead of vajnaltht (Christmas); tsajl instead of rq’ (queue). 7. Semantic changes. Certain words underwent semantic expansion. For example, ivre, ‘literacy’ rather than ‘Hebrew and Yiddish literacy’, hence polit-ivre (political literacy); ring and makhne to denote the Pioneer organization’s units—‘group’ (Ru. zveno) and ‘detachment’ (Ru. otrjad); untergejn (to fit), cf. Ru. podkhodit’; shtejger (daily round), like the Ru. byt (Zaretski ascribed the authorship

of this new connotation to Litvakov); and many others. 8. Affixation. For example, with the suffix -nih: dalesnik (poor man); zuntihnih and shabesnik (labour freely given to the State on Sunday, zuntik, and Saturday, shabes); khq'deshnilr (a month’s campaign); khahbnih (abacus). 9. Abbreviation. Zaretski categorized the abbreviations in four types: (a) elliptic words consisting of initial parts of two or more words, such as arbhor= arbeter korespondent (worker correspondent); fabkom = fabrih-komitet (factory committee); komjug = komunistisher jug-nt-farband (Komsomol); (b) elliptic words consisting of a shortened adjective and a full substantive, such as jidsektsje = jidishe sektsje (Jewish section); profarejn = profesionelerfanjn (trade union); hourpartq' = homunistishe partq' (Communist Party); (c) acronyms, such as ts. k. = tsentraler komitet (Central Committee), f s. s. r. = der farbandfun sovetishe sotsialistishe republihn (USSR); (d) other types of abbreviations. Zaretski found it difficult to classify such abbreviations as dneproboj, cf. Ru. Dneprostroj (the construction of the Dnepr hydro-electric power station), or nepman, cf. Ru. nepman (NEP-man), therefore be defined them ‘literal translations of the corresponding Russian abbreviations’. Zaretski wrote about a struggle between the Russian and native coinages. At the same time, it was a struggle between different schools of thought amidst the language regulators. In a sense, Abchuk took part in this discussion by trying to reproduce the real language of Yiddish-speaking city-dwellers. A5 a committed realist, Abchuk ‘transcribed from life’ the dialogues of his characters.

5O

Yiddish proletarian language

Quite

often the author’s regulative lexicon contrasts with the spontaneous lexicon of the characters: that is, Abchuk’s hemerl (cell) as against Shamaj’s jatshq'ke (see above); Abchuk’s vojnltoop as against Shamaj’s zhilko[o]p (housing co-operative). The following dialogue between Shamaj and his wife illustrates the modification of their speech: —And what do you wantP—She says.—I am in the cell [jatshq'he] of Children’s Friends. How can Imiss paying my due [nedove] for homeless children [beepriwme] .. .? —Fe,—I say and put her right,—it is not nice to say nedove [lit. alms]. It has nothing to do with it. —Is a vznos [that is, Russian vznos, ‘due’] better for you? And you don’t like Yiddish either. Since when? Since you became a white-collar (Abchuk 1934a: 106—7) [sluzhashchi]?

In Gladkov’s Cement the word predispolkom (chairman of the executive committee) exasperates the counter-revolutionary Colonel: ‘The Russian language is not like that. It’s your jargon —Yiddish or thieves’ slang’ (Gladkov 1929: 127). It was, however, Yiddish that mutated under the influence of Russian Newspeak. Post-revolutionary Russian made productive word-formation models which had previously been operating on the fringes of the vocabulary. The Colonel should have known such turn-of-thecentury compounds as Produgol’, Lenzoloto, to say nothing of glavhoverhh, homandarrn, nachshtab, and some others, which had been widespread in Russian during the First World War (Sukhotin 1933: 153—4; Borovoj 1974: 163-4) and called forth such Sovietisms as predispolhom. But such developments were non-existent in Yiddish, which was now flooded not only with new coinages not current in pre-revolutionary Yiddish, but by alien models of word-formation as well. The Yiddish press, for example, began to imitate the new type of Russian words with the suflix -nik: shabesnik, cf. Ru. subbotnik; zuntihnik, cf. Ru. voshresnih; khojdeshnik, cf. Ru. mesjachnik. In Vitebsk even two Yiddish newspapers were called Der alruskndisher shabesnik (All-Russia Subbotnih, 1920) and Undzer jomhipernik (Our YomKippurnih, that is, a kind of subbotnih organized on Yom Kippur, 1921; see Shmemk 1961: 333, 336). A bilingual poster published in 1923 by the Kremenchug District Committee called: Ale vi ejner af dem pejsekhnik—dem ershtn tog pejsekh.’ (On the first day of Passover [pejsekh] all to a man [should

Yiddish proletarian language

51

take part] in the pejsehhnik!) It is interesting that the Russian text of this Kremenchug ‘Rosetta Stone’ uses voskresnik rather than pejsekhnih (Kremenchug Poster 1923). Litvakov attacked these neologisms, arguing that in Yiddish ~nih might be productive only in designating persons. In fact, as we saw in Ch. 1, there were already a number of accepted Yiddish words ending in male for inanimate objects, but—in this case Litvakov was right—not for events and campaigns. It is characteristic that Abchuk’s Shamaj goes to a voskresnilr rather than to its conflicting Yiddish counterparts—zuntihnik or arbet-zuntih. In general, Abchuk’s novel testifies to the wide gap between spoken and written Yiddish. The language propagated by Litvakov and other language planners was difficult to understand for the vast majority of Yiddish speakers and readers. Thus, Shamaj complains to the director of a Yiddish library that he cannot understand Lenin’s works. The director explains: ‘It is not Lenin who is guilty, but those who translated him into Yiddish. They like very much to use a high-flown language’ (Abchuk 1934a: 84). A5 a matter of fact, the number of Yiddish readers was, to all appearances, not very substantial. Furthermore, those who did read Yiddish books preferred works by pre-revolutionary and foreign writers, or even translations of some Russian authors (such as, for example, Maxim Gorky) rather than Soviet Yiddish stories and poems (Gildin 1930; Litvakov 1931: 26—7). The Yiddish press was not in much demand either. For example, in Belorussia in the mid-19205 the planned distribution of Yiddish periodicals was rather modest compared with the Yiddish-speaking population of the republic (see Table 2.6). The purists’ desideratum, that the ability of Yiddish readers must rise to the necessary standard of ‘Yiddish proletarian language’, was utopian in the Soviet setting. ManyJews just switched to Russian media, abandoning the learnedYiddish calques of Russian Sovietisms. In 1928 a shtetl-dweller claimed: ‘1 read Pravda, though it is difficult for me to read a Russian newspaper since I have not graduated from a university. For all that, it is much easier for me to read Pravda than Der emes’ (Zaretski 1931a: 19). AYiddish typesetter wrote that Soviet Yiddish literature was at ‘civil war’ with the reader; he retold a joke which was popular among the Yiddish printers: nobody would read a Yiddish book, except for the author, the censor, and the typesetter (Strazh 1925).

Yiddish proletarian language

52

Table 2.6. The planned distribution of Yiddish periodicals in Belorussia in 1926 Town/city

Ohtjabr

Emes

Shtern

Pioner

(Minsk)

(Moscow)

(Minsk)

(Moscow)

newspaper newspaper literary magazine Minsk Vitebsk Bobruisk Mogilev Slutsk Orsha Kalininsk Polotsk Mozyr Borisov

3.000

Total

700 500 300 400 600 500

500 350 300 150 100 100 100 100 200 200

1,000 550 450 300 250

9,800

1.900

1,600 1,300 900

jungvald (Moscow)

children's youth

magazine magazine

200 100 150 200 200

500 400 300 200 100 100 50 50 100 100

300 250 150 100 50 25 50 25 50

3,400

1.900

1,000

so

Source: Distribution of Yiddish periodicals in Belorussia 1926.

Ironically, those who did take an interest in modern literature, theatre, and in other cultural spheres where Yiddish could be applied, were especially prone to acculturation. At the same time, in such strongholds of spoken Yiddish asJewish national districts the Yiddish written language was not much in use—a ‘cultural somnolence’ reigned there (Tajtsh 1930). Difliculties in understanding the new vocabulary and ideas exercised speakers of all Soviet languages including Russian. A number of studies indicate that common people could not fully understand the Russian political terminology (see, for example, Shafir 1923; Shpilrejn et al. 1928; interestingly, Shpilrejn was also a pioneer of Yiddish studies at Soviet universities—see Estraikh 1994b). In fact, it was often a conceptual rather than lexical problem: people could not understand the political and social phenomena of the new regime (Shor 1929: 51). Due to the difiiculties, a rarnified multilingual system of the dissemination of ‘political literacy’ among the Hershl Shamajs was called into being (see Brooks 1989: 17). Compared with Russian, Yiddish was much less equipped lexically. A survey among readers of the Kharkov daily Der shtem confirmed that the vocabulary of many readers did not exceed the

Yiddish proletarian language

53

bounds of ordinary oral communication. They could not understand even such literary, rather than Soviet, words as (see Shprakh 1928):

1. Germanisms: an(t)dehung (discovery), antojshung (disappointment), antsilrt (delighted), antvilrlung (development), antvofenung (disarmament), badajtung (meaning, significance), bahvem (comfortable, convenient), drang (striving), droung (threat), q'ferzuhht (jealousy), farat (betrayal), farheltnsmesih (relatively, more or less), farkriplung (misrepresentation), farshverung (conspiracy), hetse (persecution, baiting), ojsgeshprolthn (pronounced, marked), onshtendih (decent, respectable), opmakh (agreement, treaty), tsushojer (spectator), villu'r (arbitrariness). 2. Hebraisms: agev (incidentally), androjgenes (hermaphrodite), bry'let (distinct), hishtadles (endeavour; mediation), halvoe (loan), hq'ojs (whereas, inasmuch as), hen . . . hen (both . . . and), kry'dem-kol (first of all), majrev (west), matsev (situation), shajekh (pertinent).

2.5 Ukrainianisms and Belomssianisms While the language of Hershl Shamaj teems with Russianisms, there are only two direct borrowings from Soviet Ukrainianisms in the novel; namely, holhosp (kolkhoz, collective farm) and selrade (village soviet). It is instructive that these words relate to rural life and that they surface with Shamaj’s trip to a Ukrainian village. The scant number of Soviet Ukrainianisms in Shamaj’s lexicon corresponds to the real linguistic situation in Kiev, Kharkov, and other Ukrainian urban centres where Russian dominated. Even at the height of the Ukrainization drive, the linguistic assimilation of Ukrainian Jews meant for the most part Russification rather than Ukrainization. In 1926 fewer than 1 per cent of Jews claimed Ukrainian as their first language. The incidence of Jews’ Ukrainian literacy also was much less substantial —240,000 as opposed to the 935,000 Jews who were literate in Russian. However, these findings show a fundamental change compared with 1919, when among 89,500 literate Jews of Kiev only 1.4 per cent claimed to be literate in Ukrainian; the majority—95 per cent of the Jewish respondents in 1919—answered that they could read and write in Russian, 68 per cent in the ‘Jewish language’, 1.7 per cent in Polish (calculated from the returns of the Kiev Census of 1920). Outside the rural areas the social basis for Ukrainization was

54

Yiddish proletarian language

quite thin even among the Ukrainians (Shevelov 1989: 122), let alone other ethnic groups. Some Ukrainian leaders argued that in the republic there were two competing cultures: the urban Russian culture and the rural Ukrainian culture (Girchak 1931: 1922). An article in aYiddish pedagogicaljournal recommended, in harmony with such urban-versus-rural compartrnentalization, the use of Yiddish in Yiddish-speaking surroundings, Russian in urban centres, Ukrainian and Belorussian ‘for communication with the village’ (Frankfurt 1925: 11). The Yiddish word-stock per se furnishes evidence of the roles which Russian and Ukrainian played in Jewish society. It was Russian officialese and journalese that fed the vocabulary of Soviet Yiddish publications. True, some calques and loanwords from the contemporary Soviet Ukrainian Newspeak can be recognized, but their number is very limited. For example: dorflrojz, cf. Ukr. sil’bud(ynoh) (village club-house); homnezam, cf. Ukr. homnezam (committee of impoverished peasants); orempojer, cf. Ukr. nezamozhnik (poor peasant); privatnik, cf. Ukr. privatnik (petty private trader; private craftsman); spilke, cf. Ukr. spilka (union); valke, cf. Ukr. vallta (string of carts). Certainly, this brief list can be expanded (for example, in Sito 1932 we find the Ukrainianism vikhovanek (inmate of a chidren’s home)). However, the Soviet Ukrainianisms become lost on the fringes of the Soviet Yiddish vocabulary among many hundreds of borrowings from Russian. It is known that as far back as in the second half of the nineteenth century, words of Russian origin already predominated among new Slavonic borrowings in literary Yiddish. The impact of Ukrainian was especially weak in the vocabulary of administration and modern city life (Swoboda 1990: 109). After the revolution, this impact increased only very slightly. In spite of oflicial lipservice to the languages of the Soviet Republics, it was Russian that became defacto the supra-language of the new regime and its élite. Therefore, Yiddish, Ukrainian, and Belorussian found themselves, in a sense, in the same position—they had become the targets of Soviet Russian lexical infusions. Ukrainianisms are somewhat more often found, for example, in Hershl Orland’s book Hrebljes (Dikes). This 1929 work was, like Abchuk’s Hershl Shamaj, one of the first Soviet Yiddish novels (for this study, the second edition is used—Orland 1931). It is interesting to note that Abchuk (1931b: 52-3) subjected this novel to

Yiddish proletarian language

55

sharp ideological criticism. The action of the novel—the construction of an irrigation canal and the concurrent ideological reconstruction of the Jewish build-ers’ outlook—takes place in a rural area of Polesye, somewhere not far from Chernobyl. It is a valke fum (a string of carts) that transports the Jewish navvies from their decomposing shtetls to the site. These former artisans and merchants are the main characters of Orland’s canvas. At the same time, many passages can be found in which the depiction of nonJews stands out. Orland’s non-Jewish characters are mostly nezamozhniltes (poor peasants). A komnezam and its chairman nezamozhne holova, or der holova fun di nezamozhnihes cf. Ukr. holova (chairman, head), watch over the interests of nezamozhnihes. The Russian language is, apparently, not current in the villages around the canal; the native Slavonic population, polishukes, cf. Ukr. polishchuhy (inhabitants of Polesye), speak a transitional Ukrainian-Belorussian dialect (see, for example, Nikonchuk 1983). But, despite the linguistically propitious surroundings, the above examples practically exhaust the list of direct borrowings from the Soviet Ukrainian vocabulary into Orland’s language (also, it is doubtful whether valke is a Soviet innovation, though it is defined as such in Spivak 1939a: 124-5). In general, Orland depicts the Soviet political landscape using mostly either loan translations or words of international origin. For example, loan translations: arojsloz, cf. Ru., Ukr., and Bel. vypusk (graduation); dorfrat, cf. Ru. sel’sovet, Ukr. sil’rada, Bel. selsavet (village Soviet); holvirt, cf. Ru. hollrhoz, Ukr. kolhosp, Bel. holhaz (collective farm); homjugist, cf. Ru. homsomolets, Ukr. komsomolets’, Bel. hamsamolets’ (member of the Komsomol); lq'enshtibl, cf. Ru. izba-chital’nja, Ukr. and Bel. khata-chytal’nja (village library); ojsfirkom, cf. Ru. ispolkom, Ukr. vykonhom, Bel. vyhankam (executive comittee); profshul, cf. Ru. and Ukr. profshkola, Bel. prafshlrola (technical school); shabesnih, cf. Ru. subbotnik, Ukr. subotnyk, Bel. subatnih (labour freely given to the State on Saturday). Internationalisms: fininspekter, cf. Ru. and Ukr. fininspektor, Bel. fininspektar (finance inspector); metalist, cf. Ru. metallist, Ukr. and Bel. metalist (metalworker) . Thus, the donor language becomes, ostensibly, unknown; in principle, it might be any of the three Slavonic languages: Russian, Ukrainian, or Belorussian. In fact, however, almost all neologisms originally came into the literary Soviet Yiddish from Russian rather

56

Yiddish proletarian language

than Ukrainian or Belorussian. Ukrainian and, especially even less developed (in terms of modern terrnonology) Belorussian, played a negligible role as donor languages. Thus the Yiddish verb derhenen zikh, a loan translation of the Belorussian spaznatstsa (to meet), is a rare example of modern Belorussianisms (listed in Plavnik and Rubinshtejn 1932 and in Rokhkind and Shkljar 1940). None the less, the two languages did play an important strategic role in this process of lexical innovation. Soviet Yiddish language planners tried hard to steer a middle course among the coterritorial Slavonic languages. Therefore such calques as kolvirt or dorfrat appeared to be a compromise. In addition, an international disguise levelled many Sovietisms, which was also conducive to the middle-course strategy.

2.6 Lejzer Vilenkin’s corpus To be sure, Abchuk, Orland, and other proletarian writers reconstructed rather than just recorded the spoken language of their time. The texts of their prose works, therefore, cannot be regarded as verbatim recordings (cf. Derrnan 1931: 145, 162). Fortunately, there is material that provides a unique possibility to verify the linguistic authenticity of their works. Lejzer Vilenkin, a Soviet Yiddish linguist, published in 1934 the results of two case studies on lexical peculiarities of the Yiddish urban vernacular (Vilenkin 1934b). In contrast with other published studies dealing almost exclusively with the written language of professional Yiddish literati, Vilenkin analyses the spoken and written language of people like Hershl Shamaj and his milieu. In the summer of 1931 Vilenkin recorded spoken words and phrases of sixty-five Minsk workers, mostly during two trials in a local court, where the trial proceedings were conducted in Yiddish. One of the defendants was a worker from the clothes factory Oktober, the second, a worker from a brush factory. (In Singer 1928: 29—33 we find a vivid picture of the MinskYiddish court circa 1927, where a militsioner (policeman), speaks a ‘newspaper Yiddish’, an old advocate’s ‘half-Yiddish-and-half-Russian’ legalese makes the audience laugh, and another advocate, a young man, speaks a ‘pure, albeit too mannered, Yiddish’.) The next summer, in Moscow, Vilenkin studied fifty articles written by arbkom (cf. Ru. rabhory (worker correspondents)) for publi-

Yiddish proletarian language

57

cation in the Yiddish filtirazhhes (cf. Ru. mnogotirazhhi (factory newspapers)) of their factories: car factory AMO, the Works Named after Stalin; the First State Watch-Maker’s Works; the Clothes Factory No. 5; the Factory Named after Balakirev. Parenthetically, we should add that the first group of Yiddish worker correspondents was organized, apparently, as far back as 1922 at the Kiev daily Komunistishefan (Portnoj 1962). Soon every Yiddish newspaper had its arbkom or some other analogous kind of vigilant contributors, e.g. dorflwm (peasant correspondents), hustkom (artisan correspondents), and even kindkom (child correspondents). The arblrom and other kom (the clipping hor for harespondent we find, for example, in Gitlits 1932: 85) were especially active in the vant—tsajtungen (wall newspapers); in 1927, the reported number of Yiddish wall newspapers in Ukraine alone was 319 (Slutski 1929: 197). Undoubtedly, Vilenkin’s first study is the more significant, because the written language of the arbkorn was a ‘deformed’, sublirnated version of their idiolects (cf. Uspenskij 1931: 260). Together, however, these two often overlapping lists represent firsthand inforrnation about the lexicon of the late 19205 and early 19305. Many of the common and varied neologisms recorded by Vilenkin are included in Abchuk and Orland’s repertoire. All other recorded neologisms are, typologically, similar to those found in Abchuk’s novel. The following examples are limited to the political and technological terms recorded in Vilenkin’s study.

1. Direct borrowings from Russian (‘=’ means the transliteration of the borrowing coincides exactly with that of its model):

fabzautshnilc (farbzauchnih), student of a factory (apprenticeship) school;

fezeu or fl 2. u. = apprenticeship (factory) school; izlisheh = surplus;

jatshq'he (jachejha), [Party etc.] cell; jedinonatshalje (iedinonachalie), one-man management; litun (letun), worker frequently changingjobs; litunstve (letunstvo), situation when workers frequently change jobs; masterskaja = workshop (in which manufacturing is done); nagruzke (nagruzha), [Party etc.] load/commission;

Yiddish proletarian language

58

obshtshestvenih (obshchestvennih), public-spirited person; otdel snabzhenja (otdel snabzhenija) , department of provision; peredvizhhe (peredvizhha), itinerant/mobile library or exhibition; polufabn'ltat = half-finished product; predfabkom = chairman of a factory committee; progul = truancy; progulshtik (progulshchilc), truant;

proizvodstve (proizvodstvo) , production; proizvodstvenih (prvizvodstuennilr), one engaged in production; prornfinplan = output and finance plan; prorr'v (proryv), hitch, snag; razrjad = category, rating; samokritihe (samolm'tiha), self-criticism; sklad sirja (shlad syrja) , storehouse for raw-material; smene (smena), shift (period for which workers work); sotssorevnovanje (sotssorevnovanie), socialist emulation; stanok = machine-tool; tshisthe (chistlta), purge; udarnih = shock worker; umivalnih (umyval’nilr) ,wash-stand; uravnilovke (uravnilovka) , egalitarianism, wage-levelling; vidvizhenets (vydvizhenets), promoted worker; zavkhoz = assistant manager in charge of the premises, etc.

2. Calques of Russian words and collocations: arbkor (rablror) , worker correspondent; arojsgeruhter (see the direct borrowing vidvizhenets); arojsruf (vyzov), challenge (e.g. to socialist emulation); arojsmlm (vydvinut’), to promote; nominate; bavustziniher (soznatel’nyj) , classaconscious; draj umbajt-sistem (trelthsmennaja sisterna), three-shift system; drajek (treugol’nilr), local authorities: administrator, Party organizer, and trade union organizer; durhhojsilre brigade (shvoznaja brigada), start-to-finish brigade; durlthrajs (see the direct borrowing prvriv); fargezelshafilelrhn (obobshchestvit’), to socialize, collectivize; filtirazhlte (mnogetirazhlra), factory newspaper; flisungfun arbet-htafi (tekuchest’ rabochq' sily), fluctuation of labour

(manpower);

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59

ibershtajgn dem plan (pererOpolnit’plan),to exceed the plan; indfinplan (see the direct borrowing prvmfinplan); hq'tlung (stseplenie), coupling; hemerl (see the direct borrowingjatshq'he); hem-host (sebestoimost’), prime cost; holvirt (kolkhoz), kolkhoz, collective farm; holvirtisher handl (holkhoznaja torgovlja), kolkhoz trade; komjugist (homomolets), member of the Komsomol; krajzkom (ohruzhhom), district committee; kvalitet (hachestvo), quality; ojsarbetung (vyrabotha), amount produced; ojsglajkhung (vyravnivanie), levelling; opfal (otsev), elimination, screening; refuse, offal; opflusfun arbeter (ottoh rabochilth) , outflow of workers;

produtsir-baratung (proizvodstvennoe sobranie) , production

meet-

ing;

profarejn (profsojuz), trade union; rejnilmng (see the direct borrowing tshistke); shediheraj (meditel’stvo) , wrecking, sabotage; shefium (shefstvo), patronage; shlogler (see the direct borrowing udamilr); sotsgevet (see the direct borrowing sotssorevnovanje); spetshlejder (spetsodezhda), protective outer garments; tsajgers (pokazateli), indices; tsufestilm (prilrrepit’), to register (e.g. at a local organization); tsuzamenshlus (smychha), union, linking;

uflrkr-arbet (prvsvetitel’skaja rabota), [political] education;

umbajt (see the direct borrowing smene); umpartejisher (bespartijnyj) , non-Party man; valchte (see the direct borrowing smene); vant—tsajtung (stennaja gazeta) , wall newspaper; virtshafilekherjor (khozjajstvennyj god) , economic year; virtshafi-rekhenung (khozraschet), financial self-supporting; zaml-tsekh (sborochnyj tsekh) , assembly shop; zewstkritik (see the direct borrowing samokritilre). 3. Russian-Yiddish hybrids adjusted to Yiddish grammar:

alttivne nemen zihh (alctivno brat’sja), to undertake actively; bapartejner (see the calque umpartejisher);

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60

der dolgfun a partq'ets (dolgpartijtsa), a Party-member’s duty; der tshlen fabkom (chlenfablwma), the member of the factory committee; gonjaen rabkom (gonjat’ rabkorrrv), to persecute the worker corres-

pondents;

khozrastshotne brigade (hhozraschetnaja brigada), self supporting bri-

gade; molodjozhner honvejer (molodahnyj konvejer), production line where the workers are young people; nit proverete arbeter (neprvverennye rabochie) , untried workers; obtshestvene arbet (obshchestvennaja rabota) , public/social work; opravdajen di doverje (opravdat’ doverie), to justify [someone’s/the society’s] confidence; otdel fun prijom zakazov (otdel prijoma zakazov) , delivery-order department; soglaseven di frage (soglasovat’ vopros), to come to an agreement [with someone] about a question, matter; tserabhopshe hredit (Irredit tserablro(o)pa), credit of the Central Workers’ Co-operative. 4. Redundant borrowings:

redhe (redho) instead of zeltn, seldom; vhradtse (vkradtse) instead of inhurtsn, short, in brief; volinhe (volynlta) instead of farshlepenish, dilatoriness.

The direct borrowings could be adapted on phonological and morphological levels. The former, transphonemization, implied the replacement of Russian phonemes with Yiddish phonemes (cf. Baldunciks 1991): smene (smena); samokritilte (samohritiha); tshisthe (chistha). At the same time, alien phonemes could remain in some of the borrowing, as, for example, /lju/ in revoljutsje ‘revolution’ or /au/ in auditorje (lecture-room; audience). (Evgenij Vereshchagin, who studied the Soviet German andYiddish vemaculars in the 19605, suggested that such phonemes might be called ispol’zuemye (utilized)—-see Vereshchagin 1966; for objections to this term, see Karlinskij 1990: 130.) Transmorphemization, on the other hand, means the change of bound morphemes as they transfer from Russian to Yiddish (cf. Filipovic 1980): molodezhnyj (molodjozhner) (youth (adj.)); partijnyj (partejner) (Party (adj.)).

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Both for morphologically adapted direct borrowings and for calques, an important role was played by a system of quite stable semantic equivalents between Yiddish and Russian affixes, which had developed long before the revolution (see Ch. 1), but became especially active in Soviet Yiddish (see in particular Vereshchagin 1965). It is characteristic that non-Soviet Yiddish grammarians regarded some of these affixes as unacceptable borrowings. One of them is the suffix -ne in Russian-origin adjectives (see Reizen 1929: 597; Y. Mark 1978: 228-9), which is very common in the vocabulary of Abchuk’s or Orland’s protagonists and Vilenkin’s subjects: hhmurne (gloomy), serjozne (serious), nervne (nervous), ahtivne (active), to name but a few.

3

Language planning of the 19305 3.1 The Soviet Yiddish Empire of the early 1930::

Although closed down in 1930, the Evsektsija created a ‘Yiddish Empire’ (to borrow the term from Peltz and Kiel 1985), namely an elaborate machinery of Jewish national districts in the Far East

(Birobidzhan), Ukraine, and Crimea, soviets, kolkhozes, educational and scientific institutions, courts and police stations, periodicals and publishing houses, Party, trade-union, and Komsomol cells, and more. After 1930, the Jewish-related projects and activities in a large measure became the prerogative of the KOMZET, Committee for the Rural Placement of Jewish Labourers, and OZET, Association for the Rural Placement of Jewish Labourers (cf. El’jashevich 1995: 74—5). The ‘KOMZET/OZET work’, originally focused on Jewish kolkhozes, districts, and on Birobidzhan, eventually partly replaced and partly absorbed the jidishe arbet conducted for the whole SovietJewish diaspora. As early as 1928, professional training of Jewish youth and their placing in the industrial areas of the country also became a part of the ‘KOMZET/ OZET work’ (Dimanshtejn 1935b: 238). In general, numerous OZET cells, i.e. links between the diaspora and the Far East metropolis (Birobidzhan), became an important outlet for Yiddish activities. In the early 19305, the Yiddish Empire was still expanding all over the country. Thus, both in Ukraine and Belorussia the number of Yiddish schools and pupils increased in the first postEvsektszja academic year 1930-1 (see Table 3.1). Teachers’ training colleges turned out an ever-growing number of Yiddish teachers. For example, in Ukraine alone the colleges continued to grow in the early 19305 (see Table 3.2). Overall, in 1933 more than 4,000 students were trained as Yiddish teachers in twenty Soviet colleges and universities. The highest level of Yiddish education was

Language planning of the 1930s

63

achieved at the Department of Yiddish (created in 1924) at the Second Moscow State University, later the Moscow Teachers’ Training Institute. Table 3.1. Yiddish schools in the academic years 1927—8, 1929-30. and 1930—1 1927-8

1929—30

1930-1

schools pupils schools pupils schools pupils Ukraine Belorussia Russia

587 190 129

79.000 26.000

n.a.

786 209 n.a.

82.400

28,300 n.a.

831 262 110

94.900

31,300 11,000

Note: n.a.: no information available. SourceJa. Kantor (1935: 172).

More than 2,600 students studied at Yiddish agricultural colleges and universities. In addition, there existed a Yiddish medical college (in Haisin), musical, art, and co-operative colleges (in Kiev), a college of political education and a department at a printing college (in Kharkov), among others. A number of the Party schools had Yiddish departments, the most important of them being the majrevke (from majrev, west), the Jewish Department at the Communist University for the National Minorities of the West (Ja. Kantor 1935: 175-6; Greenbaum 1978: 29, 39, 75; Libinzon 1995). Table 3.2. Yiddish teachers’ training colleges in Ukraine, 1928-34 Academic years

1928-9 I929-30 1931-2 1932-3 1933-4

Colleges 4 4

3

4 5

Source Dimanshtejn (1935a: 200).

Students

741 670 805 855 865

Languageplanning of the 19305

64

hip—I

The number of Yiddish periodicals was impressive too. Seventeen newspapers with a total circulation of almost 150,000 represent only the most important Soviet Yiddish newspapers published in 1931 (see Dimanshtejn 1935a: 214; Shmeruk 1961: 330—402, 417—18):

‘E N F U -S Q P D f

Birobidzhaner shtem (Bimbidzhan Star, 1930), Birobidzhan. Der arbeter (Worker, 1927-35), Berdichev. Deremes (Truth, 1920—38), Moscow. Derjunger arbeter (Young Worirer, 1922-35), Minsk. Der kustar (Artisan, 1927—37), Kharkov. Der odeser arbeter (Odessa Worker, 1927-37), Odessa. Der shtern (Star, 1925—41), Kharkov, later Kiev. junge gvardie (Young Guard, 1924-36), Kharkov. Junger Ieninets (Young Leninist, 1929—37), Minsk. Kolvirt-emes (Kolkhoz Truth, 1930—5), Kalinindorf. Kolvirt shtern (Kolkhoz Star, 1931-5), Najzlatopol [Novo-

zlatopol].

l2. Leninveg (Lenin’s Way, 1931—5), Frajdorf. 13. Ohtjabr (October, 1925-41), Minsk. 14. Proletarishefon (ProIetarian Banner, 1928-35), Kiev. l5. Sotsialistishe dorf (Socialist Village, 1930-2), Kharkov. l6. Stalindorferemes (Stalindorf Truth, 1930-5), Stalindorf. l7. Zaj grejt (Be Ready, 1928-37), Kharkov.

In addition to these flagships of the Soviet Yiddish press, many factories, kolkhozes, and other institutions with large numbers of Yiddish-speaking workers published their own Yiddish newspapers. Some institutions published their newspapers in two or three languages, including Yiddish. Importantly, new Yiddish newspapers were organized after 1930, such as Krementshuger arbeter (Kremenchug Worker, 1932-5, Kremenchug) and Proletarisher emes (Pmletan'an Truth, 1935—7, Vinnitsa). Three Yiddish literary magazines appeared in the early 19303, namely, Di rojte velt (Red World, 1924—33, Kharkov), Prolit (Proletarian Literature, 1928-32, Kharkov and Kiev), and Shtern (Star, 1925—41, Minsk), as well as a few specialized journals, like the pedagogical Ratnbildung (Soviet Education, 1928-37, Kharkov), the anti-religious Apikojres (Atheist, 1931-5, Moscow), and the academic journals Afn shprahhfront (At the Linguistic Front, 1931—9, Kiev) and Afn visnshafllekhnfront (At the Scientific Front, 1932-5, Minsk).

Languageplanning of the 19305

65

The academic periodicals published mostly studies by scholars from the Kiev-based Institute forJewish Proletarian Culture of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and the Jewish Department of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences; both became Yiddish academic centres of world importance. During the First Congress of Soviet Writers (1934), Yiddish literature was represented by twenty delegates. It appeared as one of the strongest and most important Soviet literatures. Itsik Fefer and Izi Kharik became members of the inaugural Board (provlenie) of the Soviet Writers’ Union (see First Congress of Soviet Writers 1934). Some of Yiddish literary theoreticians (notably Isaak Nusinov, Jakov Bronshtejn, Aarn Gurshtejn, Mejer Viner) played an important role in general literary discussions. Apart from the Jewish state theatres in Moscow, Birobidzhan, Kharkov, Kiev, Odessa, and Minsk, there were also scores of other professional and amateur companies in many towns and villages of the country, as well as Yiddish theatrical schools in Moscow and Kiev (Ja. Kantor 1935: 180—1; Sandrow 1996: 240). So, despite the liquidation of the Evsektsija, the architect of Soviet Yiddish institutions and activities, the role of Yiddish and Yiddish institutions had not been redefined. At the same time, as during the Evselrtsija period, it was by and large the linguistic afliliation, ‘Yiddish’, rather than the national, ‘Jewish’, that necessitated and limited the sphere of the Soviet Jewish institutions. Mikhl Levitan, one of the leadingJewish communists in Ukraine, ariserted that the Yiddish-speaking proletarians, especially those newly arrived from shtetls, should be regarded as the main object for the activities of SovietJewish institutions; these bilingual proletar'ians should be regarded as a source of cadre for the jidishe arbet. Only a few episodic activities, limited to propaganda againstJewish nationalism, were recommended for linguistically assimilated Jews (Levitan 1930). Mojshe Kamenshtejn, a Soviet apparatchik who had come to play an important role in Yiddish language discussions, argued that for Soviet Jewish institutions to host any activities in Russian, Ukrainian, or other non-Jewish languages would mean to disseminate a ‘culture national in form and in content alike’, in other words, a ‘nationalist culture’ (Karnenshtejn 1930). Meanwhile, after 1928-9, the barriers between Soviet and nonSoviet Jewry became much stronger. There were many signs that Evsektsija was becoming more and more isolated. For example, the

66

Languageplanning of the 1930s

castigation of Shmuel Gordon, then a young Yiddish writer, for sending his poems to the Warsaw ‘bourgeois nationalistic publication’ Literarishe bleter intimidated other Soviet Yiddish authors (Erlich 1973: 78; Estraikh 1992c; B. Sandler 1997). In general, Soviet writers and scholars could no longer avail themselves of the luxury of co-operation with foreign colleagues or institutions unless the latter demonstrated outright pro-Sovietism. This selfisolation left a strong imprint on the language planning discussions and reforms.

Before [1928-9] there still reigned a certain linguistic peace [sholem-bajes] between Soviet Yiddish and foreign Yiddishists. Moreover, there were intermittent foreign influences, an enthusiasm concerning the foreign Yiddishists’ linguistic ‘achievements’ and, from time to time, even an adoption of some [of their ideas]. Now, however, this has become absolutely impossible, because each side of the barricade is fully aware . . . that a compromise or a mutual understanding are ruled out. (Holmshtok 1932: 62)

In general, Soviet-style political correctness became obsessional. For instance, in 1930 the newpaper Der odeser arbeterwas criticized for publishing 3,214 lines about the guest performances of the Moscow Jewish State Theatre, whereas only 2,967 lines had been allotted to materials concerning the congresses of the Communist Parties of Ukraine and the Soviet Union (Shnitser 1930). The Soviet Jewish establishment was fully aware of the key role of Yiddish in the then elaborate machinery of Jewish institutions. After the liquidation of the Evsektaija, Josef Liberberg, the ambitious and charismatic director of the Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture, was the first to aspire to leadership in the Yiddish Empire. Liberberg claimed that his Kiev team of scholars, together with co-workers in Odessa and Zhitomir, epitomized the cultural needs of the majority of SovietJews in so far as 60 per cent of the country’sJewish population then resided in the Ukraine. In February 1931 Liberberg took the lead in convening the First All-Union Yiddish Language Conference. The paper he presented to the conference, ‘For party spirit in Yiddish scientific work’ (Liberberg 1930), led to the adoption of resolutions which included the condemnation of the Jewish Department of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences (the main rival of the Kiev Institute) for its keenness on dialectology instead of practical language planning

Language planning of the 19305

67

and the removal of Ajzik Zaretski from his leading position in the implementation of spelling reform. Henceforth, standardization of spelling would become a prerogative of the Kiev Institute. Zaretski, the pioneer of Soviet Yiddish language planning, and his Moscow colleague Elje Falkovich, were instead given control over the less gratifying problem of punctuation. (Yudl Mark was apparently the first Yiddish grammarian who tried, in his 1921 Shul—gramatik, to formulate rules of Yiddish punctuation. In 1928, Zaretski (l928e) published his own propositions.) Zaretski and Falkovich’s joint project was based on the rules of Russian punctuation, though they proposed to reduce, compared with Russian, the functional load of commas (Zaretski and Falkovich 1931: 46— 8). In practice, however, Soviet Yiddish punctuation was a replica of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian punctuation (see, for

example, Majdanij 1946). Clearly, orthography, let alone punctuation, was not a major issue of the period. The main struggle now was over the vocabulary itself. The Russification of the Soviet Yiddish vocabulary laid bare the impact of rapid social changes on the language of Soviet Jewry. The returns of polls and censuses demonstrated with clarity the acculturation processes of SovietJewry. At the same time, how-

ever, the statistics of the 19205 showed that a substantial number of Yiddish-speaking horepashnikes (toilers) still existed in the country. Thus, the subsequent activities of the Yiddish language machinery was justified in the eyes of the Soviet leadership, all the more so as assimilation and acculturation could be ascribed to the natural processes of Soviet society and even entered on the credit side of Yiddish institutions. A far greater threat were claims that the production of the machinery—newspapers, magazines, books—had little effect since the reader could not understand the Soviet Yiddish Newspeak. Inefficiency meant failure, which in Soviet terms would be labelled as sabotage or nationalism or some other crime depending on the ideological campaign of the moment. Fear of such accusations inspired various manmuvres as well as a merciless struggle to silence anyone who might exploit the question.

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3.2 Language discussions The Sovietization of Yiddish (or the construction of ‘Soviet Yiddish’) was the most popular and welcome topic among Soviet Yiddish language planners. One of the most widely discussed issues in this field was, without any doubt, the dehebraization of Soviet Yiddish (these discussions have been studied in depth in Peltz 1981; 1985). The ideological alienation of the ‘class-ridden’ Hebrew-Aramaic component derived from the all-embracing struggle that Jewish communists tirelessly carried on in the 1920s and 19303 against religion and the ‘old bourgeois’ culture. The Jewish front in this general Bolshevik struggle had its characteristic trait—the majority of leaders and activists of the Jewish institutions were neophytes in the Communist Party, so they had brought in from the Bund, Poale Zion, and other Jewish socialist parties the impetus of the prolonged Hebrew-Yiddish War, which often appeared strange to their Russian comrades. As a vital problem of Soviet Yiddish language construction, the subject of dehebraization was broached in 1929, when Nokhem Shtif published his much-discussed article ‘The Social Difl‘erentiation of Yiddish’ (Shtif 1929). Certainly, neither Shtif nor other advocates of dehebraization sought to outlaw allwords and forms derived from Hebrew or Aramaic. They argued, however, that a substantial number of Hebrew words were redundant in Soviet— secular and denationalized—surroundings and could be discarded. Moreover, they believed that the Hebrew component should be, as much as possible, excluded from the process of lexical innovation in Soviet Yiddish. Sociologically, there was much truth in the arguments of Shtif and his disciples. Thus, the non-Soviet Yiddish linguist Yudl Mark saw two primary factors determining the frequency of Hebraisms, that is: (l) the theme to which the speaker/writer refers; (2) the speaker’s/writer’s and the addressee’s education and embeddedness in traditional Jewish life (Y. Mark 1954: 37—8). Obviously, Abchuk’s factory worker Shamaj did not use and did not need to use so many Hebraisms concerning the realms of Jewish traditions as, say, Sholem Aleichem’s characters. Khaim Lojtsker, who studied the poetic vocabulary of David Hofshtein (‘the last distinguished mouthpiece of ideas of the [Jewish] nationalist pettybourgeois intelligentsia’—Olevskij 1933: 15), concluded that the

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frequency of Hebraisms in Hofshtein’s works declined as the poet ‘freed himself from the national associations’ (Lojtsker 1930: 26). Lojtsker also studied the frequency of Hebraisms in Litvakov’s works, published before and after the revolution, and revealed a telling pattern of attenuation (Table 3.3). Table 3.3. Hebraisms in Mojshe Litvakov's works Years of

Types of Hebraisms (%)

Number of

publication Hebraisms per 1,000

biblical letters of text quotations

1906—7 1910-17 1918-19 1923-4 1926 1928

7

8.5 6 3.5 4 2

16 l1

7

6 12 2

’high-flown’

words

24 24 23 28 37 27

‘usual’ words

60 65

70

66 51 71

Source: Zaretski (1931a: 32).

Falkovich presented the following statistics which also showed that, compared with the pre-revolutionary works, the use of Hebraisms was declining, especially in such literary works depicting Soviet realities as Hershl Orland’s novel Dikes: Mendele MoicherSforim’s The Travels of Benjamin III—187 Hebraisms per about six pages of text; Sholem Aleichem’s Motl the Cantor’s Son—53; Dovid Bergelson’s All is Gone—57; Peretz Markish’s A Generation Goes, a Generation Comes—41; Orland’s Bikes—20 (quoted in Zaretski 1931a: 32). For all that, the publication of ‘The Social Diflerentiation of Yiddish’ revealed that Shtif’s was ‘not only a philological, but also a psychological problem’ (M. Weinreich 1933: 348). Indeed, the timing of the dehebraization drive cannot be explained solely in terms of the social and demographic changes in Soviet Jewry (Peltz 1985: 143). From 1929 onwards, it became routine to condemn scholars, who made an ideological slip. (Shtif ‘slipped up’ in 1922—6, when he lived in Berlin and became one of the creators of the Vilna-based YIVO, Yiddish Scientific Institute, deemed, in the Soviet Union, a nationalist, Yiddishist and even fascist institution.) As a protective reaction, many scholars attempted to

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demonstrate their loyalty to the leaders. The dehebraization drive may have been part of this demonstration. Another reformer, Mojshe Kamenshtejn, who worked in Kharkov, advocated the large-scale removal of daytshmerisms (borrowings from modern German) as a route to simplification-cumproletarization of the language. The Kievjournal Dijidishe shprahh reported on his proletarizing proposals put forth in September 1930 during a conference in Kharkov (Kharkov Language Conference 1930). A few Kamenshtein’s proposals found support among some journalists writing for Kharkov’s then nine Yiddish newspapers. In particular, he was opposed to the Germanic adjectival/ adverbal suffixes -loz and -bar; instead of -loz he proposed to use the prefix on- combined with the suffix -(d)ik (e.g. onerdik v. erdloz ‘landless’), instead of -bar the suffix -evdik (e.g. lojnevdik v. lojnbar

‘expedient’). Although not particularly enthusiastic and despite the avant— garde character of Kamenshtejn’s models, some Soviet Yiddish linguists, writers, and journalists were ready to endorse these formations (see in particular Shtif 1928a; 1928b; 1930: 12; Zaretski 1931a: 107-13), especially as, for example, -bar was not an establishedYiddish suffix. At the turn of the century, -barwas used only as a constituent of some loans from German. Zaretski (1931a: 108-9) found only one pre—revolutionary example of an independently formed Yiddish word using -bar, derlozbar (admissible, permissible), which was a calque of the Russian dopustimo rather than a borrowing from German (zulalssig). By the 1920s and 19305, the number of such formations came to many dozens. Further, Kamenshtejn incorporated the agentive suffix mik— generally, instead of the Germanic -ler—in such Sovietisms as artelnik (member of an artel (association for joint work)); bashitsnik (counsel for the defence); brigadnik (brigade/ team leader); kolvirtnil: (member of a kolkhoz); shlognik (shock worker); virtshafinih (industrial or economic executive). Kamenshtejn also advocated substituting alejn- for zelbst- to convey the ‘self’ notion in all corresponding compounds, such as alejnkritih rather than zelbstkritik (self-criticism). He argued for the de-Germanization of nouns and proposed adding the schwa suflix -ein such words as kritike, politike, pmbleme, programe, reforme, and for substituting batajt (meaning) for badajt, the neologism vajterfirung (continuation, sequel) for the Hebraism hemshekh and the Gerrnanism forzetsung.

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There were even more radical approaches. Bentsion Grande, a Soviet Semitist, argued that language planning in the Soviet Union must remove obstacles along the path to a future universal proletarian language. In Grande’s eyes, the Yiddish word baleguf (rich peasant) used instead of the ‘international’ Russianism kulah reflected obstructive ‘narrow nationalism’ (Grande 1931: 18, 22). The lack of Yiddish dictionaries, especially updated ones, exacerbated the problem of introducing a standardized terminology. Ber Slutski’s Lexicon of Political and Foreign Words was condemned immediately after its publication in 1929 (Baker 1991). The first significant product of Soviet Yiddish lexicographers was published in 1932: the Yiddish-Belorussian Pocket Dictionary with approximately 12,000 entries and a short grammar section (Plavnik and Rubinshtejn 1932; see also Fajnzilber 1932: 118). In the foreword to this publication, the Linguistic Commission at the Jewish Department of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences stated that the dictionary had been ready as early as 1930, but it took two years to edit and re-edit the list of entries and the Belorussian translations. Without a doubt, the delay was associated primarily with the concurrent struggle between the two approaches to the lexical expansion of both Soviet Belorussian and Soviet Ukrainian. One approach prescribed Russification, often camouflaged as internationalization, while another favoured the introduction of neologisms based on the native resources of the language (Wexler 1974: 162, 272). A Russian—Ukrainian—Yiddish dictionary, compiled in Kiev in 1929-31, could not appear due to ‘the sabotage in the Ukrainian terminological work’ (Slutski 1935: 167). In other words the dictionary listed too many native Ukrainian words. True, Yiddish lexicographers did publish a number of terminological dictionaries and word lists for such specialized fields as jurisprudence, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and metallurgy (Fajnzilber 1932: 118-19; Bordin 1987: 63—6). In general, the enrichment of terminology was one of the central and most prominent accomplishments of Soviet Yiddish planners. But this stock of words, however professionally crafted, was in use only in special publications, being unintelligible and largely useless for the overwhelrning majority of Yiddish speakers. A comprehensive dictionary of Soviet Yiddish usage was to appear far too late, only on the eve of the war with Germany (Rokhkind and Shkljar 1940). The unpublished reviews of 1933 on Yiddish translations of

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school textbooks reveal the tactics used to engineer the language planning of the late 19203 and early 19303 (Reviews 1933). Reviewers pinpointed Hebrew words and expressions such as the ‘old Talmudic word’ dehajne and recommended replacing it with nemlekh (namely, viz.). Another example: the analytic verb nisasher vern had to give up its place to barajkhert vern (to become rich). In addition to Hebrewphobia, we find an echo of Shtif’s attack against the use of the passive voice in Yiddish. This construction became especially widespread injournalese. In 1927, Shtif argued that the literary language must be cleared of passive constructions, including the misuse of the preposition fun (of) (Shtif 1927a), since: ‘ “Active” and “passive” are psychological notions, notions of the lifestyle, rather than solely of the grammar. . . . The [passive] construction is incongruous with the revolutionary energy of our time, with the active nature of Soviet life . . .’ (Shtif 192712: 25, 30, emphasis in original). Among the authors of the 1933 reviews, we find both supporters and opponents of Shtif’s proposals to ‘activize’ Yiddish. For example, Lejzer Vilenkin praised the wide use of active constructions in the Yiddish version of a zoology textbook. At the same time, M. Gurevich condemned Vilenkin’s translation of Geography of Capitalist Countries because the translator did not use the prepositionfun and hence ‘continued the Yiddishist cause of the late linguist Shtif. The reviews also show the dearth of terminology. In a review on a botany textbook, Vilenkin stated that the ‘terminology of the natural sciences is the least developed field in Yiddish linguistics; more importantly, this terminology is also the least standardized’. The reviewer L. Vilenskij commented on a geography textbook that the translator had used paraphrastic translations because many corresponding terms in Yiddish simply did not exist. The reviewers criticized the verbosity of some translations and even counted the number of signs, that is, letters and punctuation marks. The expected optimal ratio between the number of signs in a Russian text and its Yiddish translation was 100 : 115, yet the real ratio appeared to be around 100 : 130. In 1932 the Moscow Russianjournal Pros-veshchenie natsional’nostq' published an article which was indicative either of deepening tensions among Yiddish language planners or of the urge of officials to set the Yiddish linguists at variance. The pseudonymous author

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of the article saw the activity of all Soviet Yiddish linguists and language planners in the worst possible light. He noted that as in 1924 (the Litvakov—Volobrinski discussion; see Ch. 2) the issue of the future of the Soviet Yiddish vocabulary was again on the agenda (Stankov 1932). For all that, the most important discussions on the nature of the Soviet Yiddish vocabulary were to take place in 1934.

3.3 The Odessa language Unlike other years, 1934 saw the participation of a few provincial Yiddish professionals in the discussions. The true name of the main protagonist is unknown. In all his writings he went under the pseudonym of Sh. Alik (or Alek). At that time he was editor of a second-rate Yiddish newspaper Der odeser arbeter. The following headline (Der odeser arbeter, 14 December 1933) illustrates the vocabulary of this newspaper: Zukht nit dern progulshtshilt q'ser derfabrih, zuhht im barn stanoh (Don’t look for the truant outside the factory, look for him at the lathe). The Russianisms progulshtshih (truant) and stanok (lathe) were then by no means accepted literary terms (true, progulshtshih was eventually to be accepted in Soviet Yiddish—see Shapiro et al. 1984: 437). Issues of this newspaper were laden with other Russianisms, such as: gruzovih (lorry); gruztshik (stevedore); farshljapen (Ru. proshljapit‘) (to overlook); kolkhoz; konjushne (stable); pereobutshenets (one who has finished or is going through a course of retraining); storozh (watchman); svodke (report); udarnilt (shock worker) (from the issues of March 1934; see also Shprakh 1934a). Unquestionably, the vocabulary of Der odeser arbeter was notjust a result of a slip of the pen. A decade earlier, in 1924, Alek had argued that the language of Soviet Yiddish newspapers should reflect the spoken language, otherwise the reader would not get the message. Lejb Abram, the first editor of the same Odessa newspaper, adhered to the same opinion but had yet to apply the policy (Holmshtok 1932: 56). In fact, all Soviet Yiddish newspapers were in some way or other laden with numerous Russianisms. Alik, however, raised this issue to the level of principle and policy. In the leading article of 24 December 1933 he blasted those language planners who were blocking the use in Yiddish of such innovations as sovet (soviet

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(council)), sovkhoz (state farm), kulah, udarnik, and other overt Russian Sovietisms. Had it been an isolated event, Alik‘s editorial might have been forgotten. But soon after it appeared, the Kharkov Der shtern (the central Yiddish daily in the Ukrainian Republic) responded to a further protest. The minor Kharkov filtirazhke (factory newspaper) called Shtolene nodl (Steel Needle), with a readership of about 1,500 workers at the Tinjakov clothes factory, addressed a letter to Der shtem, Der emes, and Ohtjabr (the central Yiddish daily in the Belorussian Republic), as well as to the Kharkov Party authorities. The factory journalists argued that workers were unable to understand the Yiddish literary language used in Soviet newspapers. Once again, the question of Sovietisms was raised. In the eyes of leading Jewish communists, Alik’s statement began to be seen as ‘a harmful tendency and a harmful system rather than an accident’ (Grin 1934b, emphasis in original). On 18 February 1934 Der shtem published the ShtoIene nodl letter together with a commentary which condemned the criticisms of both dissenting newspapers. Alik’s decision to introduce several Russian Sovietisms was described as a ‘guerrilla trick’. The Odeser arbeter of 10 March parried the blow, arguing that the Odessa Party authorities had approved the lexical innovations. Furthermore, it turned out that the newspaper had appealed to the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party ‘to convene an AllUkrainian conference with the participation of comrades from Oktjabr, Der emes, and others’. Far more was at stake than the use of words. Criticism was clearly regarded as an encroachment on the

language planners’ monopoly. It is possible that the Odessa and Kharkov appeals were coordinated. Most probably, however, the Kharkov reformers, led by Mojshe Kamenshtejn, had decided to take advantage of Alik’s attack. A participant later recalled:

During almost the whole winter and spring of 1934 intense preparations for an All-Ukrainian Yiddish Language Conference were in progress. . . . As the Conference approached, the polemic became sharper, positions drifted further apart, and arguments flared up. Many sides took part in the debate. Suddenly everyone was an expert in linguistics and anyone who felt like it wrote declarations and counter-declarations. . . . Kamenshtejn ostracized all daytshmerisms since . . . fascism had seized power in Germany. He did the same with Hebrew words. . . . The situation had

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become complicated because the trio—Kamenshtejn, Alek, and Veltman [the editor of Shtolene nodlj—invoked the eminent linguist A. Zaretski. (Tshitshelnitski 1974)

It was a vain gesture. By this time the incessant criticism had already subdued Zaretski’s radicalism. In 1931 he publicly castigated himself for using a forrnalist approach in his 1926 Practical Yiddish Grammar (Kahan-Newman 1983: 4; see also Beznosik 1932). Despite his recantation, he was still criticized for bizarre (though, one might think, harmless) dictums. For example, he was pilloried for his proposal, put forward in all seriousness, to remove the word ‘God’ from the Internationale, the Communist anthem (Zaretski 1930b; Alaverdov et al 1933: 146—7). In 1934 the only thing Zaretski ventured to do was to write an article about the Russian influence on Soviet Yiddish. In particular, he recommended the acceptance as literary words of such widely used Russianisms as kulak (rich peasant), lishenets (one deprived of suffrage and some other civil rights due to his/her social origin or occupation), narjad (order; warrant), oboz (military transport), otrjad (detachment), otsherk (feature story), priziv (callup, conscription), progul (truancy), razvjorstke (assessment), shahhtjor (miner), sovet (soviet (council)), spravhe (certificate), stanok (lathe), subotnilt (labour freely given to the State on days off), vidvizhenets (promoted worker), zapas (reserve), zatshot (examination, test), as well as the Ukrainianism valke (string of carts). And although he condemned (fairly indulgently, it is true) the ‘awkward experiment with Russianisms’ in Odeser arbeter, his article was accompanied by a footnote in which Der emes completely dissociated itself from his approach to Russianisms and Sovietisms (Zaretski 1934). Logically the mutineers might have expected to find support among the Yiddish professionals from Belorussia who undoubtedly could not forgive their previous fiascos under pressure from Litvakov and Liberberg (during the language discussions of 1924 and the 1931 All-Union Yiddish Language Conference). All the more so as their leader, Shlojme (Sam) Agurski, was eager to settle old scores-—Litvakov’s accusations in the late 1920s at the time of the power struggle between the Moscow and Belorussian Jewish activists (see Gitelman 1972: 458-68; Altshuler 1980: 241-52). But Agurski was no match for his ingenious rivals from Moscow and Kiev. Moreover, he and Volobrinski disowned their potential allies

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in Kharkov and Odessa. They argued that it was the Minsk newspaper Oktjabr, rather than Odeser arbeter and Shtolene nodl, which had triggered the current stage of the discussion and that the Minsk approach to lexical innovations had nothing to do with Alik’s and Kamenshtejn’s projects. In fact, it was a matter of some discrepancies between the lists of Sovietisms which Ohtjabr on the one hand or Odeser arbeter and Shtolene nodl on the other hand tried to introduce intoYiddish (Agurski 1934; Volobrinski 1934). Another participant in the discussion, M. Shejngold, an author of anti-religious and other pamphlets, took a neutral position. He condemned both the extremism of the journalists-Russificators and the conservatism of the linguists. Shejngold advocated a balanced philological approach, in the spirit of Ber Borokhov’s 1913 article ‘The Aims of Yiddish Philology’ (Borokhov 1966: 53—75), though he did not mention Borokhov or his seminal work directly (Shejngold 1934). Reaction in the foreign Yiddish press also contributed to the official evaluation of the language discussion. Shmuel Niger, writing in the NewYork daily Der tag on 6 March 1934, argued that the real problem of Soviet Yiddish vocabulary was not the etymology of Sovietisms, but ‘the idle word, the newly coined words from the Party’s florid language . . . the whole stiff set of words which others had prepared for them’ (quoted from Shprakh 1934a, emphasis in original). Paraphrasing Volobrinski's 1923 article, Niger wrote ironically: ‘Art of the word? Art of sound? This is not for them. This is “fastidiousness” (inteligentshtine) . . .’ (quoted from Grin 1934a).

In the course of the debate, the position adopted by Alik, Kamenshtejn et al. was branded ‘liquidationism’ (Shprakh 1934b).

This label was borrowed from Stalin’s pronouncement on those who called for a stepping-up of the linguistic assimilation of the non-Russian peoples (Materials of the XIV Party Congress 1931: 54). True, in the early 1930s, some signs of the approaching deliberate Russification became apparent. In 1933 Mykola Skrypnyk, Ukraine's Commissar of Education, took his own life after being viciously attacked for his efforts to preserve the uniqueness of the Ukrainian culture (Liber 1992: 167-8). However, despite some ideological re-evaluation, the period of the korenizatsija policy (‘indigenization’ or ‘nativization’, when the Soviet regime sought to ‘take root’ among the non-Russian peoples) had not yet come

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end. Furthermore, the Soviet official doctrine of the 19303 paid little attention to the formation of a single proletarian language: the powers-that-be were much more concerned that ideological unity prevail (Goodman 1956; Kreindler 1977). In addition, a surprise blow was struck against Alik and other mutineers. On 18 March 1934 Pravda published an article by Maxim Gorky entitled ‘On Language’, an action which demonstrated powerful backing on the part of the Soviet authorities. Gorky called for the protection of the Russian literary language. He argued that it was ‘necessary to distinguish the language of clerical dogmatism and preaching from the language of poetry’. He even wrote that Church Slavonic words might be utilized and, at the same time, condemned all kinds of ‘vulgarisms’ and ‘barbarisms’. In passing, Gorky referred to what he called ‘Odessa language’, pointing out that one of its advocates was ‘the Zionist Zhabotinsky’ (Gorky 1953: 164; on Gorky as a figure of authority and the role of his obiter dicta, see Etkind 1981: 14; Fitzpatrick 1992: 239—49). In fact, the Odessa language mentioned in the article had nothing to do with Soviet Yiddish. Gorky complained that the Russian literary language was being cluttered with the Odessa Russian parlance (which, indeed, had a particularly markedJewish-Ukrainian accent—see Popova 1993: 48). Furthermore, Gorky most probably could not have had the remotest idea about the debates going on over the Yiddish language or of Alik and of the campaign the Odessa editor had sparked. Nevertheless, his article, with its reference to the ‘Odessa language’ and its ‘Zionist advocate’, became a trump card in the hands of such pugnacious individuals as Liberberg and Litvakov who did not waste any time in using it. Towards the end of April 1934 Liberberg sent seven academics and two research students to Odessa. Their oflicial assignment was to lecture to the local Jewish community, but it was evident that the mission had an ulterior motive. Odessa was a major SovietJewish centre, therefore it was important to show that Alik had no support there. For this purpose, one of Liberberg’s envoys, Kalmen Marmor (an American communist who was studying at the Kiev Institute) stressed in his report that Odessa Jews spoke literary Yiddish and not ‘Odessa Yiddish’ (Marrnor 1934b). At the same time, Der emes noted that the Odessa Yiddish journalists had ‘turned away from Alik’ (Kiselzon and Sherman 1934). to an

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A day before the conference, Der shtern published an article based on six ‘documents’, namely texts which showed a lexical scale of the Soviet Yiddish idiom (Goldenberg 1934): Document 1 A few quotations from a collection of Dovid Bergelson’s stories, reprinted in 1934, gave examples of a high frequency of Hebraisms, e.g. nigzl (one who has been robbed or wronged), bq's-hakise (lavatory), a mevusemdilte brie (a tipsy creature), metsaref zajn (include (in a count)), onzogn zohir vezohir (to warn very carefully). It may be added parenthetically that Yudl Mark’s calculations indicate a great richness of Hebraisms in Bergelson’s works (Y. Mark 1954). Document 2 From a letter to Der shtern written by an undergraduate who was studying Yiddish journalism at the Communist University for the National Minorities of the West: ‘Again the Hebraisms.Who needs hhejleh if we can use tq'l [part; portion], who needs terets instead of entfer [answer] or tq'ltef instead of bald [immediately]?’

Document 3 From a letter written by a Poltava worker: ‘The daily circulation of Der shtern is 17,000. This circulation is lower than any one of the Russian newspapers. The language [of Der shtern] is to blame for this. Only writers and literati are able to understand this language, while it is unintelligible to ordinary people . . .’

Document 4 From a letter written by a Dnepropetrovsk worker. In this case it is the Russified language rather than the context that attracted Goldenberg’s attention. Di arbeterjun zbomem tsehhl hobn ojsgehert di informatsje vegn podvig2fun di sovetishe zjomhimfi vos hobn spasajet‘ di tsheljuskintsas5 Di arbeterfun der ers)» ter smene5 adobrjaen7 di meres,8 vos dos ratnland hot ongenumen tsu spasajen4 di tsheljuskintses.5 Nor in aza land, vu es iz dihtatura proletarjata,9 hon zajn azojne

podvig'n2. . .

Indeed, the text is full of Russianisms: 1 zbomem tsekh (sbor(och)nyj tsekh) (assembly shop); 2 podvig(n) (podvig'(i)) (heroic deed(3)); 3 ljottshihes (ljotchihi) (pilots); 4 spasajet; spasajen (spasat’) (to save); 5 tsheljuskintses (cheljuskintsy) (the crew and passengers from the icebreaker Cheliuskin); 6 smene(smena) ((factory) shift); 7 adobrjaen

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(odobrjat’) (to approve); 8 mere: (may) (measures, actions to achieve some end); 9 dihtatura proletarjata (diktatura proletariata) (dictatorship of the proletariat). Document5 From a letter, written by a Zlatopol artisan: ‘It is necessary to answer the Shtolene nodl that all who read the newspaper [Der shem] on a daily basis will not find any linguistic drawbacks. Undoubtedly, its language is refined, pure and Soviet.’ Document 6 From a letter, written by a Slavuta worker: ‘Who is our priority: the grandmother or the pupil? The only answer is: the children!’

Curiously, the Slavuta worker was very near the truth. According to Yudl Mark’s findings, the frequency of Hebraisms in the Soviet dailies was about the same as in American schoolchildren’s Yiddish compositions or in Yiddish books and periodicals for children (Y. Mark 1954). 3.4 The Kiev conference

The language conference in Kiev on 7-11 May 1934 was the most representative forum in the history of Soviet Yiddish language planning. No analogous meeting has been so well documented. A special double issue of the Kiev linguistic periodical Afn shpralthfront (no. 3—4, 1935) contains a detailed chronicle of the conference. It is noteworthy that the opening day of the conference had been serendipitously timed: it coincided with the day on which the Soviet government declared that the BirobidzhanJewish National District (rajon) had been raised to a higher status, that of Jewish National Region (oblast’). The 116 delegates and numerous guests from twenty-five Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian cities and towns were addressed by Ukrainian Party and government officials. The key role was assigned to Andrij Khvylja, Ukrainian Deputy Commissar of Education. It is likely that the paper this high-powered ideologist read at the conference had been written for him by the Kiev Institute. He personified the authority of the Communist Party and govemment, an authority which condemned all mumblings that there was no future for Yiddish. This position reflected the desire of Ukrainian leaders to defend

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their policy against charges that indigenization (i.e. Ukrainization) was suppressing Jewish culture. In essence, they were right: the Ukrainization drive did have a wholesome effect on Yiddish activity, in particular because Yiddish was seen as an antidote against Russification (Altshuler 1990: 296-8). Khvylja concentrated his fire on Kamenshtejn. He accused the amateurish reformer of attempting to stimulate, artificially, language assimilation amongJews. The quotations he used give some idea of Kamenshtejn’s 1934 project. As in 1930, this was a clear anti-daytshmerish programme dressed up in anti-fascist verbiage. Accordingly, Slavonic suffixes and endings would replace German ones, e.g.: -nik instead of -ler in such nouns as virtshaftnik —virt3hafller (industrial/economic executive), 3hpajznih—shpajzler (food industry worker); -ent.sje instead of -ents in such nouns as tendentsje—tendents (tendency), konhurentsje—konhurents (competition); me instead of -(al)e or -(el)e in such adjectives as kulturne —kulturele (cultural), sotsialne—sotsiale ‘social’. Again, some nouns, it was argued, should be de-Germanized by the additional schwa suffixation -e, for example: reforme, probleme, programe Kamenshtejn also proposed to use, for example, only vesne (spring), osjen (autumn), sudja (judge), sud (court), i.e. words of Slavonic origin, instead of the Gerrnanisms friling, harbst, rikhter, gen'kht. Kamenshtejn’s project was clearly the most far-reaching proposed. While the proposals of Odeser arbeter, Shtolene nodl, and Oktjabr dealt mostly with Sovietisms, Kamenshtejn strove to alter a substantial stratum of Yiddish vocabulary. He thus became the main target for criticism. As a whole, Kamenshtejn did not invent new lexical items; rather, he tried to standardize various colloquialisms and colloquial models of word-formation which had become widespread among Soviet Jewish urban dwellers. This kind of Yiddish was especially characteristic of the younger generation. As the poet Dovid Hofshtein remarked during the conference, the Jewish communists ‘had freed people of the old mental associations. The young had grown up without knowing the old and without yet possessing the new.’ Zaretski offered assurances that the hybrid vernacular did exist and he classified its three forms: Yiddish-Russian, YiddishUkrainian, and Yiddish-Belorussian. In fact, nobody denied their existence. The essence of the conflict was whether the hybrid vernacular should be accepted as a literary norm.

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Paradoxically, all attempts to standardize the Sovietisms in their labelled not only ‘liquidationism’ but also ‘Jewish nationalism’. This meant that these projects were under suspicion a3 concealed efforts to preserve the durability of the Jewish nation, because the hybrid Yiddish-Slavonic vemaculars might, allegedly, appear as a further development of Yiddish and offer Jews greater linguistic latitude for their ethnic delimitation. During the conference the mutineers not only criticized each other but also retracted statements they themselves had made. Alik attributed Karnenshtejn’s anti-daytshmerism to lack of belief in the future proletarian revolution in Germany. Volobrinski too jumped on the bandwagon, criticizing his own position of 1924 and stressing that the ‘Belorussian comrades’ did not intend to support Odeser arbeter and Alik thus had nothing on which to base his hopes. Agurski, faulting Alik’s position, could not miss an opportunity to attack both Litvakov and, especially, the Kiev Institute. He recalled the ‘Dubnov afiair’, when the noted non-Soviet Jewish historian Simon Dubnov was invited by Liberberg to come to Kiev in 1928 (Rosenthal-Shneiderman 1982: 116—31), as well as political mistakes in Ber Slutski’s Lexicon of Political and Foreign Words (1929). Each of these Soviet appatchiks had passed through the tribulations of Party life with its permanent purges, brainwashing campaigns and ideological zigzags. They, especially those with a nonBolshevik past, were over-anxious not to appear nationalistic. It is no wonder then that a peremptory shout by Party leaders threw them all into disarray. As far as can be ascertained from the extant sources, these people were ready to kowtow to the authorities because their real motivation was often political rather than cultural or linguistic. At a time when some Yiddish activists were being accused of forming a bloc with ‘Ukrainian nationalists’, they wished to demonstrate their communist vigilance and loyalty (Smoljar 1978: 435; Krawchenko 1985: 136). They could not foresee, however, that such champions of ‘national’ language planning as Liberberg, Litvakov, and others would convince the Party authorities that a large-scale Slavization of Yiddish would bear the danger of ‘liquidationism’ or ‘nationalism’. Liberberg, who presided over the conference, managed to reduce Agurski, Kamenshtejn, Alik, and other rebels to secondrate participants. Summing up discussions of the first day of the overt Russian form were

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conference, Liberberg was confident enough to grade the other panellists. He contrasted Agurski’s position with that of another representative of the Belorussian Yiddish centre, Volobrinski. Agurski claimed that the conference had only local, Ukrainian, jurisdiction and argued that only an All-Union conference would have the right to dictate rules to, say, Belorussia. On the other hand, Volobrinski, together with the leading Belorussian Yiddish poet Izi Kharik, had stated, ‘with a Bolshevik categoricalness’, that the Yiddish ‘culture front’ should not be divided by the geographical borders between the Soviet Republics. Liberberg condemned Alik’s anarchism, which was a transparant allusion to the former party afliliation of the Odessa editor (two books of Alik’s Memoirs of the Former Anarchist were published in 1932). Kamenshtejn was ridiculed for his ‘metamorphoses which could not be grasped due to their rapidity’. Also, Liberberg mentioned the former ‘deviations’ committed by Zaretski and Litvakov (Litvakov was ill and could not come to Kiev, though on the eve of the conference he published the article ‘For a Pure and Rich Soviet Yiddish’ which ridiculed all ‘deviationists’—see Litvakov 1934). It was Elje Spivak, the leader (after the death of Nokhem Shtif in 1933) of the philological section of the Kiev Institute, who was assigned to back up official doctrine with scientific evidence. He had already assumed an arbitral tone in his article published shortly before the conference (Spivak 1934). Spivak’s new role as linguistic leader of the Kiev Institute was a triumph and he was later to play a major role in Soviet Yiddish language planning. Spivak’s paper was a compromise between the Scylla of intemationalism (= Russification) and the Charybdis of nationalism (abundant use of Hebraisms and other ‘archaisms’), which he expounded further in his 1939 monograph (Spivak 1939a). Objectively, there was no way the language planners could avoid the massive borrowing from Russian given the post-revolutionary socio-linguistic situation. Spivak, however, condemned all attempts to ‘romanticize Russianisms’, which, in his view, would only serve to acknowledge that Soviet Yiddish had ceased to develop. Instead, he proposed a euphemistic definition of ‘word-formation by semantic matching’ (inhaltlekh paralele vortshafung, lit. semantically parallel word-formation) as a reflection in Yiddish of the ‘drawing together’ of all Soviet languages and of their ‘mutual enrichment’ (we find an analogous approach in his perfunctory article on

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Soviet innovations in Ukrainian, Spivak 1939b). Spivak’s proposal mirrored the authority’s fight against linguistic nationalism and for use of the Russian ‘international vocabulary’ (cf. Robin 1992: 35). Following Spivak’s approach, the conference accepted three basic principles of word-formation in Soviet Yiddish:

1. where Russian, Ukrainian, or Belorussian utilized internationalisms, these words should be introduced intoYiddish as well; 2. where Russian, Ukrainian, or Belorussian utilized both an internationalism and ‘a national term’, the international word should be given preference. A parallel Yiddish word might be coined only if the coinage were ‘unstilted’ and as adequate as the internationalism; 3. where there was no appropriate internationalism, a corresponding German item could be borrowed, in direct or modified form. However, such borrowings were permissible only if the German word had a ‘foothold’ in the Soviet Yiddish lexicon and was comprehensible to Yiddish readers. Otherwise, words from Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian might be borrowed as well. In other words, Spivak et al. accepted, even if euphemistically, that Soviet Yiddish had practically ceased to produce lexical items independently. Nearly all lexical innovations in Soviet Yiddish, whether coined from Hebrew, German, or Slavonic elements, were loanwords or calques from Russian, like the two debatable variants for an equivalent of the Russian oporosit’sja (to farrow): the Hebrew-Yiddish coinage opkhazem zikh versus the Slavonic-Yiddish one oporosjen zihh. Russian was the principal purveyor of internationalisms as well as models for Yiddish neologisms. At the same time, the conference tried to camouflage this trend, particularly because it contradicted the policy of indigenization in Ukraine and Belorussia. To be sure, Russification was also contrary to the ideas of many delegates at the conference who opposed a direct Russian influence on Yiddish language planning (Peltz and Kiel 1985). Hence the preference for the so-called international and German lexical items, which looked equidistant from Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian. Paradoxically, it was mostly Russianisms with international roots or affixes that were defined as international words; it is no coincidence that Zaretski (1927a: 20) had defined them as ‘Russian-intemational words’.

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The conference formulated a new and more tolerant approach to words of Hebrew and Aramaic origin. According to Zaretski’s metaphorical statement, Soviet Yiddish linguists had ceased ‘to check the words’ passports’ (Zaretski 1934). He argued that some language regulators had carried the dehebraization too far. He gave examples of such words as mesiresnefeshdih (self-sacrificing) and shetekh (area, domain, tract) which ‘for the time being could not be replaced by other adequate [non-Hebrew] words’ (quoted in Vajsman 1934). However, that did not mean that the words were a priori ‘innocent’. The selection of ideologically clean words remained valid. Shprintsa Rokhkind, one of the compilers of the 1940 Yiddish—Russian Dictionary (Rokhkind and Shkljar 1940), recounts in her memoir: In 1939 we had completed it [the dictionary]. The editors appointed were people who did not deal with Yiddish. They kept throwing away every word which they regarded as a Hebraism or a Yiddish folk-idiom. One could understand them: they also were afraid. The critics of the dictionary don’t know about these circumstances. In fact, the dictionary appeared in (Rokhkind 1995: 35) 1941, though the title page indicated 1940.

As for German words, the conference challenged the antidaytshmerish efforts of the Yiddish Scientific Institute (Yl'VO) in Vilna. The conference resolutions opened the door to further importations of modern German terms, albeit they had already, even before this official benediction, invaded literary Soviet Yiddish. ‘It is natural that the German terminology dominated in the process of creating [new Yiddish] terms . . .’, wrote Khaim Finkel (1922) in the preface to his Russian-Yiddish dictionary of technical terminology. Vilenkin hailed the practice of terminological borrowings from German as ‘a natural way out’ (Reviews 1933). In fact, borrowings from German saved Soviet Yiddish from many ideologically inadmissible Hebraisms. In addition, Germanisms blocked the way to superfluous importations from Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian. It is diflicult, therefore, to agree with Joshua A. Fishman (1991: 211) when he argues: ‘There is . . . no evidence that the Ukrainian and Belorussian Ausbau [or “building away” from more powerful, similar languages (see Kloss 1978)] struggles influenced the Yiddish attack on daytshmerish to the slightest degree. For all intents and purposes it [anti-daytshmen'sm] was a fully endocentric development.’

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On the contrary, the Ukrainian and Belorussian Ausbau were influential exocentric factors conducive to massive borrowings from modern German. It is characteristic also that the same emotive term daytshmerism—indicating criticism of introducing or employing Gerrnanisms in Yiddish—meant, according to Soviet language-planners, chiefly archaic borrowings, rather than modern importations which were (and are) the principal bugbears for Western Yiddish purists (on various Western applications of the term daytshmerism see Katz 1993: 166—85; Hutton 1993). Apropos the daytshmerisms in Yiddish, it is instructive to compare the processes of innovation in Soviet Yiddish and Soviet German. 3.5 Soviet Yiddish and Soviet German: Some parallels

A bibliography of comparative studies on Soviet Yiddish vis-a-vis Soviet German would be extremely short. So far as Iknow, only Evgenij Vereshchagin’s paper deals directly with this issue (Vereshchagin 1965), though the published abstract of his paper is not mentioned in the most extensive bibliography of Soviet studies on German vemaculars (Berend andJedig 1991). German and Yiddish linguists in the Soviet Union worked virtually in diflerent worlds. Even the organizational matrices of Yiddish and German linguistic centres in the Soviet Union reflected their diflerent goals: the German linguists worked in general universities, whereas Yiddish linguistics was, as a rule, a prerogative of specialized academic institutions in Kiev and Minsk (Pinkus and Fleischhauer 1987: 146-7). German linguistics in the Soviet Union was traditionally regarded as a mainstream, rather than a national field of studies. We know the names of many scholars—ethnic Russians,Jews, etc—who devoted their life to German studies. Yiddish linguistics, on the other hand, attracted almost exclusively students of Jewish origin; it was a secluded national branch of study with its own Yiddish-language publications that by and large remained unknown to students of contiguous subjects. Soviet Yiddish linguists concentrated their efforts mostly on various language-planning issues, especially since in the 19303 any significant deviation from this highway would be tantamount to delinquency. Meanwhile, their German counterparts were markedly interested in dialectology. It is no mere coincidence that Vrktor Zhirmunskij, the most prominent Soviet Germanist, published a

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review on the Yiddish dialectological atlas, which was an important product of the Minsk Yiddish centre and, in general, the first language atlas in the Soviet Union, but he never wrote about the numerous Yiddish language-planning works. Moreover, in his review Zhirmunskij stressed the importance of Yiddish dialectology ‘for the final normalization of the spoken form of the national language’ and expressed his regret that Yiddish scholars, who were busy ‘on the front of language construction’, did not always consider this fact to the proper degree (Zhirmunskij 1940: 136). At the same time, Mojshe Litvakov did not miss a chance to quote a language-planning resolution proposed at a conference of Soviet German writers (Litvakov 1934), although, so far as Iknow, there are no Soviet Yiddish publications mentioning dialectological works by Soviet German linguists. Nor has Soviet German been compared with Soviet Yiddish in Western literature publications. Uriel Weinreich’s seminal survey (1958) skips the Soviet period of Slavic influence on the two Germanic languages. Meir Buchsweiler’s book (1984), which is an important comparative study of difl'erent aspects of Soviet German and Soviet Yiddish history, does contain the chapter ‘The language’. However, it deals only with discussions about new ‘proletarian’ systems of writing for German (i.e. Kleinschreibung and simplification of spelling) and for Yiddish (i.e. phonetization and Latinization). Benjamin Pinkus and Ingeborg Fleischhauer’s book (1987) also ignores linguistic problems, though it dwells on numerous Soviet German and Soviet Jewish historical, demographic, and social parallels. The Soviet German lexicon has come in for attention in recent years (see, for example, Weydt 1991; Whitehead 1993), but these studies have mostly been conducted from the standpoint of language accommodation of German immigrants coming from the Soviet Union, rather than of Soviet German language peculiarities per se. In sum, Evgenij Vereshchagin’s 1965 paper, his 1966 candidate’s dissertation (Vereshchagin 1966) and a few en passant comments in other works (see, in particular, Gitlits 1940; Stumpp 1978, though some of the latter’s etyrnologies are either erroneous or questionable) exhaust my bibliography of comparative studies on the two Germanic languages spoken in post-1917 Russia. Import— antly, studies of language contact, multilingualism, as well as other

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related subjects were, until the 19603, virtually suppressed in the Soviet Union (Fridberg 1970: 17). Again, just a few studies deal with innovations in the postrevolutionary Soviet German vemaculars. Friedrich Schiller’s 1929 article opened this problem. Interesting data can be gleaned from Nikolaj Bernikov’s 1940 work, though his study is devoted exclusively to one Volga German village. It is highly illuminating that, in a recent article by a competent Russian scholar, Schiller’s study of 1929 was still used as the most important source of information on German Sovietisms (Domaschnew 1993). A comparison of existing sources shows that a list of parallel Soviet lexical innovations may be rather long, especially as massive importations from Russian are characteristic of all Soviet languages. First of all, it seems possible to compile a list of analogous lexical innovations associated with different aspects of Soviet life. The following are just some of the most conspicuous examples of direct borrowings and calques (two last examples) from Russian:

chlen (member (e.g. of a party))—Ger. T3chlen,Yi. tshlen; druzhinnik (member of voluntary people’s patrol (to maintain public order) )—Ger. Drushinik, Yi. druzhinih; kulachestvo (the kulaks (rich peasants))—Ger. Kulakentum, Yi. kulalmtum; maeuka (pre-revolution illegal May-Day meeting)—Ger. Majowka, Yi. majovke, mashina (car, lorry)—Ger. Maschina, Yi. mashin; putevka (l. instruction and record sheet on transport; 2. voucher for recreational travel, accommodation and/ or remedial treatment)—Ger. Putjowka, Yi. putjovke, sel’sovet (village Soviet)—Ger. Dorszowjet or Dorfrat, Yi. dorfsovet or

dorfrat‘, treugol’nilt (local authorities, i.e. administrator, Communist Party

organizer, and trade-union organizer)—Ger. Dreieck, Yi. drajelt (The German examples are derived from the Kharkov-based Soviet German newspaper Das Neue Dorf, January—June 1934; Bernikov 1940; Sessler 1967; Stumpp 1978. The Yiddish examples are from: Abchuk 1934a; Shkljar 1934; Vilenkin 1934b;Jofe 1941; Shapiro et al. 1984.) Also, it is possible to find such examples of macaronic phrases as the German die Prodawschiza stareit sich net (Sessler 1967: 568) and

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the Yiddish di prodavshtitse staret zihh nit (cf. Ru. prodavshchitsa ne staraetsja, the saleswoman works without enthusiasm). In general, however, the lexical innovations of Soviet German were fewer than those of Yiddish. As a matter of fact, there was no necessity to coin so many new German lexical items, because metropolitan German served both as the model and source of lexical and phraseological enrichment. The strategies of innovation, too, were different. While the Soviet German neologization followed Standard German word-formation, Soviet Yiddish writers and linguists preferred to adopt Russian word-formation models. Thus, many Soviet Yiddish neologisms were formed by using either aflixation or adjective + substantive collocations, whereas the Soviet German Sovietisms were formed as compounds, for example (Gitlits 1940: 53; cf. Vereshchagin 1965: 30): udarnik (model worker)—Yi. shlogler; Ger. Stossarbeiter, transportnik (transport worker)—Yi. transportler, Ger. Transportarbeiter; traktorist (tractor driver)—Yi. traktorist; Ger. Traktorfu'hrer (also Trahtorist; see Stumpp 1978: 319); fabrichnyj rabochij (factory worker)—Yi. fabrikisher arbeter (also fabrik(3)-arbeter; see Fridland 1940: 47); Ger. Fabrikarbeiter. To be sure, the scope of innovations in Yiddish and in German mirrored to no small degree antithetical visions of the role assigned to the Soviet language communities on the world scene: the central one to the Soviet Yiddish community and a secondary one to the Soviet German community. For Soviet German, two circumstances should be taken into account. First, the Bolsheviks’ obsessive belief in the imminent proletarian revolution in Germany (cf. Karklins 1975). Second, the minority complex which apparently was widespread among Soviet German activists. In this connection, the following response to domestic reforms in German orthography (published in a Volga German pedagogicaljournal) is very illuminating: In general, Ithink that here, on the Volga, all of us, without exception, are not competent enough to solve this problem. We will make fools of ourselves. The orthographic reform must come from Germany. For even if we succeed in decreeing our orthography for all Germans in the Soviet Union—how important are one million Germans compared with one hundred million dispersed all over the world? (Steinepreis 1928)

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No wonder then that Soviet Yiddish language-planners introduced radical reforms of Yiddish spelling (first of all, the naturalization of spelling for Semitic words and, later, the abolition of the traditional word-final consonant letters—see Ch. 5), whereas their Soviet German colleagues did not dare to take analogous steps. The Soviet Yiddish establishment, while engineering the language, perceived themselves as the creators of a model proletarian culture and language for all Yiddish-speaking communities of the world. As the Soviet writer Moshe Tajtsh, suffering from profound megalomania, put it in his 1926 letter, ‘we think here that the Yiddish literature in the whole world must now be guided by Russia’ (quoted from Altshuler 1979: 197). Ironically, in spite of such officious claims, Soviet Yiddish publications were mainly oriented to serve the inland market. It was, therefore, less important to take into consideration the lexical, spelling and other preferences of non-Soviet readers. In addition, a network of pro-Soviet Yiddish periodicals in America and Europe readily reproduced and adapted works published in the USSR. Soviet German publications, by contrast, usually were meant for the pan-German readership. To say nothing of the fact that, especially in the 19303, the Soviet German literary scene was dominated by authors who recently emigrated from Germany and Austria (Pinkus and Fleischhauer 1987: 146-7). One more important sociolinguistic fact must be accentuated. The modern Yiddish literary standard was by and large very close to the spoken language of the Soviet Jewish population. By contrast, Soviet Germans spoke, as a rule, a distinct dialect of the language rather than the Hochsprache. Therefore, their attitude to the learned standard German was by definition much more conservative and puristic. In addition, the bulk of the German population continued (particularly before the Second World War) to live in more or less isolated villages and were not exposed to such crucial social and demographical transformations as the Jews. These factors, together with typological peculiarities of German and with the rather modest language-planning aspirations of Soviet German authors and educationalists, limited the lexical innovation of Soviet German.

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3.6 A conference which did not take place The 1934 conference was a climactic event in the history of Yiddish language planning in the Soviet Union. Nominally, it had again accelerated the Party’s guidance over this field of activity. In practice, it was a convincing victory for a group of Yiddish professionals and their cultural policies. It was the Kiev Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture that consolidated itself as the de facto centre of Soviet Yiddish language planning. In a sense, the Birobidzhan project helped the Kiev Institute to reinforce, for a few years, its position as a kind of scholarly reservoir for the Jewish Autonomous Region. Especially since even before the conference the Kiev Institute had already obtained special funds allocated to the Birobidzhan project (Rosenthal-Shneiderman 1983: 47). Liberberg and his co-workers would not reap the fruits of this victory for long. In the spring of 1936 the Kiev Institute was dismantled and reorganized as a kabinet (research unit). It seems that Liberberg might have had a hand, albeit unwillingly, in the downgrading of this Yiddish academic institution. Sure enough, he visualized Birobidzhan as the principal centre of Soviet Yiddish culture. Perhaps, he did not believe that Yiddish culture could be preserved over a long period of time in the European part of the counUy.

Mikhail Kalinin, the Soviet president, added weight to the ambitious Birobidzhan-centripetal blueprints: ‘I reckon that in ten years Birobidzhan will be the most important, if not the only, custodian ofJewish Socialist national culture’ (quoted from Goldberg 1961: 252). Small wonder then that as early as 1932 Liberberg proposed to transfer the Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture to Birobidzhan. In December 1934 he became the first chairman of the Jewish Autonomous Region’s executive committee, or— formally—the head of the Region (the real head was, of course, the Party boss). While in Birobidzhan, he argued that the most important Yiddish academic institutions, libraries, and artefacts of Jewish culture should be transferred from the Soviet diaspora to the Jewish Region. Liberberg was not destined to carry out his grandiose plans. In August 1936 he was accused of Trotskyism and bourgeois nationalism and arrested (Litvakov 1937; Weinberg 1993: 26). Paradoxically, even after his arrest, Birobidzhan—then ‘the biggest little town’

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with a population below 20,000 (Novick 1937: 16)—continued to be regarded as the future oflicial centre of Soviet Yiddish culture. A few months later several editorials were published announcing the forthcoming Yiddish language conference in Birobidzhan scheduled for 9 February 1937 (Der emes, 17 December 1936; Birobidzhaner shtern, 3 and 9January 1937). This date was chosen to commemorate the visit to Birobidzhan in 1936 by Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin’s rnightyJewish satrap. Apart from the ornamental function, the convention had a more important goal. It was intended not only to mark Birobidzhan as the official centre of SovietJewish culture, but also to solve practical (rather than theoretical) linguistic problems which were dogging Yiddish journalists, teachers, and scholars (Holmshtok 1937b). The Soviet Yiddish periodicals proclaimed a unique feature of the Birobidzhan convention—it was to be the first Yiddish language conference under the oflicial auspices of the Soviet govemment. Moreover, the conference was to deal with Yiddish as the oflicial language of the Jewish Autonomous Region. The published agenda of the conference (Birobidzhaner shtern, 9 January 1937) announced the following papers: 1. ‘Marxist-Leninist linguistics and the aims of Yiddish language development' (by Shimen Dimanshtejn), ‘On unification of the dialects’ (by Khaim Holmshtok), ‘Terminology' (by Elje Spivak), ‘Orthography and normative grammar’ (by Ajzik Zaretski) , ‘Punctuation’ (by Elje Falkovich) , ‘The language of the press’ (by Mojshe Litvakov) , ‘The language of literature’ (by Dovid Bergelson). Articles, which reached print on the eve of the 1937 conference, were far from the heated exchanges of the 1934 Kiev conference. As Litvakov stated: ‘now we have no linguistic discussion: the guide-line for our language construction has been set once and for all. . . . The questions which we sometimes raise nowadays have to do only with putting in good order our numerous languagerelated issues’ (Litvakov 1936: 152). Such protagonists of the 1934 events as Alik, Kamenshtejn, and Agurski were placed outside the pale. Their names were not included in a list (published in Der emes of 15January 1937) of about fifty people invited to participate in the Birobidzhan conference.

”? 97 N

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At the same time, materials of the 1937 discussion show that the 1934 Kiev conference had not satisfied many language planners. Zaretski’s article, which opened the discussion, dealt with the lack of co-ordination in the usage of Soviet neologisms (Zaretski 1936). Again, we read that ‘nationalist’ and ‘misleading’ trends of Russification continued to be an urgent problem of Soviet Yrddish, though this issue had not been discussed publicly since the 1934 conference (Gitlits 1937). Another article, written by M. Shulman, called in question some ‘puristic’ decisions of the Kiev forum. The author argued, for example, that such Russian Sovietisms as udarnik, kolkhoz, and sovnarkom as well as many current Russian acronyms should replace their Yiddish calques (Shulrnan 1937). The unification of Soviet Yiddish pronunciation was one of the main questions scheduled to be discussed at the conference. As far back as 1923 Zaretski had started to weigh the pros and cons of a unified pronunciation. At that time he was not sure whether this problem should or could be solved, especially as he saw no real force capable of implementing unified norms of Yiddish pronunciation (Zaretski 1923a: 11). Six years later, Zaretski saw ‘only contours of the future system’ (Zaretski 1929b: 8). As one of the contours he presumably meant A. R Tsvajg’s proposals based on the speech features of Yiddish actors and some intellectuals who endeavoured to speak ‘literary Yiddish’ (Tsvajg 1929). In his 1935 book on methods of teaching Yiddish, Zaretski recommended the inculcation of the literary pronunciation, although he cautioned teachers not to represent the dialectal forms as ‘mistakes’. Furthermore, in those cases when the literary standard tolerated two parallel forms (like je and jo for ‘yes’; kenen and honen for ‘can’), he advised adhering to the local dialectal forms (Zaretski 1935: 11). By 1937 Zaretski noted that the situation had not changed for the better. He argued that the general unification of Yiddish pronunciation must be regarded as an impracticable task. In his opinion, a normative pronunciation should be introduced in the theatre and radio, though it was first necessary to formulate the norms (for example, bojmer or bejmer (trees), nojtik or nejtik (necessary), rojtlen zikh or rejtlen zikh (to blush; to show red)). As for the spoken language, he proposed to begin by solving some particular problems, rather than making radical general changes. Zaretski believed that it was possible to tackle such problems as

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the uniform pronunciation of international words and the eradication of some dialectal peculiarities (an analogous proposal concerning only ‘narrow provincialisms’ had been formulated in Volodarski 1928). A3 for dialectisms, Zaretski suggested beginning the orthoepic cleansing with distinguishing the hush- ([sh], [zh], [ch]) from the hiss-sibilants ([s], [z], [c]) (Zaretski 1937a). Indeed, in the 19203 and 19303 this so-called sabesdilrer losn existed only in the south and south-east parts of pre-1939 Soviet Belorussia (U. Weinreich 1952) and, therefore, could be regarded as a ‘narrow provincialism’. Table 3.4. Examples of gender assignment by Mojshe Shapiro’s respondents Type of

Nouns

affixation

Number of the respondents who assigned the noun to: fem.

neut.

l 3

18 21

32 27

7

19 22

23 25 31 38 27 33 18 33

masc.

-nish

ajlenr'sh ‘hurry” ajnshtelenish ‘risk' gedehhenish ‘remembrance’

ekhts -(e)n

ge-

gerehhtenish ‘justice’ jogenish ‘haste’ opshporekhts ‘saving' tejgelthts ‘pastry’ geshvilelthts ‘swelling’ fargenign ‘joy' farmegn ‘possession’ onbajsn ‘lunch' geduld ‘patience' gevant ‘cloth’ geuiter ‘storm’

geuejn ‘weeping’ gesets ‘law’

gy'eg ‘rush’ gefar ‘danger'

5 4 5 18 8 29 15 47 24 18 35 23 43 l8 18

14 9 6 10 5 3 1 6 6 3 3

2 6 16

4 2O 28 6 26 6 21 16

Source. Shapiro (1937).

Meanwhile, the Birobidzhan language planners were determined to promote orthoepic reform. They envisaged a future in which the population of the Jewish Autonomous Region would speak a uniform Yiddish language rather than different dialects.

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An American communist journalist ridiculed both Yiddish and Russian spoken by Jewish migrants from Ukraine (Novick 1937: 65). In May 1935 a special conference of Birobidzhan linguists, journalists, and teachers discussed this problem (RosenthalShneiderrnan 1983: 188). Now it was Khaim Holmshtok who zealously advocated the unification of Soviet Yiddish pronunciation. He soon realized, though, that it could not be done overnight, especially as Yiddish linguists were not ready to formulate norms of pronunciation (Holmshtok 1937a; 1937c). One more task brought to the fore was the unification of gender assignment of Yiddish nouns. In the 19203 Zaretski, for example, was of the opinion that the two-gender system of Lithuanian Yiddish was more acceptable for the literary standard (see in particular Zaretski 1928d: 128). A survey (Table 3.4) showed that a ‘natural’ assignment by the speakers differed even within the same dialect: of the fifty-two Yiddish-speakers polled forty-four were from Ukraine, four from Poland, and four from Belorussia. Articles published in the course of the 1937 discussions show the language regulators’ vision of a ‘fully developed’ Soviet Yiddish: many planned to craft a vocabulary as rich as Russian. Ideally, the desired homologous vocabulary would have lexical and grammatical correspondence in the crudest sense, namely a Yiddish twin for every Russian word. Dovid Bergelson’s 1937 article ‘Lexical Problems in Yiddish Literature’ published in the Birobidzhanbased quarterly journal Forpost exposes this approach. In particular, this venerable Yiddish prose writer (but who was no linguist) complained that Yiddish lacked equivalents for many Russian words to describe the landscape, weather conditions, and the charms of nature. Bergelson seems to take a masochistic delight in choosing Russian words without interlingual equivalents. The irony is that be extracted Russian words which often had no direct synonyms even in a ‘developed’ language, such as English: brad (ford); buran (heavy snow-storm); burja (storm; tempest; gale); kholm (hill; hillock); kotlovina (hollow, basin); kruten’ (whirlwind); kurgan (mound, hillock); metel’ (snow-storm); obryv (precipice); opushka (border/ edge of a forest/wood); otrog (spur (projection from mountain)); prigorok (hillock, knoll); prud (pond); purga (heavy snow-storm, blizzard); ruchej (brook, stream); spusk (slope (on mountainside)); vikhr’ (whirlwind).

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According to Bergelson, Sholem Aleichem—due to the lexical limitations of Yiddish—was compelled to describe paraphrastically such a notion as rasputitsa (season of impassable roads): nit mit kq'n vog-n un nit mit Irq'n shlitn ([it’s impossible to traverse] neither by a cart nor by a sledge). Bergelson argued that Yiddish writers usually preferred ‘a depiction of a man’s condition associated with a weather condition’ rather than ‘a direct depiction of natural phenomena'. Also, he added, neither Sholem Aleichem nor other pre-revolutionary writers used an appropriate lexicon in order to portray the beauty of their heroines. In general, Bergelson concluded that Yiddish writers, who skilfully used folk idioms and oral-type constructions when they depicted the traditional mode of life, displayed little skill when their characters found themselves outside the shtetl surroundings. A few writers (Bergelson mentioned Sholem Asch, Dovid Ignatoff, Isaac Meir Weissenberg) did try to overcome the insularity of the vocabulary and subject-matter. But these endeavours were not crowned with success. Bergelson ‘confessed’ that lexical problems, in particular, forced him to stage his Nohh alemen in a shtetl rather than in a city proper, where he, in fact, had met the prototype of Mirele, the protagonist of the novel. Bergelson’s forceful statements should be considered with reservations. To be sure, the article must be read within the context of the time and the writer’s biography. Bergelson returned to the Soviet Union quite late, in 1934. Against the backdrop of antiWestern feeling and suspicion, Bergelson had to demonstrate that he did not harbour any warm feelings towards his Western colleagues. However, it is clear that, in order to depict the new, Soviet reality, Yiddish‘writers needed new lexical material. This new lexicon was so distinct and often even contrary to the conventions of Yiddish, that it grated upon the ears of (especially non-Soviet) speakers and readers. Among various sound demonstrations of the peculiarities of Soviet Yiddish the most eloquent one is, perhaps, the confession which we find in the documents relating to the Department of Yiddish Literature and Language attached to the Moscow Teachers’ Training Institute (formerly Second Moscow Univer-sity) written at the beginning of 1938 (see Estraikh 1994]): A sizeable number of students, even those who make better progress in Yiddish than others, know the [Yiddish] lexical material insufficiently,

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especially that part which has become less used or has fallen out of use altogether owing to the great changes in Yiddish in the last twenty years. To a considerable extent, such an inadequate and incomplete knowledge of Yiddish vocabulary hampers understanding and sometimes makes it even impossible to understand in full and to learn classical Yiddish literature (Mendele [Moicher-Sforim], Sholem Aleichem, Peretz), as well as

works by prominent Soviet writers (Bergelson, Markish, and others).

According to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bergelson and other writers ‘lost . . . their linguistic charm’ in the Soviet surroundings. ‘It may sound mystical, but some of these writers were actually no longer able to construct a Yiddish sentence; their language had lost its soul’ (Bashevis Singer 1962: 267). In fact, it was a new sociolinguistic situation rather than mysticism that changed the ‘soul’ of the language. For Tevje the Dairyman (Bergelson’s chief analysis was of this work by Sholem Aleichem) Yiddish was the ‘only true language, the instrument of all his inventiveness, the expressive vehicle of all his thoughts and feelings’; therefore ‘Sholem Aleichem was able to exploit the full range of the Yiddish language—precisely because Tevye’s limited circumstances and traditional way of life kept him within the sphere of Yiddish and its (abundant) resources’ (Wisse 1985: 32). Soviet Yiddish literature, however, as Bergelson (1937: 150) put it, ‘ceased to celebrate— both in language and in content—the poverty of the Sabbath’ and

instead celebrated the ‘riches of week-days’. Hence, Ruth Wisse’s play of words, the ‘contrast between the resourceful Yiddish of the poor and the poor Yiddish of the resourceful’ (Wisse 1985: 32). In the end, the debates of the winter and spring of 1937 came to naught. The purges of the année terrible 1937 annihilated the plan to convene the Birobidzhan conference. Shortly before the day announced newspapers published a communication that the conference was adjourned till May. As it turned out, it never took place. Liberberg, Litvakov, and many other participants of the discussions of the 19203 and 19303 were executed or arrested and sent to a labour camp in the Gulag (see in particular Aronson 1944: 146—64). From 1938 Russian was considered, de facto, more important than other Soviet languages, though, as before, the official propaganda paid lip-service to the equality of all languages (cf. Kirkwood 1991: 63). A new generation had grown up in cities and other places where Yiddish played an insignicant role as a means

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of communication. At this time the decline of Yiddish activities gained additional momentum due to the curtailment of the most reproductive elements of the Soviet Yiddish Empire—nursery schools, secondary schools, and institutions of higher education. True, Yiddish schooling did not disappear overnight. Yiddish classes still existed in some places and textbooks continued to be published (cf. Zaretski 1939). However, it was a shadow of the system created during the two post-revolutionary decades. Just three Yiddish newspapers survived after 1938: Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan), Der shtern (Kiev), and Oktjabr (Minsk). In 1939, the percentage of Jews who declared Yiddish as their native language dropped from 72.6 per cent in 1926 to 41 per cent in 1939; at the same time, the percentage of those claiming Russian as their native language grew by a factor of 2.1 (Altshuler 1987: 179, 184). In September 1939, in accordance with the Soviet—Nazi pact, eastern Poland, an area with deep-rooted Jewish life, come under Soviet rule and the decrease of Yiddish activity was somewhat reversed. InJune 1940, the Baltic countries likewise became Soviet Republics. The Soviet annexations of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were made at the expense of Romania, and as a result, the Soviet Jewish population swelled from 3,000,000 to over 5,000,000. In order to facilitate the Sovietization of new citizens, 'the Soviet authorities opened Yiddish schools, launched periodicals, and organized other cultural and propaganda activities in Yiddish (see Pinchuk 1990: 70—9). This burst of support, however, was only a short-lived episode against the background of the general marginalization of Yiddish.

4

Soviet Yrddish in the 19403 to 19803 4.1 Ejnihajt (Unity): The 1940s

It is difficult to speak about a language-planning policy of the 19403. The nightmare of the Holocaust did not leave room for discussions or reforms concerning the Yiddish language per se. The vast majority of Soviet Yiddish institutions—schools, periodicals, national districts, academic centres—were drastically reduced by the Soviet authorities in the late 19303 and later wiped out in the flames of the war. In spring 1942 the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was established (for its history see Redlich 1982; 1996). Designed to win strong Jewish sympathy in the Western world for the Soviet cause, the Committee published the Yiddish newspaper Ejnikajt (Unity). In addition, about 100,000 copies of books and pamphletsrn Yiddish were circulated during the war period (the Yiddish publishing house Der emes survived the purges of the 19303) (see Shmeruk 1960; Ben-Yosef 1960). One of the main missions of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was to distribute material for foreign periodicals, including Yiddish ones. Clearly, the priority was to make the material acceptable to the Yiddish media in North and South America, Great Britain, and Palestine, rather than to preserve the ‘purity’ of Soviet Yiddish. The problem of the Anti-Fascist Committee’s linguistic policy concerning the material for the foreign media and readership deserves special study. It is known, for example, that a number of Yiddish books, published in the Soviet Union for distribution abroad, were properly adapted, at least orthographically. A3 for the vocabulary used in the Soviet publications of the time, it was, again, mainly borrowings from Russian that filled the lexical lacunas. The following characteristic samples of wartime lexical innovation in Soviet Yiddish are from the last Yiddish linguistic

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book published in the Soviet Union, The [Yiddish] Language During the Great Patriotic War (Spivak 1946). Most of them are also attested in the 1984 Russian-Yiddish Dictionary (Shapiro et al. 1984): 1. Military professions: avtomatler, cf. Ru. avtomatchih (sub-machine gunner); farbindler, cf. Ru. .srg'aznoj (messenger); famihhtler, cf. Ru. istrebitel’ (destroyer (e.g. of tanks)); infanterist, as well as pekhotiner, cf. Ru. pelthotinets (infantryrnan); kty'lnvarfler, cf. Ru. pulernetchih (machine gunner); minenvarfler, cf. Ru. minometchilr (mortar man); minirer, cf. Ru. miner (minelayer); snajper, cf. Ru. snajper (sniper); tanhist, cf. Ru. tanhist (tanker); unter(r)ajsler, cf. Ru. podryvnih (member of demolition squad); zenitler, cf. Ru. zenitchik (anti-aircraft gunner). Three agentive suffixes were active: -er, -i3t, and -ler (Spivak 1946: 36). The first of them is the universal suffix, which we find in the vast majority of Yiddish agentives formed from a verbal root. The suflix -i3t is found mostly in the international words of the twentieth century (such as kapitalist (capitalist, financier), marksist (Marxist), metalist (metalworker), shakhmatist (chess-player)), though some of the words with -ist appeared in the nineteenth century (kantonist (aJewish boy conscripted into long years of military service), kolonist (colonist, settler)). A3 for the suflix -ler, it became especially productive from the 19203 (Schaechter 1984: 202); during the war, it was widely used in calques of Russian nouns referring to persons (for example, with the suffix -chik), in particular when the suffix -er had been already used in a noun denoting a type of weapon or equipment (cf. kojlnvarfler (machine-gunner) and kojlnvarfer (machine gun)). In the 19403, the suflix -ler even pushed aside the -nik. It is characteristic that a few Yiddish words with -ler calqued the corresponding Russian words with mile; for example: Ru. desantnik, Yi. desantler (paratrooper); Ru. podvodnik, Yi. untervaserler (submariner). The suffix -er, however, remained with verbal stems with -ir, as in Yi. minirer (minelayer), Yi. ojsshpirer (intelligence officer, scout).

2. Weapons and equipment; famihhter (Ru. istrebitel’) (destroyer (warship); fighter (aircraft)); fajervarfer (Ru. ognernet) (flame-thrower);

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(hant-)kojlnvarfer (Ru. (ruchnoj)pu1ernet) ((light) machine gun);

minenvarfer (Ru. minomet) (mortar);

torpede (Ru. torpeda) (torpedo); torpedn-kater (Ru. torpednyj hater) (torpedo-boat).

3. Other military terms: as (Ru. as) (ace

(pilot));

dot (Ru. dot = dolgovremennaja ogneuaja tochka) (pillbox); dzot (Ru. dzot= dereuo-zernljanaja ognevaja tochlta) (blockhouse); foder-pozitsje (Ru. peredovaja pozitsija) (front line); minen—feld (Ru. minnoe pole) (minefield); shuts-rand (Ru. kraj oborony) (line of defence/ resistance). In the military terminology borrowed from Russian, parallel semantic extension played an important role. For example:

arqisrejkhern (Ru. vykurivat’) (to smoke out (the enemy)); durkhkemen (Ru. prochesyvat’) (to comb (a forest, etc.)); farq'nihung (Ru. soedinenie) (force, formation, large unit); fargejn inflang (Ru. zalthodit’ sflanga/voflang) (to outflank); ibermoln (Ru. peremalyvat’) (to pulverize (lit. to grind, mill)); hesl; zak (Ru. hotel; meshoh) (mousetrap, pocket, encirclement); klem (Ru. kleshchi) (pincer movement); knup (Ru. uzel) (centre/ nest (of resistance)); nest (Ru. gnezdo) (pocket (of resistance); weapon emplacement); onzotlen (Ru. osedlat’) (to get astride (a road)); shtepn (Ru. strochit’) (to blaze away (with a machine gun)); tejl (Ru. chast’) ((military) unit); tsung (Ru. jazyk) (prisoner (to be interrogated)); the metonym tsung was often used in the phrase khapn a tsung (cf. Ru. dobyt’ jazyka) (to capture a prisoner who will talk) (in Yiddish of the nineteenth century, the expression khapn a tsung meant ‘to find out/ discover’); varfn zikh in atake (Ru. brosat’sja v ataku) (advance/rush to the attack).

It is interesting that the Russian trite metaphor sokol (falcon) for ‘pilot’ was translated into Yiddish as odler (eagle) rather than falk (falcon) (though many times also the overt borrowing sokol was used). Apparently, the word falk did not evoke the same metaphoric associations as sohol. A3 in Russian, where many epic notions became active during the war, in Soviet Yiddish a number of historicisms, as well as new

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coinages based on Hebrew roots, were frequently used; for example: giber (hero); mojred (rebel); nekomenemer (avenger). At the end of the war, Birobidzhan again entered the scene. At this time about 25,000 Jews were residing in the Jewish Autonomous Region (the total population of the region was 100,000). Between 1946 and 1947 numerous articles appeared in Ejnihajt calling once more for Jewish migration there. Birobidzhan increasingly began to appear as a genuine refuge for thousands of Jews, who no longer had a place to live or could not bring themselves to live on the site of their families’ slaughter, or who felt the post-war hostility of neighbours and employers (see for example Redlich 1982: 57—8; Weinberg 1996). It was the last chance to create a Yiddish-speaking enclave in the Soviet Union, but little more than 20,000 Jews went there. Towards the end of 1948, the campaign of persecution that had spread throughout the country also reached Birobidzhan, and waves of bloody cleansing against the Jewish ‘nationalists’ swept through the region. At the end of 1948 and early 1949 all specificallyJewish cultural institutions, including those that survived the purges of the 19303 and the few that had been established during the war, were obliterated. Most shocking was the death of Shlojme Mikhoels, the world-renowned Yiddish actor and chairman of the Jewish AntiFascist Committee, in an accident, deliberately staged by the Soviet secret police, on 13 January 1948. Widespread arrests followed reaching many hundreds and embracing people who had little, if any, connection with Jewish culture. Nearly all the prominent figures in Soviet Yiddish culture, most of whom had never voiced any opposition to the government, were arrested and shot. Many others—Yiddish writers, editors, and linguists—became prisoners of the Gulag detention and hard labour camps.

4.2 The era of Sovetish hq'mland Chronologically, the post-Stalin renewal of Yiddish publishing in the Soviet Union dates from February 1959, when a collection of stories by Sholem Aleichem appeared in Moscow. However, it was Sovetish hq'mland (Soviet Homeland), launched in 1961 under the auspices of the Soviet Writers’ Union, that became a continuous, state-sponsored centre—or, to be precise, central oasis—of Yiddish culture. This centre also controlled the publication of Yiddish

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books, most of which were reprints of works which had previously appeared in the magazine. Sovetish hq'mland, the product of Nikita Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’, was clearly conceived as a gimmick in order to evade other, more effective ways of renewing Yiddish culture after its virtual de3truction in the late 19403. The Soviet authorities no doubt imagined that this manmuvre would silence at least left-wing foreign movements and personalities who demanded the reconstruction of Jewish culture in the USSR. The demands became especially insistent after publication of the 1959 census returns which revealed that almost 21 per cent of Soviet Jews still considered Yiddish their mother tongue (see in particular Tobin 1961; Schulman 1965; Sloves 1985; Levenberg 1991: 207-24). These statistics contradicted the Soviet official arguments that the Jews had been fully acculturated and, therefore, did not needYiddish cultural activity. In one of his 1959 letters from Moscow, Pejsakh (Paul) Novick, the editor of the New York Yiddish Communist newspaper Morgnfrajhajt, wrote about a significant number of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Unionwho had survived the Stalinist repressions: [The Yiddish poet] Sh[muel] Halkin and others told me that there are 73 Yiddish poets and novelists who are members of the Writers’ Union in Moscow and other cities. In addition there are some thirty such writers who are not as yet members of the union. 1was also told of a group of young Yiddish writers that is growing up in Vilna, Riga, Minsk, Birobidzhan. It should be noted that at the meeting with the writers their average age appeared to be considerably lower than at similar meetings in the (Novick 1959: 15) United States.

The appearance of Sovetish hejmland signified a modified version of the old Yiddish policy. Officially, the status of Yiddish—as the national language of Soviet Jews—was again placed beyond dispute. In fact, we know only of a few overtly anti-Semitic authors as well as one provincial Jewish self-hater who denied or minimized the status of Yiddish during this period (Moskovich 1987b). Sovetish hq'mland was not a separate institution in the full sense of the word. Its staff, headed by the sole editor-in-chief, Aaron Vergelis, was, in fact, a department of the Moscow publishing house Sovetskij pisatel’ (Soviet Writer), one of the monopolies of the Soviet book market. Being a non-profit-making monthly (in 1961-4 bi-monthly) publication, Sovetish hejmland depended

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wholly on subsidies which the publisher (following directives of the highest authorities) allotted it. Paradoxically, this vassalage ofl‘ered significant advantages: the editorial staff were almost totally unconcerned with financial and administrative matters, their function being to prepare and proof-read each issue. The publisher also paid the salaries, bonuses, and authors’ honorariums which provided the leading writers with substantial incomes. Ideologically, however, the magazine was directly guided by a couple of middle-rank apparatchiks from the Central Committee of the Communist Party. It is illuminating that the Communist cell of Sovetish hq'mlandwas independent of the Party bureau of Sovetskij pisatel’. Sovetish hq'mland never had its own printing press. Manuscripts were sent to the Moscow printing house No. 6 Iskra revoljutsii (The Spark of Revolution), which carried out the entire process of typesetting and printing. Up to the end of 1991 linotypes belonging to this printing house also produced practically all secular and religious books in Yiddish and Hebrew for the Soviet Union, including Birobidzhan, where the old typographical equipment, deprived in particular of the final forms of consonants, was suitable only for the increasingly anachronistic local Yiddish newspaper Birobidzhaner shtern. Subscriptions and distribution were functions of other centralized organizations: Sojuzpechat’ for Soviet readers and Mezhdunarodnaja kniga for foreign readers. Aaron Vergelis, like all Yiddish ‘press barons’, concealed the magazine’s true circulation figures. But in this case, it is a very simple matter to calculate the approximate circulation from the annual Pechat’ SSSR (Periodicals in the USSR): in 1961 25,000 copies were printed; in 1966 the number fell to 16,000; in 1971 to 10,000; in 1977 to 9,000; in 1978/ 1981 to 7,000; in 1985 to 5,000 (Moskovich 1987a: 140; Shmeruk 1991: 201). InJanuary 1989 the magazine had 2,732 (or 83 per cent) Soviet subscribers and 547 (17 per cent) foreign subscribers (Estraikh 1995c). In addition to these 3,237 copies, several hundred more copies were published for free distribution and the retail trade. The geographical breakdown of the subscribers was as follows: Ukraine, 1,007, including (regions with ten and more subscribers): Kiev, 215; Czernowitz (Chernovtsy), 155; Lvov, 100; Odessa, 78; Vinnitsa, 73; Kharkov, 68; Zhitomir, 48; Dnepropetrovsk, 41; Khmelnitsk, 41; Donetsk, 37; Crimea, 34; Nikolaev, 23; Zaporozhe, 21; Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk), 16; Cherkassy, 11.

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Russia, 903, including (cities, regions and autonomous republics with ten and more subscribers): city of Moscow, 251; city of Leningrad (now St Petersburg), 98; Moscow Region, 52;Jewish Autonomous Region, 35; Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) Region, 35; Cheljabinsk Region, 33; Gorky (now Nizhni Novgorod) Region, 32; Bashkir Republic, 24; Kuibyshev (now Samara) Region, 24; Perm Region, 23; Novosibirsk Region, 21; Krasnodar Region, 16; Volgograd Region, 16; Rostov Region, 15; Tatar Republic, 15; Saratov Region, 13; Brjansk Region, 12; Omsk Region, 12; Vladimir Region, 10. Other Soviet republics: Belorussia, 192; Moldavia, 176; Lithuania, 106; Latvia, 105; Uzbekistan, 102 (including Tashkent region, 81, Sarnarkand region, 11); Kazakhstan, 48; Azerbaijan, 24; Estonia, 24; Georgia, 20; Kirghizia, 15; Tajikistan, 6; Armenia, 2; Turkmenistan, 2. Abroad: Israel, 155; USA, 116; Canada, 40; France, 38; East Germany, 34; Australia, 26; West Germany, 26; Poland, 25; Romania, 15; Bulgaria, 13; Great Britain, 11; Belgium, 10; Holland, 6; Austria, 5; Hungary, 4; Japan, 4; Argentina, 3; Czechoslovakia, 3; Finland, 3; Denmark, 2; Italy, 2; Brazil, 1; Mexico, 1; Mongolia, 1; Thailand, 1; Uruguay, 1; West Berlin, 1. As always, in 1989 the bulk of subscribers resided in the Soviet Union. We do not know the ratio between the numbers of Soviet and foreign subscribers in the earlier years. It is clear, however, that the ideological and political foment of the years after the SixDay War between Israel and its Arab neighbours in June 1967 could not but result in a precipitous falling-off of foreign readers, who started to shun Sovetish hejmland as an anti-Israel force. In the early 19603 the magazine had about 2,000 subscribers in the USA, including 500 through the Morgn-frayhayt (Estraikh 1997). However, even the leftist Yiddish publications, which hitherto were distributors of the Soviet magazine, became its opponents (see, for example, Birnbojm 1976). In the Soviet Union, too, the magazine would certainly have had more readers, had it been able to refrain from attacking Israel and focus on the real problems of Soviet

Jewry. It is interesting that in 1989 almost 12 per cent of all subscribers to Sovetish hejmland, or above 15 per cent of Soviet subscribers, were residents of Moscow, Leningrad, and the Moscow region, areas characterized by a high level of assimilation (see, for exam-

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ple, Altshuler 1991). While there are no specific details of the subscribers’ social composition, my own experience indicates that a substantial number of the readers were elderly intellectuals, whose Russian was as a rule far more fluent than their Yiddish. Many of these readers skipped over the novels and poems, preferring items on, for example,Jewish history, anthropology, art, bibliography, and language. Indeed, Sovetish hejmland was the main outlet for such publications (see Greenbaum 1992). Small wonder that the metropolitan Russian cities of Moscow and Leningrad boasted the largest number of such readers. Many of the magazine’s contributors lived there too. Importantly, for many of the subscribers, the reading of Sovetish hey'mland meant not only being au courant, it also meant participation in Jewish cultural life, however limited and crippled its scope. Apart from the traditional areas populated by many Yiddishspeakers—Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldavia, and the Baltic republics—an impressive number of readers lived in Uzbekistan, Sverdlovsk, Cheljabinsk, Gorky, and elsewhere. Presumably most of these readers were refugees from the Second World War, while the others were former prisoners and exiles of Stalin’s time who for various reasons had not remigrated to the western regions of the USSR or to Poland. Letters and visits of readers demonstrated that, beside the metropolitan and provincial ‘highbrows’, many of the subscribers preferred Yiddish belles-lettres to informative material. For these readers, Sovetish hq'mland was usually the only literary Yiddish publication they could obtain. Birobidzhaner shtern, a newspaper equally accessible, typically covered successes achieved by local milkrnaids and construction workers, to say nothing about the primitive style of articles teeming with mistakes and misprints. Vergelis was happy that the second Soviet Yiddish periodical was so weak. Moreover, in the 19803, when Leonid Shkolnik, the Birobidzhan daily’s ambitious young editor, tried to target Yiddish readers residing outside Birobidzhan, Vergelis used the tested expedient of letters to the Party authorities denouncing political faults found in the newspaper (the texts of some of these letters are published in Shkolnik 1992). None the less, some Yiddish readers subscribed only to Birobidzhaner shtern because they preferred a newspaper to a sophisticated magazine. The only foreign Yiddish newspaper which was distributed

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through kiosks of Sojuzpechat’, was Der veg, the weekly organ of Israeli communists. However, Der vegwas so dull that many of its copies remained unsold. Another potential rival was the Warsaw newspaper Folks-shtime. Alone among foreign Yiddish periodicals, this had a tangible number of readers in the Soviet Union and was generous with the space it gave to poems, stories, and articles by Soviet Yiddish authors. Folks-shtime played an important role in the post-Stalin revival of Soviet Yiddish culture. Ironically, this procommunist publication had, in the eyes of Soviet Jews, a nonconforrnist reputation. In 1956—61 it was almost the only place where Soviet Yiddish writers could publish their works. After Sovetish hq'm— land had been launched, Folks-shtime became the main forum for works which Soviet authors could not publish (though they were by no means anti-Soviet) or did not wish to see on the pages of Sovetish hq'mland (for a bibliography of Soviet authors’ publications in post-war Yiddish periodicals in Poland, see Altshuler 1975). In the Soviet Union it was impossible to subscribe to Folks-shtime. Some people managed to establish direct contacts with its editorial stafl through, for example, Polish friends who paid the subscription. However, given the specific character of its distribution in the Soviet Union, Folks-shtimecould not compete with Sovetish hq‘mland, especially as a committed Yiddish reader would prefer to have both periodicals. By the 19803 the Warsaw periodical had deteriorated in quality. Simultaneously its distribution in the Soviet Union appears to have fallen, though this process cannot be associated with its quality only. Rather, the number of its older readers, often former Polish Jews, declined. As for readers who had attended Soviet Yiddish educational institutions, many of them found it difficult to understand Folks-shtime and other foreign Yiddish publications due to the lexical and, especially, the orthographical discrepancies between foreign and Soviet Yiddish. In sum, there can be little doubt that the vast majority of regular Soviet Yiddish readers were subscribers to Sovetish hejmland. Consequently, even if the same copy was read by two people (for example, in the same family), the actual number of regular Yiddish readers in the late 19803 totalledjust a few thousand—a small number compared with the 150,000 or so who, supposedly, claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue during the 1989 census (Kupovetskij 1990). But even in the 19603, when the magazine’s circulation was 25,000, only a small proportion of Yiddish speakers

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were in contact with Yiddish in print. Yiddish in the post-war Soviet Union had became—mostly—a folk vernacular, because the bulk of its speakers did not read or write in Yiddish, and— partly—a sort of classical language, because some of the readers of Sovetish hq'mland could hardly speak proper Yiddish. While in 1961 the magazine boasted over one hundred contributors, in the late 19803 in the entire Soviet Union there were only thirty or forty writers, a few professional proof-readers, historians, music, art, and language experts, and perhaps about a dozen

Yiddish-speaking actors.

In the 19803 Sovetish hq'mland initiated the organization of Yiddish groups at the Moscow Literary Institute in order to prepare young writers and editors. In 1986 it began to publish annual youth editions, consisting mainly of works by Yiddish writers of the post-war generation; the bi-monthly jungvald (New Growth) was published as a supplement from July 1989 to 1991. Faina Grimberg, a literary critic, called the works of young Yiddish writers ‘literature of a linguistic experiment’, because all of them—as well as many characters in their works—were more fluent in Russian. She also drew a parallel between this literary phenomenon and modern works written in different dialects of Swedish, in Macedonian, and even Esperanto (Grimberg 1986; for a history of ‘youth drive’ of Sovetish hejmland see Estraikh 1995d). In 1989—91 about 1,000 people were beganning to study Yiddish throughout the Soviet Union. However, the dearth of teachers and, more importantly, mass emigration had sapped the vitality of projects aimed at revivingYiddish schooling. The milieu of Yiddish specialists was essentially limited to the writers of Sovetish hejmland. It is no mere coincidence that even the only samizdatYrddish periodical Mame-Loshn (Mother Tongue), whose four issues appeared in Moscow in 1989, was edited by Velvl Chernin, formerly one of the younger editors of Sovetish hejmland. For the younger generation, however, Yiddish was the mother’s tongue or even the grandmother’s tongue rather than the mother tongue. Hebrew was winning many more adherents among the nationally active Jews. In the early 19903 Yiddish lecturers were invited from the USA, Israel, Britain, and France for a few educational programmes organized in Moscow, since the last local specialists had already emigrated from the country or were too old for such enterprises. The break-up of the Soviet Union marked the end of an era in

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the modern history of Yiddish culture—the era of Sovetish hejmland, as the three decades that followed the summer of 1961 (when this Moscow magazine was launched) may justifiably be described (Shmeruk 1994: 496). In 1990 the Moscow publishing house Sovetskij pisatel’ brought out its last Yiddish book. At the end of 1991 the magazine Sovetish hey'mland ceased to appear. Since 1993 its shadow has been published under the name Dijidishe gas ([ewish Street) (Estraikh 1996b). 4.3 The 1984 Russian-Yiddish dictionary

The language of Sovetish hejmland and, especially, the Russian -Yiddish dictionary, published in 1984, drew the attention of a number of foreign linguists, particularly Mordkhe Schaechter (see Schaechter 1969-70; 1990). His analysis of the peculiarities of the Soviet Yiddish usage is based on a profound reading of various publications; his articles are very informative for those studying Soviet Yiddish in particular and modern literary Yiddish in general. For all that, Schaechter’s puristic-cum-atomistic approach and persistent ignoring of the socio—linguistic context leave little room for objective conclusions, especially since purism was not a distinctive feature of Sovetish hejmland. In general, the experience of Sovetish hejmland suggests an idea that purism—in particular, militant purism—is hardly compatible with the activity of established, self-confident writers, especially if the writers themselves play first fiddle. In addition, the approach of the few Soviet Yiddish linguists who survived the repressions was a moderate one. Their attitude was that the etymology of the word was a less important factor than its authenticity, stylistic adequacy, and clarity (see, for example, Falkovich 1973; 1978). Mojshe Shapiro, the leading Yiddish lexicographer of the Sovetish hq'mland period, even doubted the value of the definition ‘Soviet Yiddish’, which (according to him) had been introduced by Nokhem Shtif. In one of his articles, whose name itself is illuminative—‘Some Peculiarities of the Uniform Literary Yiddish in the Soviet Union’, Shapiro argued (1967: 141): ‘This definition never had nor could have any terminological meaning, since it never meant a new quality or a literary language different from the literary Yiddish outside the borders of the Soviet Union. In fact, there were only a few peculiarities which could justify speaking (even

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conditionally) of a specific Soviet Yiddish style.’ According to Shapiro, it was ‘life itself' rather than the linguistic discussions that had provoked the dehebraization-cum-dearchaization drive of the 19203 and 19303 and this had affected an insignificant part of the vocabulary. During the war, the struggle against Hebraisms was not only unimportant, it even became harmful. Without Hebraisms Soviet Yiddish publications would not attract foreign readers. In general, the leitmotif of the post-war activity of Soviet Yiddish linguists was the continuation and preservation of literary Soviet Yiddish, which, in their eyes, represented the direct and most 10gical development of the language of turn-of-the-century Yiddish literature. They were against disturbing the vocabulary, especially any lexical items which had already gained a foothold in Yiddish in print. Shapiro (1967: 146) stressed also that for literary Yiddish the spoken language since the war had become less important than the established literary usage. He held that literary Yiddish was, in fact, a written language and the potential of its mass spoken medium had never been realized (see Moskovich 1984: 39). The central linguistic problem discussed in numerous articles in Sovetish hejmland was the use of words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin. A penchant for Hebraisms was very strong among the writers (see in particular Shternberg 1968; Shapiro 1968; Tokarski 1969; Falkovich 1974). In a sense, this tendency can be compared with the post-war popularity of Slavisms which Max Weinreich (1950: xiv—xv) observed in Yiddish stylistics outside the Soviet Union. In the West, the Holocaust and the annihilation of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union increased the sentimental value of Slavisms, which became nostalgic lexical markers of the ‘old homeland’. In Soviet Yiddish Hebraisms played a similar role. As regards the overseers from the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, there is little doubt that the chapter and verse of Yiddish language planning were of no interest to them; none of them knew Yiddish, and Vergelis was for them the tried and tested expert. In fact, Sovetish hejmland was an untouchable institution, primarily because there were no other Soviet institutions which could compete for authority in the field of Yiddish literature and language. The Party instructors also realized that it would be foolish to bother with the problems of a language which came to light only within scant books and magazines and newspapers with small circulations. Given the laissez-faire approach of

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the higher authorities, the linguistic tastes of the magazine’s editors, chiefly Vergelis himself, played a role which can scarcely be

exaggerated. Perhaps most importantly, Vergelis was

not an opponent of Hebrew. The anti-Zionist fire of articles in Sovetish hq'mland did not extend to the language. On the contrary, Vergelis wrote about the

process of mutual rapprochement and enrichment of Hebrew and Yiddish. He even argued—naively and outdatedly enough—that this process should be regarded as part of the forthcoming merging of all languages of the world into a universal idiom (Vergelis 1972: 173-4). Therefore, his approach to Hebraisms in Yiddish was an even-handed one. One more factor, albeit paradoxical, is worth mentioning: the opponents of Hebraisms were usually proficient in Hebrew, whereas for Vergelis and many other Soviet writers of his generation, whose Hebrew was virtually non-existent, the biblical language was a forbidden fruit which they could taste thanks to the indulgence of the post-Stalin period. For all that, some Soviet Yiddish linguists, such as Mojshe Shapiro and Elje Falkovich, continued to advocate the doctrine of the late 19303, contending that ‘archaic and bookish’ elements could not be recommended for current usage. In particular, this approach was recommended for the Russian—Yiddish dictionary (Shapiro et al. 1984), which, in the 19603 and 19703, was being prepared for publication in Moscow under the auspices of the publishing house Russkijjazyk (for a comprehensive history of the project and the concurrent linguistic discussions, see Moskovich 1984). In spite of some vociferous protests (Shternberg 1968; Margolin 1978), lexical items of Semitic origin remained underrepresented in the dictionary. In the literature published on the dictionary (Moskovich 1984; Bordin 1987; Wexler 1989; Schaechter 1990) it became legitimate to criticize the compilers for ignoring many lexical items of Semitic origin. The main component of the words and phrases omitted from the dictionary was associated with Judaism. In a sense, such excessive secularism of the vocabulary had a sociologicaljustification, since the religious life of the community had virtually been brought to naught (see Rothenberg 1971). To be sure, the disregard of the religious component of the vocabulary mirrored the general attitude of Soviet lexicographers (Wexler 1989: 146).

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Clearly, the compilers and publishers were also reluctant to stress the social distance between Jews and non-Jews. Therefore such words as goj and orl (non-Jew) were omitted. Soviet Yiddish, in general, had seen the departure of these words, which were often purged even from the reprints of pre-revolutionary classics. Nevertheless, in some entries in the dictionary we do find the ‘JewishnonJewish dichotomy’, for instance: Ru. dukhovenstvo (clergy): Yr. gajstlekhe, kler (in general), hie)"kojdesh (Jewish); Ru. kalendar’ (calendar): Yi. kalendar (in general), luekh (Jewish); Ru. khram (temple): Yi. ternpl (in general), bq's-hamikdesh (inJerusalem);

Ru. kladbishche (cemetery): Yi. tsvinter (Christian), besalmen (Jewish); Ru. kreshchennyj (baptized): Yi. getojfter (in general), geshmadter (a convertedJew, apostate); Ru. molitvennih (prayer book): Yi. gebetbukh (in general), sider

(Jewish);

Ru. obshchina (community): Yi. gemejnde (in general), hehile

(Jewish); Ru. pomolvka (engagement; betrothal): Yi. farlobung (in general), knasmol, tnoim (Jewish); Ru. prosveshchenie (enlightenment): Yi. uflclerung (in general),

haskole (Haskalah); Ru. svadebnyj podarok (wedding present): Yi. khasene-matone (in general), droshe-geshank (Jewish) (ironically, both components of the general term are of Semitic origin, whereas in the Jewish term the first component is Semitic and the second component is Germanic); Ru. uboj (slaughter (of animals)): Yi. kojlen, kajln (in general), shekhtn, kojlen (Jewish); Ru. venchat’sja (to marry (religious ceremony)): Yi. farhq'rat vern (Christian), nemen khupe—kidushn (Jewish). The underrepresentation of Hebrew words in Shapiro et al. (1984) may be partly explained by the fact that it was based on a Russian rather than a Yiddish glossary. In this connection, it is illuminating that even in the dictionary compiled by U. Weinreich (1977), which boasts a high percentage of Hebrew words, a significant number of them can be found only in the Yiddish-English

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section; in the English-Yiddish section we do not find lexical items which should be explained rather than translated, for example: hanfe (one of the four corners of the arbe-kanfes, the ritual male garment); heser (ornamental crown set upon the Torah scrolls in the synagogue); thhum-shabes (a distance of 2000 e113, which observantJews are not permitted to exceed on the Sabbath when walking out of town); thies-kaf (hand shake signifying agreement); tales (tallith, a striped tasselled shawl worn by Jews during certain prayers); tashlekh (a rite performed on Rosh Hashanah, in which men gather at a stream and shake out their pockets over water as a symbol of washing away their sins). In addition, the corpus of Russian terms (at least, active ones) for the realities of Jewish life was far more modest than, say, the corresponding English vocabulary. Jewish religious life in the Soviet Union was kept at bay and Russian Jewish periodicals did not exist. In fact, from 1937 until 1985 not a single periodical on a Jewish theme was ever published, except for a few samizdat works (Karasik 1994).

The 1984 dictionary also shows that the surviving Soviet Yiddish linguists continued to be much more tolerant of words and forms borrowed from modern German than the American Yiddish normativists. The frequency of overt Gerrnanisms in the dictionary was in line with the vocabulary of contemporary Soviet Yiddish publications. For instance, Solomon Birnbaum wrote—true, in a surface-scratching article—about the language of Sovetish hejmland and Birobidzhaner shtern: ‘Sometimes one has the impression when the writer uses a certain word that he has onlyjust looked it up in a Russian-German dictionary. At other times one feels that he must have once lived in Berlin’ (Birnbaum 1979: 36). As for new Russian borrowings, scores of them—in an overt or calqued form—appear in Shapiro et al. 1984. For example: Ru. atomnik, Yi. atomnih (atomic scientist); Ru. atomokhod, Yi. atomokhod (atomic-powered vessel); Ru. kineskop, Yi. kineskop (tube in TV set); Ru. kolg'otki, Yi. kolgotkes (tights); Ru. kosmonavt, Yi. kosmonavt (astronaut); Ru. vozdushnajajama, Yr. luftgrub (air-pocket); Ru. lunohhod, Yi. lunokhod; leuone vegele (lunar module); Ru. magnitofon,Yi. magnitofon (tape-recorder);

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Ru. rahetchih, Yi. rahetler (missile specialist); Ru. reahtivnyj samoIet, Yi. realttiver aeroplan (jet plane); Ru. Sovet Ekonomicheskoj Vzairnoposhchi, Yi. der rat far hegnzajtiher ekonomisher hilf (Council for Mutual Economic Aid); Ru. tselina, Yi. tselina (virgin soil/ land); Ru. mezhdunarodnyj,Yi. truishnfellterlekher (international); Ru. vezdekhod, Yi. umetum-gejer (cross-country vehicle); Ru. vertolet, Yi. vertoljot (helicopter). Although the compilers of the dictionary in many cases tried to bridge the gap between Soviet Yiddish and normative Yiddish in the West (Bordin 1987: 196), they could not tangibly reduce the differences. The dictionary was, in a sense, a memorial to Soviet Yiddish dreams and dreamers of the 19203-19403, particularly to the language of the epoch. It is no mere coincidence that the compilers of the dictionary included in the entry dvenadtsatyj (twelfth), a clandestine epitaph to the martyred Yiddish writers and activists; this ordinal is illustrated through the combination of words ‘on the twelfth of August’. On this day in 1952 the most prominent personalities of Soviet Yiddish culture were executed on Stalin’s direct order (see Borshchagovskij 1994; Naumov 1994). Unfortunately, the schism between Soviet Yiddish and Western Yiddish usages has never been properly studied, though even impressionistically it is clear that differences between a Soviet Yiddish text and a Yiddish text written by an American or an Israeli author are in many respects more significant, than, for example, between a literary work written in British English and American English. In particular, the Yiddish in the West is much more influenced by Polish and English. The following list, which is far from being complete, illustrates the semantic differences between lexical items found in Russko—evrejskij (idish) slovar’ (Shapiro et al. 1984) and Modern English—Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary (U. Weinreich 1977):

akademiker: academician (Ru. akademik) in Shapiro et al. (1984), academic(ian) in U. Weinreich (1977); amunitsje: accoutrements (Ru. amunitsija) in Shapiro et al. (1984), ammunition in U. Weinreich (1977); divan: sofa (Ru. sofa) in Shapiro et al. (1984), sofa or rug (cf. Polish dywan) in U. Weinreich (1977); dinje. melon (Ru. dynja) in Shapiro et al. (1984), melon or

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pumpkin (cf. Polish dynia) in U. Weinreich (1977); narte. dog-sledge (Ru. narty) in Shapiro et al. (1984), ski (cf. Polish narty) in U. Weinreich (1977); sliver. (small) public garden (Ru. sliver) in Shapiro et al. (1984), square, plaza in U. Weinreich (1977); klimalts. menopause (Ru. klimalrs) in Shapiro et al. (1984), climax

in U. Weinreich (1977). The reinterpretation of the words bulihhalter and khezhlm-firer represents one of the most telling examples:

bukhhalter. book-keeper, accountant (Ru. buhhgalter) in Shapiro et al. (1984), bookkeeper in U. Weinreich (1977); khezhbn-firer. ledger clerk (Ru. schetovod) in Shapiro et al. (1984), accountant in U. Weinreich (1977). Thus, due to the semantic correspondence between khezhb and account, the American khezhbn-jirer has been considerably ‘pro— moted’ compared with the Russian colleague schetovod—a modest clerk equipped with an abacus (it seems both schetouodand khahbn-firer originate from the German Rechnungsfrihrer). The language of Soviet Yiddish writers was not homogeneous. In fact, it strongly depended on the individual style as well as on the subject-matter. Writers, whose stories about traditional Jewish life were marked by a lively idiomatic Yiddish style often slid to the robotic language of Soviet-speak when they wrote about contemporary events. In such contemporary writings, Russian calques dominated among the neologisms; for example: lufigrub < vozdushnaja jama (air-pocket); najbojung < novostrojka (newly erected building); opru-hojz < dom otdykha (holiday house); umetum-gejer < vetdekhod (Jeep; cross-country vehicle) (Estraikh 1991b).

5 Soviet Ylddish orthography 5.1 Preliminaries

Historically, Yiddish has been written right-to-left using the Hebrew characters and some Hebrew orthographic conventions. These conventions are: the etymological spelling for Semitic components of the language (that is, words and forms derived from Hebrew and Aramaic), word-final allographs, and a word-initial silent aleph. For non-Semitic components of Yiddish, a vowelized system of spelling was developed. This considerably de-Semitized system included Hebrew graphemes with or without diacritic signs (vowel points and consonant quality markers) and several digraphemes, pronounced as a diphthong or a consonant. The silent aleph came to be used not only at the beginning of a word or its stem, but also to avert ambiguity by distinguishing the consonantal ‘tsvej vovn’ 11 (v) before and after the vocalic ‘vov’ 1 (u) and, later, by marking the border between some syllables. In the aggregate, the Yiddish alphabet became conformable to the European type of alphabet. Yiddish vowelized spelling was based only partly on phonetic principles. Given the dialectal differences and quite vague canons of standard language, Yiddish spelling used some conciliatory principles. In addition, it mirrored certain German orthographic conventions. In fact, the coexistence of the Hebrew and German orthographic conventions reinforced the Yiddish system of spelling, and imparted to it some of their stability. The influence of German orthography became especially strong in the nineteenth century in maskilic writings: the use of the silent ‘ajen’ l! and ‘hej’ .‘I (following the German endings -en/-el and words with ‘h’), the redundant gemination of consonants (modelling, for example, the German -mann), the string ‘jud + ajen’ D‘ as the Yiddish equivalent for the German ‘ie’ [i], and some other

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replicas of the German writing system featured in Yiddish publications (Shtif 1928c;J. Fishman 1991: 195—7; Katz 1993: 71-86). From the beginning of the twentieth century, it was the maskilic orthographic style of the St Petersburg daily Frajnd that dominated Yiddish secular publications in Russia and other countries (Shtif 1928c: 56—7). (An anecdotal occurrence from the history of the Frajnd illustrates the superfluity of silent ‘ajens’ in the orthography of that time: in 1903, when the newspaper was launched, the few first issues could not be printed with the normal number of pages due to a shortage of ‘ajens’ in the printing cases—see Ginsburg 1944: 199.) Meanwhile, a number of reforms were proposed; each presupposed a particular level of phonetization. Apparently, the idea that the etymological spelling of Hebrew words was a stumbling block for Yiddish literacy was especially popular among teachers, they were at the top of the list of those Jewish intellectuals who championed spelling reforms. There is evidence that some of them practised, on their own initiative, a uniform orthography for the entire vocabulary (Halpern 1926; Gold 1977: 340; Falkovich 1978: 188). In 1908, at the Czernowitz Yiddish Language Conference, Nathan Birnbaum, the initiator of this historic convention, proposed a reform of the spelling of Hebrew words (Gold 1977: 311). In 1913 Mordkhe Vejnger published in Warsaw his radical orthographical project which included phonetization of the spelling (or de-etymologization) of Hebrew words (Vejnger 1913). In the same year Ber Borokhov published his project which was fated to mould the modern system of Yiddish orthography (Borokhov 1966: 72-5; see Katz 1993: 87-9). Also, we know about a number of even more radical pre-1917 proposals, including the plan to Latinize Yiddish orthography, suggested in the 1909 blueprint of Ludwig Zamenhof, the inventor of Esper1930c. 4; Gold 1977: 327-8; Katz 1993: 85—6). Without a doubt, the proposals to reform Yiddish spelling were partly influenced by the turn-of-the-century endeavours to simplify other European orthographies, particularly German. The most radical projects of German reformers called for the abolition of letter patterns such as sch, ch and for the naturalization (dc-etymologization) of loanwords from Latin, Greek, French, and other languages (see Lautschrift v. Wortschrifi‘ in a 1902 proposal—Brener 1978). There was also a proposal to abolish in German dehnungs-h (which has a lengthening effect on the preceding vowel) and of

anto (Zaretski

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the digraph ie, as well as new unigraphemic substitutes for sch and ch (Bramann 1987: 100—3). At the same time, the proposals for reform were a natural concomitant of the political movement for Yiddish. While some of the Yiddish activists claimed allegiance to the traditional Ashkenazic Yiddish-Hebrew(—Aramaic) bilingualism, others—the most radical —saw Yiddish as the national Jewish language. For these radicals the traditional spelling of Hebrew words looked onerous. It is safe to say that the Soviet Yiddish orthographical reform —which would be widely seen as a (or even the) hallmark of denationalized and moribundJewish culture—had been actually instigated by a group of non-communist Yiddishists. In fact, by the time of the 1917 revolution there were no real Yiddish philologists and writers in the Bolshevik party. We know (see Ch. 2) that Soviet Jewish institutions had to start working by and large through former Bundists, Poale Zionists, anarchists, and members of other political currents. For these Yiddishists-monists of every stripe, the revolution formed auspicious conditions to eclipse the power of tradition and to put their plans into practice (see Holmshtok 1932: 49—50; Beznosik 1932: 76). In addition to the general spirit of subversion, iconoclasm, and reconstruction some realities of that time facilitated and even stimulated a radical transformation of Yiddish spelling. Especially noteworthy is the reform of Russian orthography first proposed in 1904 and finally effected after the Bolshevik revolution. Further, the Soviet surroundings gave the reformers a unique opportunity to enjoy political and organizational support from the government and the ruling party. Thus, the Yiddishists’ dream about the uniformity of Yiddish orthography seemed to be easily achievable. Since there was no experience of analogous orthographic reforms, the instigators of the Yiddish respelling could not foresee all the potential psychological, sociological, and political factors.

5.2 The first steps towards reform, 1918—1920

Orthographic reform of Yiddish was the first language-planning project carried out by the Soviet Jewish authorities. The years 1918-20 were characterized by Zaretski as the period of ‘theoretical, organizational, and propaganda activity’ in the field of orthographic reform (Zaretski 1931b: 280). Zaretski, who was then

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leading the Yiddish Philological Commission attached to the Jewish Commissariat (the latter was, in turn, a subdivision of the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities), was, without question, the major architect of Soviet Yiddish spelling reform. A chronicle of the period can be re-created from the magazine Kultur un bildung (Culture and Education), a publication of the Jewish Commissariat’s Department for Culture and Education. In the seventh issue of the magazine (15 October 1918) we find the first signal, J. Mitljanski’s article ‘A Revolution in the Yiddish Orthography’. The author argued: ‘Now, in the time of general revolution, it is necessary to revolutionize our orthography, in the same way as it has been done in Russian orthography’ (Mitljanski 1918:

10). Two months later, on 17 December, the magazine published M. Shulman’s article on the same subject. The author reported on the phonetization of Yiddish spelling in the Kiev newspaper Naje tsajt (from September 1917) and, later, in the Moscow newspaper Der emes and magazine Kultur un bildung. These periodicals changed the spelling of non-Semitic words; first they eliminated the German-inspired silent ‘hej’ and ‘ajen’, as well as the Semitic word-initial ‘khes’ (for the history of this spelling reform see the memoirs of Mojshe Katz, the editor-in-chief of Naje tsajt—M. Katz 1942; see also Zaretski 1923b). This reform was based on Ber Borokhov’s 1913 proposals. In fact, Mojshe Katz wanted to naturalize the spelling of Semitic words too, but he did not receive the backing of his colleagues. Ironically, among the opponents we find Mojshe Litvakov. At the beginning of 1919 an analogous spelling code, without the respelling of Semitic words, was prepared in Kiev by the orthographic commission of the non-communist Kultur-Lige (Culture League), where Litvakov played an important role until 1920, when he became a Bolshevik (see Culture League Code 1919; for Litvakov’s metamorphoses, see Schulman 1971b: 81-96). Shulman, however, regarded the refinement of the spelling of non-Semitic words as a half-measure since, he argued, ‘the greatest aflliction of Yiddish spelling is the orthographical autonomy of Hebrew words’. He stressed that this ‘orthographical autonomy’ was a particularly knotty problem for Jewish schoolgirls and schoolmistresses who traditionally had no education in Hebrew. He linked the problem of spelling with the status of Hebrew in

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Soviet schools: either Hebrew should become a mandatory subject, or Hebrew words should be respelled according to the general phonetic rules of Yiddish. However, as soon as we proceed to put into practice the new Yiddish phonetic spelling, we notice an amazing opposition or reluctance on the part of the radicalJewish intelligentsia. It is the same intelligentsia that reviled the [silent] ‘ajen’ and ‘hej’, and later all the holy fundamentals of the capitalist system and even the fetish of the Constituent Assembly. But the same intelligentsia has not the courage to kick out from the Yiddish alphabet such letters as, for example, ‘sof' and ‘khes’, which are absolutely redundant in Yiddish orthography. . . . It is possible that ‘khes’ and ‘sof' have a pedigree longer than the Russian letter ‘jat”, but we, socialists, don’t care a shell about privilege and right of possession. Do we really have to take it to heart if the democratic ‘khof' and ‘samekh’ supplant the (Shulman 1918: 7) aristocratic ‘khes’ and ‘sof'?

This philippic reveals that de-Germanization (such as the elimination of the silent ‘ajen’ and ‘hej’) was not so much a radical sociological step as an encroachment on the Hebrew component of the Yiddish writing system. Shulman mentions that even advocates of a complete phonetization of Yiddish orthography strove to preserve the ‘khes’ and ‘sof’ in respelled words of Hebrew origin, even though Yiddish had at its disposal the graphemes ‘khof’ and ‘samekh’. (Everything points to the fact that Shulman was one of the radical reformers. Thus, it was he who would, on 19 September 1919, publish in the weekly of the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities an article about a universal Roman alphabet for all languages—Shulman 1919.) From a discursive footnote to Shulman’s article we learn that the Department for [Jewish] Culture and Education was at that time accumulating different projects for spelling reform, and that a special commission was creating a ‘uniform, correct and rational orthography for the new Yiddish schools as well as for the broad masses of people’. On 31 January 1919 Kultur un bildung published a letter from the shtetl Monastirshchino (dated 22 December 1918). It is interesting that the letter was published (and, apparently, had been written) using a naturalized spelling of Hebrew words, though— paradoxically—with the silent ‘hej’. The author, Sh. Harlavski, welcomed the initiative to reform Yiddish spelling since ‘if Yiddish is a language like all other languages, then it ought to have a uniform

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orthography’. He diagnosed a psychological complex which kept many intellectuals from further reforms: ‘they cannot free themselves from the old objection of our opponents that “Yiddish has just been hatched, therefore every boy may shape it at his own discretion” ’. In other words, Yiddish did not deserve reforms or, at least, did not deserve to be reformed by the intellectuals. Furthermore, in the intellectuals’ eyes the ancient attire of Hebrew words added a sanctity to Yiddish (Harlavski 1919). On 10 March 1919, Kultur un bildung reverted to the question of orthography. Abraham Kantor, a journalist and translator, wrote about the phonetic spelling of non-Semitic words (A. Kantor 1919). He accentuated the simultaneity of the spelling reforms in Russia and in the United States. It meant, according to Kantor, that the language regulators had already overcome two important obstacles. First, they realized that Yiddish might have a phonetic orthography that conformed to the literary language rather than to dialects. Second, they were freed from the German orthographic conventions that had restricted previous reforms. As for the respelling of Hebrew words, Kantor made it clear that the issue was still under discussion. On 8 March 1919, the reform of Yiddish spelling was put on the agenda of a session of the Central Bureau of the Jewish Sections. Mojshe Rafes, however, the former prominent Bundist, insisted on the need to preserve ‘the old orthography’ and the Central Bureau decided to leave the question open (Extract from the minutes 1919). Finally, in its first issue of 1920, Kultur un bildung published Zaretski’s article ‘On the Reform of Yiddish Orthography’ (Zaretski 1920). Zaretski listed the reasons for and against complete phonetization of the Yiddish writing system. Pros: I. Unarnbiguous spelling facilitates education. 2. Simplification of spelling frees more time in school for the teaching of other useful subjects. 3. It will be easier to eliminate Hebrew from schools. 4. The alphabet per se becomes more rational.

Cons: I.A rupture of the millennia-old tradition. 2. Practical difficulties for the pre-reform generation to switch over to the new spelling.

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3. Texts written according to traditional rules seem to be more aesthetic. 4. The Hebrew spelling is stable, whereas a reform would create chaos. 5. English and many other languages borrow words without

respelling. Zaretski was confident that the pros outweighed the cons, and that only one problem might really be serious: the formulation of unambiguous rules for the respelling of Hebrew words. The article contained an algorithm of respelling. Ironically, in order to apply Zaretski’s do-it-yourself algorithm, the user had to be proficient in Hebrew spelling. In essence, Zaretski was guided by the so-called north-easternist approach which canonized the norms mythologically associated with the received pronunciation of the Vilna Yiddish-speaking intelligentsia (cf. Schaechter 1977: 47). According to Dovid Katz (1994), the north-easternist approach is only partly linked with the high prestige of Vilna as an important centre ofJewish scholarship and literature. Historically, three factors played a crucial role in establishing the norms of standard Yiddish: first, the continuity of norms accepted in the traditional writing system; second, the overlappings with German; and third, the influence of the traditional Ashkenazic pronunciation of Hebrew and Aramaic. The interplay of these factors shaped the widely accepted norms of literary Yiddish: north-eastern (Lithuanian) Yiddish as the ground-element, but with mid-eastern (Polish) /south-eastern (Ukrainian) gender assignment for nouns, with the differentiation of the vowels [ej]/ [oj] which merge into [ej] in north-eastern Yiddish, and with

some other features of non-north-eastern dialects. Soon after Zaretski’s publication in Kultur un bildung, the First All-Russian Convention of Jewish Educators, held in Moscow in July 1920, ensured the reform of Yiddish spelling according to phonetic principles for both non-Semitic and Semitic components. Undoubtedly, the introduction of the new spelling with its anti-Hebrew and anti-traditional context had a distinct ideological connotation. This is clear even from the party affiliations of the delegates: three out of four were communists. Moreover, the con-

vention had already received directives from the Third All-Russian Conference of the Jewish Sections of the Communist Party (Schulman 1971a: 79—81).

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It is difficult, however, to agree with the opinion (see, for example, Kalmanovitsh 1931: 80) that by the spelling reform the SovietJewish communists wanted, at one stroke, to separate themselves from the Jewish world. This does not seem logical, since the essential features of Soviet orthography had originated from earlier, often more radical projects, advanced by non- (or even anti-) communist linguists, educators, and writers. Moreover, at the time of the reform, the communists hardly wanted to be cocooned inside the Soviet borders. In 1920, when the worldwide proletarian revolution seemed to be so close (see Florinsky 1933: 29—71; Nollau 1961: 45—51), the reformers apparently dreamed that the whole Yiddish proletariat would soon take up their initiative. Some of them may even have perceived the spelling reform as just an interim step, since in the near future, with the victory of Communism, all national languages would be supplanted by one common

language.

5.3 Implementation of reform, 19203

The Soviet environment provided fertile ground for the Jewish communists to establish their control over Yiddish education and to implement the reformed spelling in all their publications. These persistently supplanted the periodicals and books of the non-communists and of a small number of independent publishers. One would think that the success of the reforms was predetermined. For all that, the reforms were not to be truly successful, since the premiss upon which they were based was quite amateurish and raw rather than scholarly (Vevjorka 1926: 30; Makagon 1927). Even Zaretski, the principal author of the 1920 code, would admit a decade later: ‘The new reform somewhat damaged the uniformity which had already begun to be settled before the revolution. Rules on how to write the Semitisms in Yiddish were, of course, worked out. The rules, however, were not sufficient, they could not meet all problems. People often wrote the way they thought was correct’ (Zaretski 1931b: 280). Indeed, spelling varied from publication to publication (Vajsman 1925; Vevjorka 1926: 30; Makagon 1927). For the vast majority of Yiddish speakers the literary norm was a notion rather than a reality (Zaretski 1929c: 289; Katz 1983: 1034; 1994: 222). In

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addition, the reforms were institutionalized at the time when Ukraine was, at least formally, an independent country. Thus, in the early 19203, in publications in Odessa and Kiev an idiosyncratic spelling could still be used (Zaretski 1923c). For example, the Kiev newspaper Komunistishefan was using the prefix MN [uf] instead of the traditional mu, even though this rule had not yet been mentioned in the 1920 code (Zaretski 1923e). According to Zaretski’s retrospective periodization, in the 19203 the orthographic issue should have assumed a new character— unification rather than reform (Zaretski 1931h 280). In reality, however, the Soviet language planner of the period was tempted to implement further reforms. The ideas that flourished at that time were radical, and even eccentric. Anyone (including lunatics) with a private spelling blueprint felt that the revolution was speaking directly to him, and that he had to strike while the iron was hot. In 1925, Mordkhe Vejnger, the leading Yiddish linguist in Belorussia, proposed an improvement to the Yiddish orthography by using ‘shurek’ 1 for [u] and ‘jud with khirek’ '3 for [i], thereby reserving the graphemes ‘vov’ 1 and ‘jud’ " without diacritical signs of vocalization for [v] and [j]. He also wanted to abolish the silent aleph for both word-initials and word-medials, as well as to eliminate the phonetically superfluous doubling of consonant letters which resulted from morphological stitches in such words as iber(r)ajsn (interrupt) and ajn(n)emen (overrun) (Zaretski 1929a: 6). We find analogous grapheme-to-phoneme mappings in Shejngold’s proposals (Shejngold 1923). Paradoxically, Vejnger, Shejngold and other like-minded reformers were, to a certain extent, traditionalists (cf. Zaretski 1929a: 11). All their innovations were based on the Hebrew system of writing, whereas a few Minsk reformers took an extreme stand by proposing the introduction of new graphemes (instead of digraphemes) for [v], [ej], and [aj] (see Vevjorka 1926: 12—13). Apparently, such radicalism was reinforced by the general orthographic climate in Belorussia, where language planners were still discussing various projects concerning the Belorussian writing system, including introduction of new graphemes with diacritical marks for the aflricates [dz] and [dzh] (Kastsjuk et al. 1993: 50). Some of these ideas came from abroad—from Vilna, for example, where Max Weinreich proposed a ‘v’ instead of ‘tsvej vovn’ for [v]

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(Yudl Mark nicknamed this letter shpitsik maksl ‘peaked small Max’-—see Y. Mark 1977: 139). The abolition of word-final allographs for the consonants [f], [kh], [m], [n], and [ts] particularly agitated the reformative psyche, especially since the orthographies of other peoples had been rationalized in the same way. Zaretski (1923b) cited the reform of Tatar spelling, based on the Arabic alphabet, and claimed that in some Yiddish schools the allographs had already been abolished. In the early 19203 Zaretski was not sure what to do with the silent aleph: whether to abolish it only in the word-medial position, as had already been approved by the First Conference of Yiddish Teachers in Poland, or also to discard it at the beginning of a word (Zaretski 1923d). An orthographic conference was scheduled for the beginning of 1926 (Vevjorka 1926: 3), but for some reason did not take place. Apparently, the differences of opinion were still too substantial. Even on the eve of the Second Conference of Jewish Cultural Workers (April 1928, in Kharkov), which approved the principles of the new spelling code, a collection of two competing projects was published. One was by Zaretski, the other, by Vejnger (Projects 1928). Details apart, these projects mirrored the controversy on a point of principle. Zaretski was a proponent of interdialectal Yiddish orthography; Vejnger argued that the Yiddish literary language was a reality and, consequently, spelling had to be compatible with the literary pronunciation. Furthermore, Vejnger was more strict about following the ‘one grapheme for every phoneme’ rule, which persuaded him to introduce more innov-

adons The Conference did not settle all the differences among the reformers. Zaretski published a protest against the abundance of diacritical signs which were imported from Vejnger’s project into the new spelling code (Zaretski 1928c). By the end of the year, the diacritical load of the 1928 code was reduced (see Communique 1928). But in a spelling handbook published in 1929, we find prescriptions in the spirit of Vejnger’s proposals—for example, to always use ‘shurek’ for [u] and ‘jud with khirek’ for [i] (Spelling Handbook 1929). Later on, the diacritical marks for ‘vov’ and ‘jud’ would be used only in some cases, as a rule in place of the abolished silent aleph in word-medial positions, to indicate [u] and [i] as separate sounds (see, for example, Spelling Handbook

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1930; Zaretski 1931c; Spelling Handbook 1932). The spelling discussions even inspired Itzik Fefer to write in 1932 the poetic satire ‘A panegyric to the khirek’ ridiculing the atomistic approach of some Yiddish linguists.Judging by the following stanza, he meant apparently Zaretski and Shtif: Ihh hon nit, vi andere, tifun genit barn Nister gefinen di ‘unen’, ihh hon ojhh nit, bruder, mit greys apetit ba Mendele tsey'ln di ‘funen’. . . (Fefer 1967: 86—90) (I cannot, like others, be deep and proficient, finding in Der Nister[’s works] the conjunctions un, Nor can I,brother, calculate With great relish the number of fun in Mendele[’s works]...) There were three directives in the 1928 orthographic reform: first, to marginalize the differences in the spelling of Hebrew words; second, to abolish the silent aleph in all word-medial positions; and third, to abolish word-final allographs. In addition, the

1928 code prescribed other distinctive but less vexed rules, including: the elimination of geminate consonants; the Russified spelling of international terms, and geographical and personal names; differentiating between the prefixes 0N [af] and D114 [uf] instead of the traditional cover spelling -D"1N; "IN [at] instead of TIN for prepositions, but ']1N [uf] for the predicative ‘up, awake’; N: [ba] instead of 1:: for prefixes and prepositions (see Reizen 1933). Thanks to the new prescriptions based on Zaretski’s study (Zaretski 1928h 13-24), the spelling of generally used Hebraisms was put in order, particularly for the limited number of lexical items included in the first Soviet Ortografrsher verterbuhh (Spelling Dictionary 1932) and in subsequent Soviet dictionaries. For all that, given the diflusive character of the Semitic component in the Yiddish vocabulary, respelling could never overcome the lack of co-ordination and even misspelling. The abolition of the word-medial silent aleph was a rather strange rationalization. Instead of the habitual and universal (but, in the reformers’ eyes, redundant) grapheme, the new spelling introduced two Hebrew diacritical signs. What kind of logic led to this outwardly illogical step, especially since the word-initial silent aleph survived? On the one hand, the reformers had produced an almost completely European alphabet disguised in Yiddish graphemes with, say, a kind of diaeresis adapted from Hebrew vowel

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signs (cf. Birnbaum 1933: 91). On the other hand, the word-initial silent aleph was, in a sense, a non-European atavism. Most likely, some reformers interpreted the new code not as the last page in the transformation of Yiddish spelling but, rather, as a trade-OE. It was actually a temporary truce between reformers with difl‘erent levels of readiness to de-Semitize Yiddish. A3 in all such cases, the demarcation line could not be based on logic; in particular, it halved the use of silent alephs (for practicaljustification of extra, silent letters in traditional systems of spelling see Nida 1964).

Thanks to the spelling reforms, the Soviet provenance of a Yiddish text can easily be established, mainly according to the following combined characteristics:

1. Naturalized spelling of all Hebraisms. 2. Absence of word-final consonant letters (especially in the publications of the 19303 and 19403). 3. Differentiation between [af] and [uf]. 4. Spelling a: [ba] for prefixes and prepositions. 5. Occurrence of word-initial double aleph in words whose first (auction), ”argument phoneme is [a], for example

warms

(lecture-room; audience). 6. Occurrence of 1" in the positions where Russian models have a lo [ju], for example (revolution); (pole). consonant at of letters the seams with geminate 7. Absence

nurhrmm

Dv’Dfil

affixes. 8. Occurrence of m [av] in word-initial positions, for example currents (bus); 6012118 (August). 9. The same grapheme N (aleph) without diacritical signs is used for silent aleph and vocalic aleph.

The elimination of the five special word-final consonant letters tangibly changed the appearance of Soviet Yiddish texts. This part of the reform had obviated one more obstacle along the path to an ‘unadulterated’ Graeco—Russian-Graeco—Roman alphabet (cf. Voegelin 1961). It is no mere chance that a critic of the abolition of word-final letters remarked that Latinization was but a step from the 1928 code (Charny 1930).

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5.4 Latinization

The Latinization campaign in the Soviet Union was launched in 1922 when Azerbaijan obtained a new alphabet (see, in particular, Winner 1952; Imart 1965). But even as early as 1919, some officials from the Commissariat of Education had raised the issue of a common Roman alphabet (see Shulman 1919). The Azerbaijan initiative was taken up as a successful compromise between the old ‘reactionary, religious’ Arabic and the ‘imperial’ or ‘missionary’ Cyrillic alphabets. Latinization became an important part of language planning in the 19203 and 19303. In 1922, Lenin called Latinization ‘the great revolution in the East' (see Latinization 1938: 90). By 1933 new alphabets had been designed for about seventy languages, including the vemaculars of the Mountain, Crimean, and Bukharan Jews, as well as of the Karaites—that is of ethnic groups which had previously used the Hebrew alphabet (Nurmakov 1934: 157). Some voices in favour of a new Yiddish alphabet were also heard. Itshe-Mejer Shpilrejn’s conspectus of a Yiddish course for the Second Moscow State University contained a thesis about ‘the shortcomings of the modernYiddish alphabet and the theoretical necessity to replace it with a Roman one’ (Shpilrejn 1926). Abroad, a discussion on Latinization was again initiated in the mid-19203. Proponents of a new script argued that Yiddish, as a European language, did not need the Hebrew, ‘Asian’, alphabet, especially since (as they claimed) many words of Hebrew origin had become obsolete. Another argument claimed thatJewish literacy in America and Europe was dying out much faster than spoken Yiddish, so reformation of the Yiddish script would help rejuvenate the language (see Kenig 1926). From Zaretski’s Russian article on Latinization (Zaretski 1932a), we know that the question was on the agenda of three Conferences of Jewish Cultural Workers in 1920, 1924, and 1928. During this period, Zaretski was against the Latinization of Yiddish. In his 1928 spelling project, Latinization was characterized as an inopportune problem (Projects 1928: 25). In 1930, the Yiddish pedagogical magazine Ratnbildung published Mojshe Kamenshtejn’s pro-Latinization article (see Greenbaum 1978: 175). Around the same time, the Russian magazine Revoljutsija i hul’tura inserted an article with the bellicose heading:

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‘Down With the Biblical Antique!’ The anonymous V. K. (Zaretski would later reveal that it was a certain V. Kolchinski—see Zaretski 1932a: 20) demanded a ‘radical rationalization’ of the Yiddish orthography; he even proposed an alphabet using twenty-six Roman characters (Kolchinski 1930). Bentsion Grande, who was one of the founders of the Latinization movement, proposed another alphabet using twenty-eight Roman characters (Grande 1932; cf. Winner 1952: 146). It is worth remembering that Latinization was a craze of the 19203. Even Konstantin Tsiolkovskij, the pioneer theoretician of astronautics, had published his Alphabet, Spelling and Script Common to all Mankind (Tsiolkovskij 1927). Importantly, the Latinization of Soviet languages did not mean an approximation to the writing systems of European languages. Quite the reverse, it was repeatedly emphasized that the reformers must refrain from implementing the Roman alphabet per se. Rather, the new alphabets should be based on the Roman alphabet (Dimanshtejn 1934: 98). Some radical Soviet intellectuals, among them the first Soviet People’s Commissar of Education Anatolij Lunacharskij and the leading Russian linguist Aleksandr Peshkovskij (who was highly esteemed by Zaretski), supported the Latinization of Russian (On Reform of Russian Spelling 1929; Lunacharskij 1930; Jakovlev 1930; Denisov 1994). The Soviet mass media presented Latinization as a progressive step (Shcheglov 1991: 543). Small wonder that around 1930 Zaretski, too, revised his stance and became one of the most active ‘Latinizers’. In July 1930 he delivered a pro-Latinization paper in Kiev (On Latinization 1930). This article sparked many reactions. Nokhem Shtif proposed to discuss the problem, particularly in the light of Yiddish orthoepy. Ber Slutski, on the other hand, spoke in favour of Latinization as a remedy against Yiddish illiteracy. A certain Farber, who was a member of the Central Yiddish Orthographic Commission, argued that Latinization would ruin the 1928 code. Zaretski’s answer shows that he regarded Latinization as a graphic reform rather than a new spelling reform. It seems Zaretski became bored with the interminable discussion. ‘The alien [Hebrew] alphabet, which is the fundamental fault of Yiddish orthography, had undergone endless changes, though the orthography is even now not free from defects’ (Zaretski 1931c: 3). Thus, he was ready to cut the Gordian knot. Towards the end of

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1930 Zaretski published his article ‘Latinizacje fun derjidi§er §rift’ (the heading was written in the ‘new orthography’) listing six reasons for the reform: I.The Roman alphabet is international. Hence, it is enough to change the alphabet whereby almost everyone will be able to read and understand such Yiddish sentences as religje iz opium far der mase (religion is opium of the masses) or social-faé’istn— agentn fun der bure'uazje (social-fascists are agents of the bourgeoisie). 2. It is more convenient to write from left to right, especially when combining Yiddish texts with mathematical formulas or Russian, German, etc. quotations. 3. The outlines of Roman letters are finer and more distinct than those of Yiddish (Hebrew) ones. 4. The Roman alphabet is better adapted to Yiddish than the Hebrew alphabet. 5. The Roman alphabet is ideologically closer to Communism; Yiddish letters are full of harmful associations with religion, Hebrew, and national isolationism. 6. The importance of Latinization is much broader than the spelling change per se. First of all, it will be easier to liberate Yiddish from Hebrew words. (Zaretski was sure that nobody would be able to bring himself to write in the new orthography such Talmudic and Biblical expressions as al regel axas (in brief), bifnej hol am (openly).) In fact, Zaretski did not actually propose an alphabet. All of his examples were based on transliterations which had been clearly borrowed from Boris Larin’s system—a version of the Czech alphabet (cf. Reformatskij 1960). The bottom line of Zaretski’s article is the following: it is only a nationalist who can be against the Latinization of Yiddish. Amusingly, Zaretski started to implement this spelling in dedications, samples of which we find in books he presented to his colleague Elje Falkovich (Estraikh 1992d). In a booklet which bears one of the Roman dedications, he stated: ‘Recently the urgent question of changing the Yiddish alphabet to a Roman one has been raised. The Latinization movement in Yiddish has existed for almost thirty years, but up to now it has not been a success. Apparently, what could not be achieved by the bourgeois Latinizers will

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be more easily achieved in the proletarian society’ (Zaretski 19313 280). Zaretski also mentioned the ‘movement for a Roman alphabet’ in the entry ‘Yiddish’ (Evrejshijjasyh) in the Great Soviet Encyclopae dia (Zaretski 1932b: 163). Again, we know that during 1932 Zaretski, together with Dimanshtejn and the Gerrnanist Rosalia Shor, was preparing a report on the Latinization of Yiddish for the AllUnion Central Committee of the New Alphabet (Alaverdov 1932: 104). Some forces resisted the Latinization of Yiddish. The majority of Yiddish scholars postponed a final decision, and rendered an account of their collaboration with the Latinization drive by publishing a couple of songbooks in the new orthography (see Shmeruk 1961: 129-30). However, it was the musical notation that made Latin transcription convenient in these books, which diminishes their importance as relevant examples of Latinized publications. In fact, the so-called ‘Czech transcription’ (cheshshaja zapis’), with accented consonants for [sh] and [zh] and with x for [kh], became the standard for musical notation in Soviet Yiddish publications. This transcription was also used in the recent post-Soviet anthology ofJewish folk-songs (Goldin 1994). At the same time, the Latinization of writing systems of Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Georgian, and Armenian was also shelved on various pretexts. Thus, in 1929, during an orthographical conference in Kharkov, the proposal to use the Latin alphabet for Ukrainian was rejected as a threat of Polonization and as an estrangement from Russian (Chaplenko 1956: 47; Smal-Stocki 1969: 178-81). (An analogous argument also troubled some Soviet Yiddish reformers: Latinized Yiddish texts would become closer to German—Zaretski 1930c: 21.) The Latinization of the Ukrainian and Belorussian alphabets was even considered to be a scheme of the ‘counter-revolutionary nationalists’ (Dimanshtejn 1934: 100). In August 1933 it was officially decided that further efforts to replace the Cyrillic alphabet were to no purpose (Nurrnakov 1934: 154; as regards Russian, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee banned any Latinization projects as early as 1930—see Denisov 1994: 100). For all that, in April 1933 it was still permissible to criticize A. Gelman and J. Rodak’s textbook for fifth-formers for the ‘lack of Latin transcriptions which should be regarded as an important

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issue from the standpoint of promoting the Latinization of the Yiddish script’ (V-n 1933: 7). However, in the same year, another reviewer, S. Rives, who analysed A. Gelman and J. Rodak’s textbook for sixth- and seventh-formers, criticized very sharply Zaretski’s idea of Latinization (Reviews 1933). In general, Latinization came to be mentioned less and less frequently in a positive light. The following year, it was condemned before and during the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party (Robin 1992: 35). Latinization even became incriminating as, for example, in the accusation of ‘the same Kamenshtejn who in his time proposed no less than to Latinize Yiddish’ (Goldenberg 1934). This evidently marked the beginning of a general curtailment of the Latinization drive, in particular for Yiddish.

5.5 The 19303 and after

The 1928 spelling code, as amended inJanuary 1929, became the official Soviet Yiddish orthography. Historically, it became the only Yiddish spelling code approved by governmental institutions (the Peoples’ Commissariats of Education) in three Soviet republics—Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia. However, the decisions of 1928-9 only enumerated the changes to be made. In reality, the new orthography remained uncodified until 1932, athough Vejnger, for example, proposed to implement the new rules from 5 May (Soviet Press Day) 1928 (Zaretski 1929a: 12). This delay may be attributed to the organizational muddle and disagreement within the Central Orthographic Commission. We know that Litvakov, the chairman of the Commission, was not exactly a radical reformer (see Jankivski 1978: 175; Shlosberg 1990: 134), and Zaretski, as secretary of the Commission, was apparently unable to prod him into action. Vejnger did not participate in the activities of the Commission; he committed suicide in 1929. In any event, the Central Orthographic Commission did not implement the resolution of the Second Conference ofJewish Cultural Workers (April 1928), which had empowered the Commission to prepare the final text of the rules. Three years later, instead of the final document, Zaretski’s brochure was published, which contained a draft of the code interspersed with his further

proposals (Zaretski 1931c). Trying to overcome the deadlock, the First All-Union Yiddish

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Language Conference (February 1931) dismissed the Central Orthographic Commission. A new orthographic commission was set up under the auspices of the Kiev Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture. Eventually, in November 1931, the orthographic conference (which met in Kiev) approved the spelling rules; they were published in 1932 (Spelling Handbook 1932). In 1932, the Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture published a concise Ortografrsher verterbuhh (Spelling Dictionary 1932) based on the new rules. Easily detected inconsistencies in this dictionary can be attributed to the fact that the project had in fact been handled by Zaretski on his own. The 1931 orthographic conference approved this dictionary by a majority vote (Vilenkin 1934a; Falkovich 1978). By that time, the new orthography was in general use in the Soviet Union. The elimination of word-final consonant letters took longer than did the other parts of the reform; periodicals dropped the final letters little by little, page by page, in order to train the readership visually (Shtern1930; Zaretski 1931c: 37). The new rules, while quite harmonious, did not present a readily understandable system. The reformers, whose proposals had met no success, apparently wanted to press for new changes. But, after 1932, further reforms of Yiddish spelling lost momentum; during the next few years, the main struggle was over the lexical problems of Soviet Yiddish (see Ch. 3). There was still no complete unification of spelling—Yiddish publications in Kiev and Birobidzhan had some minor peculiarities (Kapeljevich 1937b). The question of spelling was brought to the fore once again on the eve of the All-Union Yiddish Language Conference scheduled for 9 February 1937, in Birobidzhan (see Ch. 3). It was again Zaretski who published the most detailed proposals (Zaretski 1936; 1937a; 1937b). Clearly, he was not fully satisfied with the 1928/32 code. Thus, in 1935 he argued that the Soviet Yiddish orthography had not been completely standardized, therefore some rules continued to be illogical and could be mastered only dogmatically (Zaretski 1935: 86). Zaretski’s paper on the further reform of spelling was on the agenda of the forthcoming conference. Perhaps for the first time Zaretski did not propose any radical changes. By that time, the militancy of the 19203 had gone out of fashion (cf. Fitzpatrick 1992: 241—3). It was also obvious that Yiddish literati were discontented with too frequent reforms. Not surprisingly, therefore, Zar-

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etski held it expedient to adjust unsuccessful innovations and to clear up some inconsistencies, rather than to change old orthographic conventions. He singled out the following especially pressing problems: 1. The agentive suffixes -ator, -tor, and -or in words of international origin (like agitator, orator, inspehtor, profesor). By the end of 1936 the Moscow-basedYiddish publishing house Der emes was implementing this spelling in all its publications including the daily Der emes (see Falkovich 1937), although the 1928 code prescribed -ater, -ter, and -er (Spelling Handbook 1932: 18). Zaretski supported this change, with one exception: dohter for physician, but dohtor for holder of a doctor’s academic title. Plural forms from words with these three suffixes had, according to Zaretski, to be derived and denoted with the ending -n (with the stress moved to the last syllable in plurals). 2. To omit ‘ajen’ for [e] in such international words as filt(e)r, teat(e)r, had(e)r; and in such proper names as Pjot(e)r, Dnjep(e)r,

Dnjest(e)r.

(It is clear that both the first and the second proposals were adjustments to Russian spelling and pronunciation.)

3. To write the adjectivalization suffix -ejish (e.g. in hebreijsh (Hebrew), ejropcjish (European)) as WJJ- instead of the 19'!“- canonized in 1928 (with an exception of parteijsh (party) since, morphologically, 1‘ [ej] is the root-final digrapheme of this word). 4. Inconsistencies in the use of the hyphen in compounds had to be resolved according to semantic features rather than ‘arithmetically’ (or hyphenating all compounds with more than three syllables).

Also, Zaretski proposed that various numerical expressions (ranges, telephone numbers, etc.) be written left to right. Some other idiosyncratic rules were mentioned inter alia in his 1936—7 articles. The question of -ator, -tor, -orversus -ater, -ter, erprovoked a wide discussion (pros in Falkovich 1937 and Kh. Kahan 1937, and cons in Rubinshtejn 1937; Zalmen Reizen, one of the creators of modern Yiddish spelling, held that this was a question of minor importance—Reizen 1933: 388). Falkovich, however, proposed using the ending -3 in plural forms of these words, without moving the stress. Again, it was Falkovich who argued that compounds

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should be written according to the arithmetical rules, that is to hyphenate the compounds with more than three syllables. It is noteworthy that the relationship between Zaretski and Falkovich was not very amicable. We know, for example, that later, in February 1938, Zaretski was the only opponent of Falkovich’s reinstatement in the Moscow Teachers’ Training Institute (Extract from the minutes, 1938). The latter lost his position after his lectures in Minsk in March 1937, when he spoke in favour of studying the Pentateuch as well as the works of Chaim Nakhman Bialik and Sholem Asch (Bronshtejn 1937; Falkovich ‘Affair’ 1937). Shprintsa Rokhkind (1995) also wrote about the friction between Zaretski and Falkovich. It is possible that the personal relationship between these leading linguists left a mark on their discussions. Falkovich was against Zaretski’s reconsideration of the adjectivalization suffix -q'ish. He held that Wit-could be morphologically justified in only one word, ejropejish. It is likely that this particular problem was just a result of an unsuccessful classification of Yiddish suffixes (cf. Zaretski 1929c: 302). This question ceases to be an issue in the context of the suffix -ish (see Falkovich 1984: 693). Falkovich supported Mojshe Litvakov’s attack (Litvakov 1936) against an excessively phonological approach to Soviet Yiddish spelling (in Shats 1937 we find, on the contrary, a voice for the further phonetization of spelling, albeit only for Hebrew words). Thus, Falkovich proposed to reinstate double consonants at the seams with affixes, for example op(p)atern, gefil(l)oz. One more problem which worried Falkovich was that of palatalization. He proposed the use of an apostrophe to indicate palatalization in a preceding consonant. In fact, it was the same proposal that we find in Zaretski’s 1928 and 1931 blueprints (Projects 1928: 9; Zaretski 1931c: 11; there was also an idea to use an apostrophe in order to denote the j + vowel or j + diphthong—see Vevjorka 1926: 26). But Falkovich limited the nomenclature to proper names—like Van’ha, Kazan’—and a few homographs, in particular hrernl for ‘little shop’, but hrernl’ for ‘Kremlin’. (Regarding an old proposal to denote only the ‘soft lamed’, see Shejngold 1923: 46.) It appeared that the Birobidzhan conference would bring out a new code with various minor changes to the 1928/32 code. But, as we know (see Ch. 3), the conference never took place. The following years were hardly a suitable time for spelling reforms. In 1938 practically the whole Yiddish educational system

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was in ruins. The daily Der emes was closed down and several language planners perished in 1937-8. Zaretski, the main reformer, became a university lecturer of general and Russian linguistics; some intractable problems of Russian orthography were to be a safety-valve for this born innovator (see, for example, Zaretski 1946; 1949). True, he did not dissociated himself from Yiddish.

He wrote from time to time for Yiddish newspapers and participated in academic discussions (cf. Zaretski 1939; Tshernjak 1957a). (According to one of his younger colleagues, Zaretski prepared a number of works for publication, but the whereabouts of his archives are unknown—see Tshernjak 1957a; 1957b.) Only one other significant event of the pre-war period is worth mentioning: the final letters were introduced in some of the Yiddish newspapers published in the territories annexed in 1939—40 under the Soviet—Nazi Pact. To my knowledge, such a deviation was made in at least two newspapers, Vilner emes (Vilna) and Folksblat (Kaunas). Some of the 1937 amendments (such as the spelling of the suffixes -ator, -tor, -or, -eish) are to be found in dictionaries published on the eve of the war (Rokhkind and Shklyar 1940; Falkovich 1941). Since 1961, when the Moscow monthly Sovetish hq'mland was launched after more than a decade of the suppression of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union, the final letters as well as some updated spelling rules have been used in all Moscow printings (Shapiro et al. 1984: 10; Paul Novick claimed that he played a significant role in reintroducing the final letters to his credit—see Novick 1986), for example: 1. the sequence -"- for [ej] was supplanted by -'.'.D- (as in the majority of Western publications), except for a few adjectives which derived from stems ending with [ej], for example idejish (ideological) from idq' (idea); 2. an attempt was made to introduce unambiguous rules for the use of hyphen with nit ‘no (-); un-’. It was to be written separately for negation or contraposition (for example, nit derzogter strashuneh ‘threatening declaration which has not been finished/ was interrupted’; im iz nit gut ‘his situation is bad’), and with a hyphen for negative quality, imperfect quality or action, etc. (for example, nitderzogter strashuneh (reticent threat); im iz nit-gut (he is unwell) ); 3. prescriptions of American language planners (cf. U. Weinreich 1977: xxix) were accepted for the spelling of compounds. A

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hyphen was recommended for a word with more than three syllables or before a constituent with the initial ‘silent aleph’; in order to avoid gemination of consonants between the constituents; and between constituents of Semitic and non-Semitic origin. Some linguists also wanted to reinstate double consonants at the seams with affixes. It seems they waited in vain for official permission from the Orthographical Commission created in 1968 at Sovetish hejmland (see Shapiro 1969: 148). The commission appears

have been inactive. Although Birobidzhan continued to publish its newspaper Birobidzhaner shtern without the final letters, the cause of this dissonance was technical: the old linotypes of the local publishing house did not have these letters. An approach that was closer to the Western principles of Yiddish spelling was again formulated in 1990 (Shrajbman 1990; Sh. Sandler 1990). But with the collapse of government-sponsored Yiddish publishing in 1991 all prospects of any serious projects associated with Yiddish literary activities, let alone revisions of spelling, disto

appeared. 5.6 Perception of the Soviet spelling reform In 1926, six years after the first Soviet reform of Yiddish spelling, Israel Joshua Singer, the elder brother of Isaac Bashevis Singer and a well-known Yiddish writer in his own right, saw the danger of a split and the estrangement between the young Soviet Jewish generation and Yiddish-speaking Jews in Poland, America, and other countries. It was the Soviet Yiddish orthography that impelled him to raise the alarm. Singer even foresaw a new turn in Jewish (Ashkenazic) language problems: from Yiddish-Hebrew bilingualism to Yiddish-Hebrew—Soviet trilingualism (Singer 1926). At the same time, the respelling of Hebrew words had its champions outside the Soviet Union as well. In 1920 a group of American Yiddish poets-‘introspectivists’ (inzihhistn—In zihh was the name of their magazine) decided to abolish the traditional spelling of Hebraisms in their writings (U. Weinreich 1959: 427). In Rumania, the Yiddish poet Eljezer Shtajnberg also published his works with phonetically spelled Hebrew words (Schaechter 1977: 56).'In March 1921, respelling was approved by the First Conference of Yiddish Teachers in Latvia (Zaretski 1923d; M. Mark

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1973: 65-6). In 1925 the American proletarian Yiddish writers introduced naturalized respelling in the last three issues (Nos. 3, 4, and 5) of their magazine fung huznje (Young Forge) as well as in the Yiddish section of the Russian-English—Yiddish magazine Spartacus (on fung huznje see Estraikh 1994c). In 1932 the respelling was implemented in jugnt-Veher, the Warsaw periodical for the younger members of the Bund (Gold 1977: 314). After the May 1931 conference in Buenos Aires, the naturalized spelling was introduced in Argentina and dominated in the publications and schooling until the late 19403 (Kazdan 1950: 134). Many Yiddish publications in other Latin American countries also employed the naturalized orthography. (I have not found any publications on the Yiddish spelling used in Latin America. Iam very grateful to Mrs Khane Tobias and Mr Nathan Grudzien, Yiddish activists from Montevideo, for information concerning this issue. See also Grudzien 1993.) Naturalized spelling found many supporters among teachers in Poland (Kazdan 1950: 129-33). In 1931, two of the three orthographical conferences organized under the auspices of YIVO called for naturalized spelling of Hebraisms (Gold 1977: 312). At the same time, some publications in Poland naturalized their spelling. Thus, in 1934, during a fierce discussion about the ideological direction of the Yiddish scout organization, Bin, the Vilnabased leader of its pro-communist fraction, Lejzer Ran, attacked his ‘reactionary’ adversary, the head of YIVO Max Weinreich, in a pamphlet written in naturalized spelling (Lejzer 1934). A few delegates to the 1935 YIVO conference (Jakov Pat, Shlojme Bastomski, Jakov Shatski) again raised the question of respelling, but they did not succeed in overcoming the strong resistance of their leaders (YIVO 1936: 91, 116). Ultimately, the 1936 code, which now dominates the secular Yiddish publications, was introduced by Max Weinreich and a few other leaders of the Vilna YIVO in spite of the majority rule (Y. Mark 1977). Unpopularity of naturalization in the United States and other English-speaking countries was perhaps associated with the exemplary heterogeneity of English spelling. By contrast, uniformity of Spanish, Polish, and Latvian orthographies created a nutrient medium for spelling reforms of Yiddish. In general, ‘[t]he response outside the Soviet Union was mixed; the naturalized spelling of words of Hebrew origin received a more sympathetic response

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than the dropping of final letters’ (Erlich 1973: 73). Nevertheless, with few exceptions, the drive for the respelling of the Hebrew component was suppressed outside the Soviet borders. An explanation is found in Uriel Weinreich’s retrospect: Although this [the traditional spelling of Hebrew-origin words] is justified, culturally, by the special status which that stock language has preserved for the users of Yiddish, linguistically it is an anomaly which already troubled such a nineteenth-century master of Yiddish and Hebrew prose as Mendele Moicher-Sforim, and was bound to irritate much more the modern Yiddish poets. Continuing familiarity with the stock languages of Yiddish by its users and many decades of mashilic vilification of Yiddish hybridity have tended to make every Jew his own etymologist, ready to decompose the delicate fusion that is Yiddish into its components.

His conclusion is: The iron logic of spelling unification might well have prevailed were it not for the fact that a similar reform, undertaken in the Soviet Union in absolute rejection of the Jewish past, had become a symbol of a vulgar antitraditionalism which was unpalatable to the majority of Yiddish users. (U. Weinreich 1959: 426—7)

Unfortunately, we do not know much about the Soviet Jewish reaction to the new spelling. According to Ber Slutski’s impressionistic estimate, the Kiev daily Naje tsajt lost half of its readership as far back as 1918-19, when the newspaper phonetized the spelling of non-Semitic words. The respelling of Semitic words alienated older readers still more. Slutski hypothesized that among the three-quarters of Soviet Jews who never read Yiddish publications, there were many lapsed Yiddish readers; these people from the older generation could not accept the respelling. At the same time, Slutski argued, the reform benefited the uneducated Jewish population (Slutski 1928). However, he backed the Soviet historian Isroel Sosis, who emphasized the damage wrought to the Yiddish culture and language by the incessant radical spelling experiments (Sosis 1928). It is plausible that there was one more very important aftereffect of the revolution in Yiddish spelling. In the 19103 and 19203, Jewish literacy in Russian began to gain on literacy in Yiddish and Hebrew, and in the urban centres the literacy in Russian had already gained on literacy in other languages. For example, in

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Kiev the 1919 census revealed that over 90 per cent of males and over 80 per cent of females, comprising the city’s 114,500 Jews, were literate. But the numbers of those who claimed their literacy in Russian and of those who claimed their literacy in a ‘Jewish language’ were in the ratios 8 : 6 among males and 8 : 5 among females. Moreover, those who claimed their literacy in aJewish language could, as a rule, read and write in Russian too (Kiev Census 1920: tables 11, X, XV). These people could easily switch over to the Russian-language press rather than to trouble themselves with a new spelling. The radical visual change of Yiddish could have been one of the reasons for the quite modest circulation figures of the Soviet Yiddish periodicals (in addition to their mainly Soviet rather than Jewish coverage). It is interesting that among the advocates of respelling we find a run-of-the-mill Irkutsk rabbi, Sholem Bejlin, who based his arguments on the historical precedent of when some Hebrew words had been respelled in the Aramaic texts of the Mishnah (Bejlin 1926). This does not mean that Bejlin was a ‘red’ rabbi. He might have perceived the spelling reform out of the ideological context, unlike the opinionated critics who dipped their pens into acid because they could not tolerate the ‘absolute rejection of the Jewish past’ in the Soviet Union and the concurrent spelling reform. We may surmise that in some other context—that is not by communists’ hands—the same reform might have been widely accepted (at least in secular circles) as ‘the iron logic of spelling unificatron’. For all that, a common perception of Soviet spelling was reflected by a Western author, for whom the phoneticized spelling of Sholem Aleichem’s name on the title page of a Moscow Yiddish book symbolized the end of Soviet Jewry (Landmann 1962: 87). The slur which had taken root in the 19203 and 19303 became commonly received wisdom in the post-war perception of the Soviet Yiddish system of writing. The opposite ideological perception of respelling was contained in an essay by Jiekhiel Shrajbman, a Soviet Yiddish prose writer. He recollected that in the 19203, when he lived in Romania, ‘the word hhaver [comrade/friend] written with a “khof”, an “aleph” and a doubled “vov” [i.e. phonetically] stirred up the flight of my fancy. . . . From this erroneous unusual hhaver came a breath of unlikeness and renewal. . . . In a sense, this new hhaver epitomized

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both justice and romantic visions.’ Still, in 1990, after five decades of his Soviet period, Shrajbman proposed to give up the respelling of Hebrew words and to restore to Soviet Yiddish the centuries-old image of Hebraisms (Shrajbman 1990: 9—10). Finally, Aaron Vergelis admitted that his floundering magazine Di jidishe gas was ready to implement the traditional spelling of Hebrew words. The only obstacle was that the magazine might lose its last Soviet readers, who often were unable to read such a text. At the same time a letter (published in issue 1 forv1995) from Gershon Winer, aJerusalem-based organizer of Yrddish educational projects in the former Soviet Union, illuminated the exceptional importance of the spelling issue for some foreign Yrddishists. He told Vergelis that an American philanthropist was prepared to donate $2,500 to the Moscow magazine with the proviso that about 20 per cent of the material in the five subsequent issues appear with the ‘original spelling’ of Hebrew words. Vergelis decided to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds: in issue 4 for 1993, it was announced that Hebrew words would be given in both spellings. In works by foreign authors, Hebraisms would be parenthetically respelt according to the rules of Soviet Yiddish. In works by former Soviet writers, Hebraisms would appear first in their naturalized form and then, parenthetically, in their traditional form. In truth, this dual approach has never been consistently followed and, in terms of spelling, Di yidishe gas became a hodgepodge of styles. It is illuminating that Mame-loshn, the Yiddish literary magazine launched in Odessa in 1994, uses the Soviet spelling rather than the traditional one. In one of its recent issues, we find an article written by Motl Derbaremdiker who argues that the phoneticized spelling was, in essence, a rational reform and ridicules the writers whose texts are packed with redundant Hebraisms (Derbaremdiker 1997).

6

Soviet Yiddish word-formation 6.1 Preliminaries

The most comprehensive study of the peculiarities of Soviet Yiddish was entitled New Word-Formation (Spivak 1939a). Indeed, besides the lexicon proper, Soviet Yiddish gained distinct features due to a range of word-formation models either non-existent or dormant before 1917. The following analysis of some characteristic word-formation processes is by no means an exposition of Spivak’s monograph. Unfortunately, his 1939 study is methodologically outdated; in addition, in many places its ideological load weighs down its scientific value. A number of word-formation models which appeared or became especially prolific in Soviet Yiddish are associated with syntacticmorphological processes called univerbalization (from the Latin in unum verbum, ‘into one word’; for a comprehensive history of the term see Shumager 1984). Univerbalization manifests itself in different ways, in particular by abbreviations and ellipsis. However, all the cases share one common trait: the modification of a collocation by being compressed into one word, a univerb. In other formulations, a new word-designation, or univerb, challenges its begetter—a stable, syntactic phrase-description which synchronically exists in the language (Korepanova 1972; Kalishan 1984; Dressler 1987: 115). If the univerb has completely ousted the corresponding collocation, then it, strictly speaking, ceases to be a univerb and its relation with the collocation moves into the sphere of etymology. For example, the word holvirt (kolkhoz, collective farm) may be defined as a univerb of the synonymous collocation holehtive virtshaft (collective farm) (if we are certain that this collocation was the begetter of holvirt). On the other hand, the word holvirtnih (member of a collective farm) a priori cannot be reckoned among univerbs, because it has not directly arisen from mitglid fun

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holvirt/holehtive virtshaft (member of collective farm)

or some other

collocation; in this case we have, obviously, a derivative with the productive suffix mil: in the derivational paradigm of the word holvirt. Different types of abbreviations and acronyms, which form the bulk of Soviet Yiddish univerbs, were especially common in journalese and officialese. The cryptic letter given below exemplifies the style (Letter 1928): [26 March 1928] Dem ts.b.l fun dijidsehtsjes2 barn ts.h.3 al.h.p.4 Mir shihn ajhh derbaj a projdttfun tezisn veg-n sotsdertsiung.5 Durhhn metodhorn5 fun der farvaltungfun sotsderts7 iz der projeht bashtetiht. Durhh der holegy'efun folhombila8 zajnen di tezisn dervajl nohh nit bashtetiht.

Elterer inspehtor

fun ts. a.b.b.9 Mishhovshi

1 ts.b. = tsentrale bjuro (Central Bureau); 2 jidsehtsjes = jidishe sehtsjes (Jewish Sections); 3 ts.h. = tsentral-comitet (Central Committee); 4 aLh.p. = alfarbandishe homunistishe partej (All-Union Communist Party); 5 sotsdertsiung = so— tsiale dertsiung (social education); 6 metodhom = metodisher homitet (methods [of education/ teaching] committee); 7 sotsderts = sotsiale dertsiung (social education); 8 follrombild = folhs-homisarjat far bildung (People’s Commissariat of Education); 9 ts.a.b.b. = tsentralejidishe bildungs-bjuro (CentralJewish Bureau for Education).

Even in the above short letter many difi'erent types of univerbs may be discerned. At the same time, compressing was not the only tendency characteristic of Soviet Yiddish. A contrary process, adjectivization instead of compounding, will also be discussed in this

chapter.

As for affixation in Soviet Yiddish lexical innovations, neither new prefixes nor new affixes were created. However, the old Yiddish aflixes frequently were part of new types of derivation processes or gained new semantic features. Peculiarities of these shifts will be discussed for the suffix -nih and the prefix der-.

6.2 Stump-compounds One of the hallmarks of Soviet Yiddish is the wide use (especially in periodicals) of stump-compounds (cf. Comrie and Stone 1978:

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99; Zalucky 1991: xix-xx; Estraikh 1996c), which consist of contractions, or stumps (often syllables) of full words. In the decade after the revolution Zaretsky (1927a: 25) extracted scores of Yiddish stump-compounds common in Soviet publications, for example: arbhor = arbeter-horespondent (worker correspondent), fabhom = fabrih-homitet (factory committee), folhom = folhs-homisar (People’s Commissar), homjug = homunistisher jugnt-farband (Komsomol, Young Communist League). If Hershl Shkljar’s list of about 1,500 neo—logisms is typical of the Soviet Yiddish lexicon (Shkljar 1934), then more than 3 per cent of these coinages are stumpcompounds. At the same time, such Yiddish coinages were practically unheard of outside the Soviet Union. These innovations in Soviet Yiddish copied the new morphosyntactic models which boomed in post-revolutionary Russian. Different kinds of abbreviations even became a symbol of the Soviet lifestyle. ‘In many of these abbreviations the atmosphere of severity, haste and struggle, following the revolution, found its peculiar expression’ (Spivak 1939a: 21). Among the main inducements engendering that new class of words was the necessity to designate numerous institutions and positions in the hierarchical Soviet state machinery. The bureaucratic denotations contained ‘codes’ which usually reflected the function as well as the level of subordination (cf. Kartsevskij 1923: 53). Thus, the monster word guberdoptgezerd, listed among Zaretski’s examples, was a concentrate of a long name which apparently described the department [. . . opt. . . = optcjl] that performed functions of the OZET (Association for the Rural Placement of Jewish Labourers) [. . . gezerd] in the agricultural [. .. erd . . . = erdarbeterisher] administration of a province [gub. . . = gubernje]. (Zaretski did not decipher the full name of this institution, which could be, for example, der optejl fun gezerd ba der erdarbeterisher farvaltung fun gubernje; it is quite possible, however, that a full Yiddish name did not exist at all.) Each of these four components of guberdoptgezerd possessed a separate accent. The constituent gezerd disguised a stumpcompound in its own right, that is: gez[elshafi] (association, society) + erd[arbet] (agriculture). According to Zalucky’s classification (Zalucky 1991: xix-xx), it was an ‘incomplete-consecutive stumpcompound’, because its constituent fragments were picked out

selectively.

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In that way an initiated person, who knew the codes of Soviet life and its associated language, might understand or at least diagnose (cf. Thom 1989: 102) meanings of the Newspeak vocabulary. While the codes-stumps disguised themselves only as constituent fragments of original words, they contained the full material meaning of their ‘normal’ equivalents (Vinokur 1929: 126). Thus, in guberdoptgaerd, the semantic code of optejl (department) remained recognizable thanks to the fact that the word was not apocopated along its morphological stitch: op = tq'l; op- isjust a prefix with a rather stable meaning (off; away; from), whereas the stump opt-, due to its onomatopoeic proximity to optejl, might be more easily associated with the full word. In fact, during the 19203 and 19303, there was a natural selection among chaotically coined stump-compounds and, as a result, mostly words with semantically motivated stumps survived in the Soviet languages (Baecklund 1940: 124-5). Yiddish was not an exception to the rule. A nomenclature of motivated stumps became widely used. For example:

agit= agitatsje (agitation); bild = bildungfs) (educational);

fin = finants (financial);

jid =jidish (Yiddish,Jewish); hol = holehtiv (collective); horn = homunistish; homandir; homitet (communist; commander; committee); hult= hultur (culture); lit = literarish (literary); med = meditsinish (medical); nats = natsional (national); org= organizator; organizatsionel (organizer; organizational); part: partq'(ish) ((usually Communist) Party); ped = pedagogish (pedagogic (a1) );

polit = politish (political); prof = profarejnish (< profesjonelerfarejn) (belonging or pertaining to the trade union); profesjonel (professional); raj = rajon (district); san = sanitarer (sanitary, medical); spets = spetsiel (special); virt = virtshaft(lehh) (farm; economy/ economic).

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Instances abound. At the same time, paradoxically, there is no room found for stump-compounds in Yiddish grammar. And not only because, as observed by Yudl Mark, ‘a compound can contain only two components [otherwise] it’s a sin against Yiddish’, or because ‘lexical items with two separate accents cannot be regarded as compounds’ (Y. Mark 1978: 207). According to standard definitions, a compound is a lexical item which should not contain stumps, but two or more free morphemes (lexemes) proper (Starosta 1988: 98). True, some of the stumps may delusively look like lexemes. For example, spets—the clipping (cf. Bauer 1988: 33) of the noun spetsialist (specialist, professional) and spets—the stump of the adjective spetsieler (special) in such stump-compounds as spetshlejdung (working clothes, overalls) (this Sovietism as well as the clipping spets was even included, for some reason, in U. Weinreich 1977) or spetsoptejl (special department). Soviet linguists could not, of course, ignore the ‘words with nonfull words as components’ (Falkovich 1940: 70), they attributed the stump-compound to a Soviet and proletarian innovation resulting in ‘significant economy in the language’ (Kh. Kahan 1930: 40). At the same time, they did not offer a suflicient description of the new word-formation model. As in Russian (cf. Kozhin 1985: 34), the vast majority of stumps contain one syllable created from (1) the first syllable of the full word + (2) the first consonant of the second syllable of the full word; for example: lit = li + t(erarish) med = me + d(itsinish). At the same time, virt is just the first syllable of virtshaft, apparently because this stump already contains two consonants after the vowel. Both semantically and structurally, the stump-compounds have agglutinative features, that is some morphological features of agglutinative languages in which ‘a word may consist of more than one morpheme, but the boundaries between morphemes in the word are always clear-cut; moreover, a given morpheme has at least a reasonably invariant shape, so that identification of morphemes in terms of their phonetic shape is also straightforward’ (Comrie 1989: 43). It would be erroneous to state that in Yiddish these features are peculiar to stump-compounds. Distinct agglutinative traits are also characteristic of words with affixoids: ultra-, super-, etc. (cf. Panov 1968: 10). However, Yiddish had never possessed so many morphemes ready to make up various compounds, using either only

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the stumps or both the stumps and full words. From the stock of agglutinative stumps it was very convenient to coin names for such interrelated objects as, for example, folhomatn (People’s Commissariats) (folhombild (People’s Commissariat of Education); folhomnats (People’s Commissariat of Nationalities); folhomfin (People’s Commissariat of Finance)) or homitetn (committees) (fabhom (factory committee); prvfhorn (trade-union committee); rajhom (district committee)). Two quantitative characteristics are important for words of such endocentric (cf. Bauer 1988: 35) groups, which add details to the main denotion (in our examples folhom- and -hom): (1) the length of the words (preferably two or, at the worst, three short stumps), and (2) the general number of recognizable semantic units in the terminological system (Serebrennikov 1988: 86). The close likeness to their Russian equivalents played an important role in deciphering the Yiddish stumps. Given the fact that the language behaviour of Soviet Jews showed almost everywhere distinct signs of unstable bilingualism associated with language change, from Yiddish to Russian, an analogy between Yiddish and Russian stumps—as well as neologisms and their components in general—was one of the most decisive factors to assist Yiddish language planners in implementing Sovietisms. Therefore, the problem of semantic motivation was even more pronounced in Yiddish than in Russian: the ideal would be a double, namely YiddishRussian, motivation. (Importantly, the decision did not rest so much with the linguists; frequently it depended upon the practical workers who translated countless numbers of texts from Russian into Yiddish.) Unlike the stump-compounds with motivated forms, there were also those rooted in internationalisms without any motivation, or etymological association. In fact, the proportion of this kind of borrowing prevailed (like homdiv (division commander), homhor (corps commander), parlorg (Party organizer), parthom (Party committee)), especially as a substantial part of Russian stumps proper stemmed from international words. It should be noted, that when using the term ‘internationalisms’ I mean Soviet Yiddish lexical items loaned from Russian or German which Soviet Yiddishspeakers usually did not regard as Russianisms or daytshmerisms. As we know from the above discussion, the Soviet Yiddish establishment gave a hostile reception to large-scale borrowing of Russianisms (see Ch. 3). Aesthetical purity of the language was but

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one of the establishment’s reasons. Another was more political.

The establishment feared that too many Russian borrowings might displease the Ukrainian and Belorussian leaders and be interpreted as a slight to their national languages. Thus, stumpcompounds formed from international lexemes also appeared to be ideologically more acceptable. These neologisms which had no etymological associations in Russian and Yiddish, very often became—synchronically—strongly motivated not only in these two languages, but also in Ukrainian and Belorussian, and sometimes even generally in all languages of the Soviet Union. In addition to the international stump-compounds, there was one more tried and approved way to disguise direct borrowings— that is, stump-for-stump loan translation. Clearly, such calqued stump-compounds as holvirt appeared to be a compromise settlement between competing co-territorial dominant idioms: neither kolkhoz (Russian) nor holhosp (Ukrainian) nor holhasp (Belorussian). The stump-compound homnezam (committee of poor peasants) is a unique direct borrowing from Ukrainian, apparently because the denoted form of the organization had in Ukraine a unique history and character (see Lebed' 1924: 27). All in all, the most widespread algorithm, according to which Yiddish borrowed stumps and stump-compounds from Russian, was the following: internationalism in Russian > internationalism in Yiddish (Ru. parthom, cf. Yi. parthom), 01‘

‘Russianism’ in Russian > loan translation (calque) in Yiddish (Ru. kolkhoz, cf. Yi. holvirt).

According to Hershl Shkljar (1935: 161), the Soviet innovations in Yiddish continued the traditions of pre-revolutionary wordformation. This meant a predilection for international terminology, in the present case—for the Russian one. Yiddish borrowed directly from Russian lexical items which had become in fact international words and formed other words after the patterns of the corresponding Russian terms. It is tempting to discuss the receptivity and homogeneity of Yiddish in its relation to Russian and to other languages of the East European Sprachbund (cf. U. Weinreich 1958: 412) in terms of the meekness of Soviet Yiddish, its readiness to borrow from Russian

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hundreds of Sovietisms, including stump-compounds. Indeed, the thoroughness with which the Slavonic components of Yiddish were fused with its other components (U. Weinreich 1955: 603) as well as the long-standing practice of borrowing from Russian into the Yiddish literary language facilitated its Soviet mutation. Even if we accept the pedantic postulate that borrowings from Russian cannot be regarded as Slavonic components of Yiddish (see Glasser 1994: 262, 274), Russian was at least a natural successor of other Slavonic donor languages. However, the most significant influence was bound up not with the typological characteristics of Yiddish but, rather, with extralinguistic factors, in particular with the social predominance of Russian. In fact, diflerent vacillations and obsessions of the Soviet Yiddish language planners were by and large induced by desperate attempts to adapt Yiddish to its new bilingual social setting. The processes which created stump-compounds in Yiddish were essentially difl’erent from those in Russian. The new, Soviet, social setting was favourable to the tendency of univerbalization in Russian, which had existed as far back as the turn of the century (see, for example, Borovoj 1974: 452-5). As for the Soviet Yiddish stump-compounds, the case was different: the language became infected with the Russian univerbs. Thus, holvirt may seem to be a possible example of univerbalization, based on the collocation holehtive virtshafl. In reality, though, the univerbalization took place not in Yiddish but in Russian, where the word holhhoz condensed the collocation hollehtivnoe hhozjajstvo. Importantly, Soviet Yiddish did not adopt that type of univerbalization itself; rather, it was just an imitation of the Russian univerbalization that produced such words as holvirt Soviet Yiddish borrowed many stump-compounds, but this model of word-formation did not begin to function as an independent feature of the language. In other words, the Yiddish stump-compound derives not from the corresponding Yiddish collocation, but from the Russian stump-compound. It means that we are not dealing with a normal compounding but with the formation of learned borrowings which resemble compounding (cf. Starosta 1988: 99). Ber Slutski, for example, indicated Russian proto— types for all the Yiddish stump-compounds in his voluminous Lexicon of Political and Foreign Words (Slutski 1929). Even the derivatives of the Yiddish stump-compounds were as a rule limited to calques

.

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149

of Russian models. True, sometimes it is possible to come across a non-imitative occasionalism, such as the verb jidseheven derived from the stump-compound jidseh (Jewish communist, from ‘ [member of the] Jewish Sections’, a nickname for apparatchihs of theJewish Sections of the Communist Party; see Mazik 1928). At the same time it would be idle to deny that some of the stump-compounds did become more or less naturalized in Soviet Yiddish, at least in the written language as well as in some other domains of Soviet Yiddish, notably among the social or professional groups with a specific register range of the language. The loss of all supplementary accents (Alekseev 1963: 36—7) may serve as an indication of the naturalization of stump-compounds: gezerd, homjug, holvirt. It is likely that the naturalization of such lexical items was accompanied by their de-etymologization or, in other words, by the weakening of the speakers’ awareness of the associative links between the Yiddish stump-compounds and the original Russian collocations or even with their Yiddish loan-translations. It is worth stressing once again that the processes of naturalization could occur mainly in the milieux where Yiddish dominated over other languages, for example in the Jewish national districts. For the majority of Jews, though, these innovations appeared to be artificial or even incomprehensible (Vereshchagin 1965: 30). None the less, Soviet Yiddish publications were full of calques from Russian Sovietisms. Especially as they contained mainly political and educational literature. Thus, in 1928, belles-lettres made up only 18 per cent of the titles of Yiddish books published in the Soviet Union, in 1930 25 per cent, and in 1931 20 per cent (Litvakov 1931: 26). Some of the stump-compounds and their derivatives appeared even in poetic texts. The examples cited below are taken from Soviet Yiddish dailies. bin ikh es un kh’vel es zajn—ba ‘shreklekhe’ jidsehn. vifl kh’vel di frajhajt libn; libn kh’vel zi ejbikl un deriber shrajb ikh itst majn lid af vajte shtrekn. un zol dos lid an entfer zajn dem vajsn dikhter Lejvikl (I am going to be with the ‘horrible’ jidsehn [Jewish communists] as long as Ilove freedom; I’ll love it alwaysl Therefore, Iam writing my poem addressed to the whole world. Let this poem be an answer to the white-guard poet Leivikl) (Mojshe Pintshevski, Der shtern, 3January 1930)

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Soviet Yiddish wordforrnation

... tsit iber veg zikh a langer tsug:

—shik ‘nit-gedajget’ arojs dajn homjugl (. . .a long train is moving slowly along the track:

- Don't worry and send [us] your homjug [Komsomol] l)

(Peretz Markish, Der emes, 16 February 1930)

. .. un es veln vaksn

un es veln blitsn hunderter holvirtn,

tojznter zavodn. (. . . and there will be growing

and there will be shining hundreds of holvirtn [holhhozes] thousands of factories.) (Itzik Fefer, Der stern, 1April 1930)

in holvirt ba undz iz gut, mir esn bulbes, tejglekh, opgearbet ajor mit mut, lebn mir farmeglekh. (It is nice in our holvirt [holhhoz], we eat potatoes, and cheese pancakes. After a year of enthusiastic work we live prosperously.) (Chastooshka, Der emes, 30 March 1937)

zajnen di holvirtnihes mike un feste, zajnen di holvirtnitses shloglerns di beste. (The holvirtnihes [male members of a collective farm] are calm and firm, the holvirtnitses [female members of a collective farm] are the best shock workers.) (Chastooshka, Ohtjabr, 4June 1937)

Quite often Yiddish could borrow stump-compounds more easily

than other lexical items, because stump-compounds were devoid of one of the most alien elements, namely the Slavonic endings (Zaretski 1934). Also, stump-compounds avoided cumbersome phrases which repeatedly used the preposition fun (of). For all that, the Soviet Yiddish ability to imitate was far from perfect, considering that only a fraction of all Russian stump-compounds

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acquired a Yrddish equivalent. Presumably, that can be explained by the following factors: 1. In Yiddish, where traditional compounds were much more widespread than in Russian, many Russian stump-compounds were calqued by Yiddish compounds. For example, in the lexical items for Province Soviet and Town Soviet: Yi. gegntrat/geg-ntsovet, cf. Ru. oblsovet and Yi. shtotrat/shtotsovet, cf. Ru. gorsovet. Some of the Russian stump-compounds were calqued by hybrids (or semi-abbreviations—see below), with the substitution of a Russian stump for a full Yiddish lexem. Thus, in the hybrid calques for Province Committee, Yi. gegnthom, cf. Ru. obhom, and Town Committee, Yi. shtothorn, cf. Ru. gorhom, gegnt and shtot are full lexems, whereas hornis a stump. 2. Not every Russian stump-compound could be calqued by a Yiddish stump-compound. For example, a Yiddish politonf < politisher onfirer for the Russian politruh < politicheshij ruhovoditel’ (political instructor) would have sounded nonsensical. For that reason Yiddish imported the loanword politruh (which is fortuitously similar to Yiddish diminutives formed by the suflixation -uh, cf. Falkovich 1984: 687), as well as many other loaned stumpcompounds. A number of such loaned stump-compounds are listed in Bordin 1987: 173. 3. As long as Russian stump-compounds were coined before their Yiddish calques, the Yiddish stump-compounds should compete with their prototypes. In the first years after the revolution, Yiddish periodicals in the Soviet Union used mostly the Russian stump-compounds. After 1918, such Russianisms as sovnarhhoz (Council of national economy), vojenhomat (military registration and enlistment oflice), ispolhom (executive committee), and many other replicas of Russian innovations began appearing in Yiddish newspapers. Even happier innovations such as holvirt and homjug could not evade their Russian prototypes kolkhoz and homsomol. To name but one example, in an issue of the daily Der shtern (29 March 1930) the combination of words ‘new holhhozes’ was used in two items published on the same page. In a poem of Khana Levin it was naje holhhozn: a grus ajkh fun arbeter-pojerishe ratn, fun tajkhn bafrishte,

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pionerishe lider, a grus ajkh a najem fun naje holhhozn . . . (Kind regards to you from soviets of workers and peasants, from refreshed rivers, pioneers’ songs, kind regards to all of you from new holhhozes. . .)

However, in an adjacent notice we read: naje holvirtn. Seemingly, in such cases one or another nomination oscillated as a stochastic variable (cf. Dolgopol’skij 1963: 266; Vereshchagin 1966: 50). What is more, some language planners argued that Sovietisms of that kind had already become so far separated from the original Russian collocation that they should be considered as independent international words, which Yiddish might borrow without translation (Shulman 1937). A number of stump-compounds in Soviet Yiddish indeed do have two forms, both the original Russianism and its Yiddish imitation. Stump-compounds represent a curious stage in the development of modernYiddish. They show how a language can react to specific social needs creating special means of word-formation in order to imitate morpho-syntactic processes in a dominant language. The bulk of Yiddish stump-compounds are now archaic relics of the Soviet epoch. Many others are dropping out of the current vocabulary reflecting the dramatic decline of Yiddish in the postSoviet period. However, it is safe to assume that many Yiddish stump-compounds will continue to function in Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia as long as the language is maintained. At the same time, Yiddish outside the former Soviet Union remains unrecep— tive to such models of word formation. In American and Israeli publications the use of stump-compounds is, as a rule, limited to a few slips of the pen by Yiddish authors from the former Soviet

Union.

6.3 Semi-abbreviations

To be sure, direct borrowings of Russian stump-compounds may also be found in many other languages, especially in translations of Soviet texts (cf. Schwanzer 1967: 421). This does not mean,

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however, that all of the languages of the Soviet Union developed a system of imitating the stump-compound. Such a system did not appear, for example, in German. Even such a vogue-word as holhhoz did not initiate a corresponding German stump-compound, but was translated as Kollehtivwirtschafi (Spivak 1939a: 123). At the same time, Soviet German together with Soviet Yiddish welcomed, for example, another model of word-formation, which also became very productive in post-revolutionary Russian. This was the formation of semi-abbreviations consisting of (1) a stump of an adjective and (2) a full lexeme, for example German Pddinstitut and Yiddish pedinstitut (pedagogical institute). In fact, semiabbreviations are quite common in the literary language of Germany as well (cf. Ortner 1984: 96; see also Kann 1976). Moreover, according to Afanasij Selishchev, one of the first students of post— revolutionary Russian, the semi-abbreviations appeared in Russian under the influence of German (Selishchev 1928: 36). In the heat of passions of the Cultural Revolution, the formation of such ‘proletarian’ words as stump-compounds and semiabbreviations was even regarded as an imperative of the time. It needs to be especially stressed, that the abbreviations do notjust enrich the language; they accelerate the language, condense its meaning and, as a result, raise it to a higher typological level. Therefore, for national languages of the Soviet Union, which develop in the same social conditions as Russian, the task is to adopt the formation of stump-compounds and semi-abbreviations, rather than just to reproduce, or to assimilate formally (Sukhotin 1933: 157) Russian abbreviations.

The response of Yiddish to this kind of patriotic call seemed appropriate. The language had indeed ad0pted the formation, even if an imitative one, of stump-compounds. Nevertheless, the frequency of stump-compounds was much lower than the frequency of semi-abbreviations. For example, in Shkljar’s list of about 1,500 Yiddish Sovietisms (Shkljar 1934), which is the most extensive, the stump agit- is the first constituent of one stump-compound and nine semi-abbreviations (a ratio of 1 : 9); the ratio for the stump jid- is 2 : 11; for hult-O : 11; for nats-l : 10; for polit-O : 23; prof-1 : 17; spets- 0 : 4. Injust one of the books published in the 19303 (Abchuk 1934b), ten semi-abbreviations with the stump lit- were used (in the original some of the semi-abbreviations are hyphenated, others spelled

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as one word; for the sake of clarity, Iseparate the stump lit- by a hyphen): lit—dinstih (literary Tuesday, or a literary meeting which takes place on Tuesday); lit-grupe (literary group); lit-holegy'e (literary board/committee); lit-hrajz (literary workshop; literary circle/

society); lit-organizatsje (literary organization); lit-ovnt (literary soirée); lit-sehtsje (literary section (of an organization)); lit-studje (literary workshop/studio); lit-tuer (literary worker, e.g. writer, journalist); lit-zajtl (literary page/section, e.g. in a news-paper). At the same time, no stump-compounds with lit- were used in Abchuk’s book. Semi-abbreviations were more prolific in Russian too.

In 1927 Zaretski (1927a: 25) listed such semi-abbreviations as: jidsehtsje (jidishe sehtsje), cf. Ru. evsehtsija (Jewish Section); hompartej (homunistishe partq), cf. Ru. hompartija (Communist Party); homunvirtshafl (homunale virtshaft), cf. Ru. hommunhhoz (communal/ municipal economy or service); lihameratses (lihvidatsje [fun] ameratses), cf. Ru. lihbez (abolition of illiteracy); pmflflarejn (profesionelerfarejn), cf. Ru. profsojuz (trade union); statsehtsje (statistishe sehtsje), cf. Ru. statsehtsija (statistical section/department). Spivak (1939a: 38) listed such semi-abbreviations as hompartej; polit[t]uer (politisher tuer), cf. Ru. politrabotnih (political worker/ activist); profarejn; sotsgevet (sotsialistisher gevet), cf. Ru. sotssorevnovanie (socialist competition/ emulation) among the lexical items frequently used in Soviet Yiddish newspapers. Again, all Yiddish semi-abbreviations have corresponding Russian models. Sometimes, Yiddish semiabbreviations modelled Russian stump-compounds: homunvirtshafl, cf. Ru. hommunhhoz; lihameratses, cf. Ru. lihbez. In all probability Yiddish could more easily adopt semiabbreviations than stump-compounds. It is especially noteworthy that standard Yiddish in the West, where stump-compounding was flatly rejected, did accept some semi-abbreviations, such as proffarq’n and redholegje, cf. Ru. redahtir/redagir—holegje (editorial board), which were current in leftist periodicals (see U. Weinreich 1977). Moreover, we even find an American Yiddish semi-abbreviation (though it is doubtful whether it has ever been in vogue), i.e. medfarzorg, for the American-English ‘medicare’ (ibid.).

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6.4 Acronyms

Apart from stump-compounds and semi-abbreviations, Soviet Yiddish borrowed from Russian scores of acronyms. Originally, they were Russian acronyms, transliterated with Yiddish letters, denoting different parties, organizations, institutions, ranks, and posts. However, in the 19203 some Yiddish newspapers, notably the M03cow Der emes, began to introduce the Yiddish equivalents Of the Russian acronyms; for example (Zaretski 1927a: 26): fs.s.r. (farbandfun sovetishe sotsialistishe republihn), cf. Ru. S.S.S.R. (USSR); a. ts. r.p.f (alfarbandisher tsentraler ratfun profesjonelefarejnen) , cf. Ru.

V.T3.S.P.S. (All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions); ts. a.h. (tsentraler ojsfir—homitet), cf. Ru. Ts.I.K. (Central Executive Committee). Importantly, the traditional names of Yiddish letters were not used in the pronunciation of Soviet Yiddish acronyms, even in those formed from the initial letters of Yiddish words. In fact, in Soviet Yiddish publications the names of Yiddish letters were as a rule given, if given at all, as historical information, analogous, for example, to the old names of the Cyrillic alphabet. Incidentally, the methods of teaching the alphabet in Soviet Yiddish schools were based on Leo Tolstoy’s approach, that is, on pronunciation of graphemes rather than on their names (cf. Spivak 1928: 12633). In a sense, the non-alphabetical pronunciation of Soviet Yiddish acronyms recalls the centuries-long tradition of reading Jewish acronymic surnames using rather arbitrary rules of phonetic interpretation (see Falkovich 1940: 71; Beider 1993: 57—9). However, the phonetization of Soviet Yiddish acronyms had its peculiar feature: the initial letters were often pronounced according to the names of their Russian counterpart, even if an acronym was comprised of the initial letters of aYiddish phrase. For instance: fs.s.r. [ef-es-es-er] (USSR); m.t.s. (mashin-trahtorishe stantsje) [em-te-es] (machine and tractor station); f.z.sh. (fabrih-zavodishe shul) [fe-zesha] (factory (vocational) school) (Zaretski 1935: 99). Pronunciation of fs.s.r. modelled the pronunciation of the Russian S.S.S.R. [es-es-es-er] (USSR), whereas the acronyms m.t.s. and f.z.sh. coincided with the corresponding original Russian acronyms, since mashin-trahtorishe stantsje < mashinno-trahtornaja stantsija and fabrihzavodishe shul < fabrichno—zavodshaja shhola.

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Two types of acronym are used in Soviet Yiddish: 1. Alphabetic acronyms, or combinations of word-initial letters pronounced by their Russian alphabetical names (see the above examples). Some of the alphabetic acronyms were not only pronounced but also spelled by the Russian letter names, such as tseka, from Russian tsentral'nyj Itomt'ret and Yiddish tsentral-hornitet (Central Committee), tsheha, from Russian Chrezvychajnaja Komissija (Extraordinary Commission [for struggle against counterrevolution, sabotage, and speculation]). 2. Phonetic acronyms, or combinations of word-initial letters pronounced like normal words, e.g. mopr, from Russian Mezhdunarodnaja organizatsija pomoshchi revoljutsioneram (International Or— ganization for Aid to Fighters for Revolution), vuz from Russian vysshee uchebnoe zavedenie (higher educational institution). In the 19303 some acronyms even became part of Soviet Yiddish idiomatic expressions. For example: Me vet mihh ojsshlisnfun mopr: ‘So what!? They cannot cause me any harm’ (lit. [So] I’ll be expelled from MOPR). [Er iz geven a tshlen tseka, itst iz er] a tsekahter tshlen: ‘[He used to be a member of the Central Committee, now he is] a nonentity’ (lit. a spoiled or defiled member)

The acronyms comprised of the initial letters of a Yiddish or Russian phrase (such as fs.s.r. versus 3.3.3.1) and based on Yiddish phrases took root mainly, if not only, in the written language (see in particular Zaretski 1934). True, a number of Russian acronyms (such as fish. m.t.s., tseha) could be reinterpreted as Yiddish acronyms; Zaretski (ibid.) called such coincidental blends ‘YiddishRussian abbreviations’. In general, acronyms were much less used in Soviet Yiddish than stump-compounds and semi-abbreviations. The latter were by far more welcome innovations than acronyms, which became ‘a thorn in the Soviet Yiddish press’s flesh’ (Itkovich 1977: 155) since in Yiddish there are no capital letters nor are there (in the Soviet orthography) double apostrophes which style acronyms in Hebrew and in non-Soviet Yiddish spellings. Zaretski also argued that since Yiddish Sovietisms were often shorter than the corresponding Russian ones, Yiddish acronyms were more or less dispensable (Zaretski 1927a; 1934).

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6.5 Univerbs with the suffix -he This type of univerb represents nouns formed, as a rule, from the combination of adjective + noun (cf. Osipova 1991). Shkljar (1934) and Gitlits (1938) listed the following words modelled on Russian neologisms: Yi. agithe, cf. Ru. agitha (propaganda piece); Yi. anonimhe, cf. Ru. (1) anonimha (anonymous letter), (2) obezlichha (undefined or anonymous responsibility); Y1. grindlhe, cf. Ru. uchredilovha (Constituent Assembly); Yi. falshivhe, cf. Ru. fal’shivha (forged/fake document, fraud); Yi. filtirazhhe, cf. Ru. mnogotirazhha (factory (or holhhoz, etc.) newspaper);Yi. funhtsionalhe, cf. Ru. funhtsionalha (organization of production according to functional / operational principle); Yi. majovhe, cf. Ru. maevha (pre-revolution illegal May Day meeting); Yi. pilothe, cf. Ru. pilotha (forage cap). Transmorphemization, or translation of morphemes, plays a significant role in the processes of borrowing the above Yiddish words: some of them are formed purely by transmorphemization of the Russian models (the Russian suffix -ha is translated as the Yiddish -he), the others by transmorphemization of the suffix and loan translation of the rest of the word (grindlhe,filtirazhhe). The origin of the blend Yi. anonimhe= Ru. anonimha and Ru. obezlichha remains unexplained. It may be a pure coincidence of two independent borrowings, one of them by transmorphemization (anonirnke from Ru. anonimha) and another by loan translation (anonimhe from Ru. obezlichha). In Shkljar’s 1934 list anonimhe means evidently only ‘undefined/anonymous responsibility’, since onperzonihajt—the bracketed synonym in the list—has no other meanings. In the 1940 Yiddish—Russian dictionary, however, we find both meanings (Rokhkind and Shkljar 1940: 98). The list of the univerbs with -ke can be expanded. For example: Yi. gazirovhe, cf. Ru. gazirovha (soda water); Yi. herosinke, cf. Ru. herosinka (kerosene lamp); Yi. hopirhe, cf. Ru. hopirka (carbon/copying paper); Yi. leninhe, cf. Ru. Leninha (Lenin Library) (the State Library in Moscow); Yi. masovhe, cf. Ru. masovha (mass meeting); Yi. spirtovhe, cf. Ru. spirtovha (spirit lamp); Yi. tushonhe, cf. Ru. lushonha (stewed meat); Yi. zenithe, cf. Ru. zenitha (ack-ack (antiaircraft) gun). Some words combine two types of univerbalization. For example, the word politmasovhe (from the Russian politmasovha (political mass meeting)) is, on the one hand, a semi-abbreviation

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containing the stump polit and the full lexeme masovhe. On the other hand, masovhe itself is a univerb with the suflix Jre. As in the case of stump-compounding, all the Yiddish Ire-univerbs imitate univerbalization which originally took place in Russian— especially since the suffix -he had long since become a universal means of translating Slavonic nouns with the suffix -ha. So far as I know, the word majrevhe for the University for the National Minorities of the West (especially itsJewish Department) is the sole example of independent Yiddish univerbization with the suffix -he (with majrev (west)). It is not unlikely that majrevhe was coined after the analogy of the Russian Arternovha or Ukrainian Arternivha, the Artem Communist Institute in Kharkov (cf. Luckyj 1990: 72).

6.6 Adjectivalization In order to describe a noun, one can use in Yiddish: (1) other nouns (noun modifiers) to form a compound noun; (2) constructions with fun (of); (3) adjectives. For example, one can describe an organization of writers as: (1) shrajber-organizatsje; (2) organi-

zatsjefun shrajber, (3) shrajberishe organizatsje. Under the influence of Slavonic languages, Yiddish writers, especially journalists, tended to use phrases consisting of adjective + noun instead of compound nouns (Zaretski 1927c. 4; Shtif 1930: 12; Gitlits 1938: 107; Spivak 1939a: 139). This accounts, in particular, for the high instance of adjectives with hitherto less productive suffixes, such as -bar (-able, -ible), and -loz (-less, lacking [something]). But even regular suffixes often could not blur the alien (i.e. Russian) origin of the adjectives used in Soviet Yiddish publications. Zaretski (1927b. 62-3) lists such innovations as: ajznbanisher arbeter (for ajznban-arbeter) modelled on the Russian zheleznodorozhnyj rabochij (railwayrnan); blut-trogndihe gefesn (for blutgefesn), cf. Ru. hrovenosnye sosudy (blood-vessels); demisezoner mantl (for demisezonmantl), cf. Ru. dernisezonnoe pal’to (spring/autumn coat); glihlehher ojsgeshrej (for glih-ojsgeshrej), cf. Ru. schastlivyj vozglas (cry of happiness); hhojdeshdihe optsoln (for hhojdesh-optsoln), cf. Ru. mesjachnye vznosy (monthly dues). Some of the loan translations (such as demisezoner mantl) are listed in Shapiro et al. (1984). A number of Yiddish adjectives with the prefix on- and the suffix

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-(d)ih (which, according to Yudl Mark (1978: 223), is ‘the universal adjectivalization suffix’) are modelled after Russian adjectives with the prefix bez-/bes-, for example: Yi. onbodndiher, cf. Ru. bespochvennyj (groundless); Yi. onferdiher, cf. Ru. bezloshadnyj (horseless); Yi. onivrediher, cf. Ru. bezgramotnyj (illiterate); Yi. onmezumendiher, cf. Ru. banalichnyj (not in cash; by book entry); Yi. onprotsentiher, cf. Ru. besprotsentnyj (bearing no interest; interest free); Yi. ontsoliher, cf. Ru. beschislennyj (countless, numberless) (Zaretski 1931a: 107—8; for more examples, see Y. Mark 1978: 231). The most avant-garde type of adjective formation is the zihhadjectives. Although the number of such adjectives is rather small, the rise itself of this type of adjectivalization indicates the extent of language change: the accommodation of such adjectives required a completely new model of word-formation, which used the verbal additive/ pronoun zihh as a prefix. The zihhadjectives are modelled on a peculiar type of Russian verbal adjective, that is, reflexive participles. For example: Yi. zihh-antvihlendihe industrie, cf. Ru. razviva-

jushchajasja promyshlennost'((the) developing industry); Yi. zihhbafrajendihe mentshhajt, cf. Ru. osvobozhdajushcheesja chelovechestvo (mankind which is becoming/making itself free); Yi. zihh-bojendiher sotsializm, cf. Ru. strojashchijsja sotsializm ((the) socialism which is being built); Yi. zihhfarfestihndihe hredit-sistem, cf. Ru. utverzhdajushchajasja sistema hreditovanija ((the) crediting system which is becoming firmly established); Yi. zihh-farsharfndihe stires, cf. Ru. obostrjajushchiesja protivorechija ((the) aggravating antagonisms) ;Yi. zihh-hohsimdihe hojln, cf. Ru. hohsujushchiesja ugli (coking coals) (Slutski 1927: 33; Spivak 1939a: 140). In the Soviet Yiddish dictionaries published before the Second World War there are no zihh-adjectives. Apparently, the lexicographers regarded them as nonce-formations or grammatically aberrant innovations. Indeed, some of them were later recast in a more acceptable form. For example, zihh-hohsimdihe hojln became hohsirihe hojln (Shapiro et al. 1984). However, others, such as zihhantvihlendiher and zihh-bojendiher, appear in the 1984 dictionary. In general, in contemporary Yiddish the zihh-adjectives began to play some role. Thus, in a novel written in Israel by the former Soviet novelist Eli Schechtrnan, we find such adjectives as, for example, zihh-rejhherndih (emitting smoke); zihh-shohlendih (shaking); zihh-shpilndih (playing); zihh-3hvartsndih (looming); zihh-vigndih (swinging) (Schechtrnan 1994). Sometimes, the zihh-adjectives also

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occur in the works of non-Soviet writers, such as der zihh-vehndiher shotn (the shadow that is waking itself) in Abraham Sutzkever’s poetic prose (Sutzkever 1989: 5). Much the same function as adjectives is performed in Yiddish by relative clauses which describe or define an antecedent noun. In Soviet Yiddish, the Slavonic-like heterogeneous expanded attributes began to compete with relative clauses. As we know (see Ch. 1), heterogeneous expanded attributes sometimes appeared in pre1917 writings. But Soviet Yiddish publications were literally inundated with such constructions. It seems that only a small group of writers, editors, and linguists continued to resist this syntactic shift. Their outcries, however, could not prevent the use and, in a sense, even naturalization (cf. Reznik 1934) of this type of word-for-word translation from Russian. For example: Yi. der ongevizener durhh im vidershpruhh (instead of der vidershpruhh, afvelhh er hot ongevizn), cf. Ru. uhazannoe im protivorechie (the contradiction which be mentioned); Yi. di nit farshtendlehhe farn ojlern frage (instead of di frage, vos der ojlemfarshtejt nit), cf. Ru. neponjatnyj dlja sobravshihhsja vopros (the problem, which the audience cannot understand) (Slutski 1927: 33; Gelbman 1928: 41). Moreover, even in the cases when Yiddish grammar tolerates the heterogeneous expanded attributes, Soviet writers frequently used an inverse word order. For example: Yi. di populere hajnttsutog lid, cf. Ru. populjarnaja segodnja/sejchas pesnja ‘the popular nowadays song’ (see Reznik 1934: 28). This word order is normal in Russian. but not in Yiddish where the adjective (populere) should follow the adverb (hajnttsutog) (cf. Y. Mark 1978: 391). A number of the adjectives, appearing in Soviet Yiddish as loan translations of Russian adjectives, later underwent nominalization, for example arbetndiker (worker; toiler); di rojte (Red Army); di vajse (White Army). Again, this type of elliptic nominalization originally took place in Russian and was later replicated inYiddish. In other words, arbetndiher did not appear as a result of elliptic nominalization of the Yiddish arbetndihe masn (working masses). Soviet Yiddish language planners just replicated the result of a parallel nominalization in Russian (trudjashchijsja < trudjashchiesja massy). In this case, adjectivalization comes into contact with univerbalization, or its particular case—elliptic nominalization (cf. Kalishan 1984: 404).

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6.7 The urffix nil: in Soviet Yiddish The suffix -nih has been a topic for numerous studies on wordforrnation in various non-Slavonic languages (see, for example, Harder 1966; Muller-Ott 1965: 62-6; Hengst 1971: 11; Bauer 1991: 255—66). Although the Slavonic origin of the suffix is indubitable, its productivity in other languages, in particular in English, is associated—at least partly—with the influence of Yiddish. Thus, Max Weinreich (1973: iv. 330) supposed that it was the fin de siecle coinage olrajtnih (alrightnik), ascribed to the leading American Yiddish editor Abraham Cahan, that cleared the way for English Americanisms with -nih. Indeed, Yiddish has naturalized the suffix -nih, which is one of the oldest aflixes (or perhaps even the oldest one) borrowed from Slavonic languages. Mordechai Gitlits, a Soviet Yiddish student of the Slavonic component in Yiddish, found borrowings in a 1607 text. Since the second half of the eighteenth century not only borrowings but also genuine coinages with -nih appear in Yiddish books (Gitlits 1938: 89). The process, when multiple borrowings of words with the same suffix result in the naturalization of the foreign suffix, is well known (see Paul 1937: 399). In Slavonic languages, -nih is often a compound suffix, -n- + -ih. The first of them is a constituent of an adjective, from which a corresponding noun has been derived. In fact, it is the availability of numerous adjectives with the suffix -n- that explains a high productivity of nominalization in -n- + -ih (Mazon 1920: 26; Dementjev 1942: 49). In Yiddish, this type of word formation was not practised on a large scale. True, we find Yiddish nouns which could be regarded as formed from adjectives with the suffix -ne: marudnih (slow man) < marudne (wearisome); nudnih (tedious man) < nudne (tedious); pashudnih (nasty man) < pashudne (nasty). Yet most probably the nominalization originally took place in Polish, and Yiddish borrowed both the adjective (with translation of the suffix: Yiddish -ne, Polish my) and the noun. In Yiddish the suffix -nih has acquired special significance as a new means of forming nouns denoting agents, giving birth to scores of derivatives from nouns, particularly those of Semitic origin. The latter usually denote professions, handiworks, commodities, personal characteristics (as distinct from, say, words with the Germanic suffix -erwhich derives usually from verbal stems). For

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example: jarid (fair/market) > jaridnih (one who visits fairs/ markets); hhutspe (impertinence) > hhutspenih (irnpertinent man); holboj (catchall) > holbojnih (jack of all trades; rascal); rehhiles (slander, gossip) > rehhilesnih (slanderer); shlimazl (bad luck) > shlimezalnih (unlucky person); tales (tallith (prayer shawl)) > talejsnih

(manufacturer of talliths). The Soviet Yiddish neologisms with -nih are practically all loans from the Soviet Russian (or sometimes Ukrainian) lexicon. The suffix -nih was immensely productive in post-revolutionary Russian. In particular, the suffix played a conspicuous role in creating lexical items which not only denoted persons, but also evaluated them from the ideological or other point of view (cf. Epshtejn 1991). The following examples of Soviet YiddlSh words with the agentive suflix -nih are culled from Shkljar (1934); Rokhkind and Shkljar (1940); Shapiro et al. (1984). Some of these words may have appeared before 1917, although they became widely used only after the Revolution. Loanwords (or importation from Russian and Ukrainian of morphemes without substitution): antireligeznih, cf. Ru. antirelig-ioznih (antireligionist); atomnih, cf. Ru. atomnih (though the form atomshchih is much more widespread) (atomic scientist); datshnih, cf. Ru. dachnih (summer resident of a country cottage (dacha)); druzhinih, cf. Ru. druzhinnih (paramilitary volunteer); frzhulturnih, cf. Ru. fizhul’turnih (athlete, gymnast); hhaltumih, cf. Ru. hhalturnih and Ukr. hhalturnyh (pot-boiler) (in Russian, hhaltumih was current in the 19203; later it was supplanted by hhalturshchih—see Altajskaja 1960: 19); hurortnih, cf. Ru. hurortnih (resort/spa visitor); poljarnih, cf. Ru. poljarnih (polar explorer); privatnih, cf. Ukr. privatnyh (private trader, craftsman, etc.); sabotazhnih, cf. Ru. sabotazhnih (saboteur, wrecker); shhurnih, cf. Ru. shhurnih (self-seeker); udamih, cf. Ru. udamih (shock (leading or model) worker). Loanblends (half-calques, or importation from Russian and Ukrainian of morphemes with substitution): arojsloznih, cf. Ru. vypushnih (school-leaver, new graduate student) (Yi. arojsloz = Ru. vypush (graduation)) (one Soviet Yiddish literary critic regarded arojsloznih as an absurd calque—Margolin 1978: 158); artelnik, cf. Ru. artel'shchih and Ukr. artil’nyh (member of artel, association for common work); dalesnih, cf. Ukr. nezamozhnyh (Yi. dales = Ukr. neza. mozhnist’ (poverty)) (poor man or peasant); farprizivnik, cf. Ru. dapn'zyvnih (youth of pre-draft age) (Yi. for = Ru. do (before) + Yi.

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priziv = Ru. prizyv (draft)) (in the 19203, there was also used a coinage with the Hebrew erevfor do: erevprizivnih—Zaretski 1927a: 22); farshulnih, cf. Ru. doshhol’nih (child under school age) (Yi. far= Ru. do (before) + Yi. shul = Ru. shhola (school)); holvirtnih, cf. Ru. holhhoznih (collective farmer); honjuhturnih, cf. Ru. hon’juhturshchih (time-server); tsenthlasnih, cf. Ru. desjatihlassnih (tenth-grader) (Yi. tsent = Ru. desjati (tenth) + Yi. hlas = Ru. hlass (grade, class); analogically: Yi. ershthlasnih (first form boy), Yi. ershthursnih (first-year student); etc.); tsvejtjomih, cf. Ru. vtorogodnih (pupil remaining for the second year in the same class) (Yi. tqu't = Ru. vtoro (second) + Yi. jor= Ru. god (year )); urlojbnih, cf. Ru. otpushnih (holiday-maker, person on leave) (Yi. urlojb = Ru. otpush (holiday)). Although Yiddish often avoids formations in -shtshih = Ru. -shchih (see artelnih, hharlturnih, honjuhturnih), the Soviet Yiddish lexicon contains a number of borrowings with this agentive suflix, which is, in fact, the most productive in modern Russian (see Moiseev 1967). The 1984 Russian-Yiddish dictionary lists such direct borrowings as: bahenshtshih (buoy keeper); buntovshtshih (mutineer); garderobshtshih (cloak-room attendant); paromshtshih (ferryrnan); progulshtshih (truant); tabelshtshih (timekeeper); vesovshtshih (checkweighman, weigher). The Yiddish language planners were forced willy-nilly to acknowledge such words, especially after the unsuccessful searching for a native equivalent for Russian progul’shchih ‘truant’ (see Spivak 1939a: 124)—a very frequent Sovietism. For all that, -sht.shih is childless in Soviet Yiddish; Ihave not been able to find the suffix outside direct loans from Russian. While the list of loanwords and loanblends can be easily expanded, it is rather diflicult to find loan translations with the agentive suffix -nih, that is a borrowing in which all morphemes are substituted rather than imported. The only full calque of this type which I could find is pshorenih (conciliator), cf. Ru. soglashatel’ (pshore, cf. Ru. soglashenie (compomise; conciliation)). With regard to another Soviet Yiddish coinage, majrevnih (student of the Communist University for the National Minorities of the West (especially its Jewish Department)), it is diflicult to say with certainty whether it was not a calque of Russian zapadnih; majrev = zapad (west). As in the pre-1917 vocabulary, Soviet Yiddish nouns with the suffix -nih denote mostly persons. However, some loans from Russian which denote objects have also become part of the Soviet Yiddish

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lexicon; for example: bagazhnih (boot; trunk); hholodilnih (refrigerator); hofejnih (coffee pot) (cf. havenih in U. Weinreich 1977); vatnih (quiltedjacket). Moreover, Yiddish naturalized a number of Russian nib-words for political and other campaigns. For example: loanword dehadnih (ten-day campaign); loanblends hhojdeshnih, cf. Ru. mesjachnih (a month’s campaign) (hhojdesh = mesjats (month). Some Western publications use hhojdeshnih for (monthly), as well as hvartlnih—for (quarterly)—-see U. Weinreich 1977; Schaechter 1986: 263—5); shabesnih, cf. Ru. subbotnih (labour freely given to the State on Saturday) (shabes = subbota (Saturday, Sabbath). In the pre-1917 lexicon, shabesnih denoted a large candlestick for the Sabbath—see Holmshtok 1932: 52; Harkavy 1988: 487. But it is unlikely that this is an example of semantic extension. Probably, the Soviet shabesnih has nothing to do with its older twin); zuntihnih, cf. Ru. voshresnih (labour freely given to the State on Sunday) (zuntih = voshresenje (Sunday)); analogical formation jomhipernih (an antireligious campaign on Yom Kippur) and pejsehhnih (an antireligious campaign on Passover), modelling shabesnih, zuntihnih, hhojdeshnih, or their Russian prototypes. Apart from their functional expansion, Soviet Yiddish nouns with -nih are notable for their frequent use of Germanic stems (e.g. arty'sloznih, farshulnih, zuntihnih). Compared with the pre-1917 and Western usage, this can be regarded as an innovation, since the vast majority of attested formations in mi]: do not contain such stems; according to Paul Wexler (1987: 175), the word vajbernih (lady-killer) is no more than an exception to the rule.

6.8 The verbal prefix derIn Yiddish, verbal prefixation is a complex expression of lexical and semantic-syntactic meanings. All Yiddish verbal prefixes are, etyrnologically, Germanic; othhajen (to revive) is a unique example of a Yiddish verb formed with a Slavonic prefix (M. Weinrech 1973: ii. 282). However, preserving the Germanic surface form, the Yiddish verbal prefix system made a number of semantic accommodations under the influence of Slavonic languages. While much of this is known (see in particular Schaechter 1951; Wexler 1964; Talmy 1982; Kiefer 1985: 1207), the Yiddish verbal prefix system has yet to be studied in depth. The following is an

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attempt to reveal the peculiar behaviour of the modern Yiddish verbal prefix system in two linguistic and socio—linguistic surroundings: the NorthAmerican and the Soviet. The object for the study will be the verbal prefix der-, which in many cases lost its correlation with the German er- and became the Yiddish twin of the Slavonic verbal prefix do-/da~. Given the fact

that Russian, rather than Ukrainian and Belorussian, played the paramount role in the Soviet Jewish community, this study will centre on Yiddish—Russian parallels. Also, Ukrainian doverbs and Belorussian da-verbs usually have the same meanings and morphological structure as their Russian counterparts, especially in the Soviet area of the three languages’ coexistence. The prefix der- has been chosen for examination because the English verbal system lacks parallel regular means to express the idea of completion of the last phase of action, while in Yiddish this semantic load of the Slavonic do- / da- often finds expression by the use of der-. The hypothesis, which will serve as a starting-point for the subsequent discussion, is that der- = do- usage became more widespread among Yiddish-Russian bilinguals, rather than among YiddishEnglish bilinguals. I omit discussing the socio-linguistic background of Yiddish in America, for there is voluminous literature on this question (see, in particular,J. Fishman 1991: 75—179). For this study, the corpus of derverbs is taken from the following six dictionaries: J. M. Lifshits, Yiddish-Russian Dictionary (Lifshits 1876); I. Drejzin, Russian—Yiddish Dictionary (Drejzin 1909); A. Harkavy, Yiddish—English—Hebrew Dictionary (Harkavy 1988, originally published in 1928); S. Rokhkind and H. Shkljar, Yiddish -Russian Dictionary (Rokhkind and Shkljar 1940); U. Weinreich, Modem English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary (Weinreich 1977, originally published in 1968); M. Shapiro et al., Russian—Yiddish Dictionary (Shapiro et al. 1984). Clearly, the dictionaries do not present a complete inventory of all the words at the time when, and place where, the lexicographers worked. But each of them lists some proportion of the derprefixed forms in current use. To begin with, it seems reasonable to select the ‘basic stock’ of modern der-verbs, conventionally attributing to this stock the words which are listed in both post-war dictionaries—Weinreich (1977) and Shapiro et al. (1984). List 1 shows all the ‘basic’ derverbs in Yiddish alphabetical order, and also whether the word has a Russian doequivalent.

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List 1: (l) derbaremen zihh; (2) dagantsn (dopolnjat’); (3) dagzjn (dokhodit’); (4) dergisn (dolivat’); (5) dagebn (dodavat’); (6) dergrunteuen (zihh) (dokapyvat’sja); (7) dergrejkhn (dostigat’); (8) derhaltn (in the meaning ‘to receive’); (9) derhejbn; (10) derhem; (ll) derhargfen)cn; (l2) demargn/demergn (zikh); (13) deruartn; (14) demartn zikh (dozhidat’sja); (l5) deruajzn (dokazyvat’); (16) deruajtem (zikh); (17) dervisn zikh (doznavat’sja); (18) dervegn zikh; (19) derzogn (dogovarivat’/doshazyvat'); (20) derzen; (21) dertrenken/deminhen (zihh); (22) derjogn (dogonjat’); (23) derlozn (dopuskat’); (24) derlangen (in the meanings dostavat’ (to reach) and dotjagivat’sja (to stretch out the hand, make reaching motion or effort)); (25) derlangen (in the meaning ‘to hand, serve; submit; inflict’); (26) derlojbn; (27) derlojbn zihh; (28) derlejg'n (dokladyvat’); (29) derlq'enen (dochityvat’); (30) derlebn (dozhivat’); (31) dermonen/dermanen (zikh); (32) dermordn; (33) dermatikn; (34) demiderikn (zikh); (35) deme(e)ntem (zikh); (36) demem; (37) derendihn (dokanchivat’); (38) deresn; (39) derforn (doezzhat’); (40) derfiln (in the meaning ‘to detect, sense’); (41) derfim (dovodit’); (42) derfrq'en (zikh); (43) derfn'shn (zikh); (44) derfregn (zikh); (45) dertsoln (doplachivat’); (46) dertsorenen/dertserenen; (47) dertsejln (in the meaning ‘to narrate’); (48) dertsien (in the meaning dotjagivat’ (stretch (up to); hold out until; live until)); (49) dertsien (in the meaning ‘to bring up, educate’); (50) derkvilm; (51) derkutshen; (52) derkundilm zikh; (53) derklem; (54) derhenen; (55) deragznen; (56) derredn zihh (dogovari— vat’sja); (57) dershatsn; (58) dershtojnen; (59) dershtihn (zikh); (60) dershtekhn; (61) dershitern; (62) dershajnen; (63) dershisr; (64) dershlog-n; (65) dershlogn zihh (dobivat’sja); (67) dershpim; (68) dershrekn (zihh). So, from 68 verbs of List 1, 23 have Russian do-equivalents. More importantly, in the Soviet dictionary the meanings of these 23 verbs adopt the meanings of their Russian counterparts. For example, derlebn adopts the additional meaning of ‘to be reduced to’; dertsien, ‘to live until’. List 2 contains der-verbs which are listed in Shapiro et al. (1984), but not in U. Weinreich (1977): (1) derobem (Ru. zavoevyvat’); (2) derar'betn (dorabatyvaf); (3) derarbetn (vytvorjat’); (4) derbakn (dopekat’); (5) derbetn (umolit’); (6) derbetn zikh (doprosit’sja); (7) derg'robn (zihh) (dokapyvat’sja); (8) derdushen (zadushit’); (9) derdinen (zikh) (dosluzhit’sja); (10) demakhn (probuzhdat’); (ll) demaksn (dorastat’);

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(12) dervaremen (razogreuat'); (l3) dervidern (vozrazhat’); (14) dervegn (doveshivat'); (15) deruekn (zikh) (probuzhdat’); (16) derverbn (priobretat’, zavoevyvat’); (17) denukhn zihh (doiskat’sja); (18) denitsn (dosizhivat’); (19) derton (dodelyvat’); (20) dertejtn (dobivat’); (21) dertrogn (donosit’); (22). dertrogn zikh (donosit’sja); (23) dertrakhtn (zihh) (dodumyvat’sja); (24) deriojfn (dobegaf); (25) derlejzn (reshat’); (26) derlernen (izuchat', issledovat’); (27) dermuntem (pri-obodrjat'); (28) derfindn (izobretat’); (29) derkokhn (dovarivat'); (30) deriwetshn (zadavit’); (31) derkajhlen (zikh) (dokatyvat’sja); (32) derhlajbn zikh (dobirat’sja); (33) derhlingen zikh (dozvanivat'sja); (34) derkrikhn (dopolzat'); (35) derredn (dogovan'vat’); (36) dermfn zikh (dozyvat’sja); (37) dershvimen (doplyvat’); (38) dashikn (dosylat’); (39) dashlofn(dosy1:at’); (40) dershlepn (zikh) (dopletat’sja); (41) dershpiln zikh (doigrat'sja); (42) dershhuljen (donimat’); (43) dershrajbn (dopi-

syvat’).

Thus, two-thirds (14) of verbs in List 2 have a Russian doequivalent, compared with just one-third in List 1. In addition, it is only among the innovations listed in the Soviet dictionaries that we find calques of Russian verbs which denote excessive actions with a negative or absurd result (cf. Sekaninova 1971: 193, 199; Avilova 1976: 310): derhajhlen zikh (roll (to); sink (into), come (to), go/ run to seed), dershpiln zikh (get oneself (into), land oneself (in), be defeated as a result of own misdeeds). Even in List 1, one of the verbs adopts, in Soviet Yiddish usage, an additional meaning of absurd result: derredn zihh (to come to the point of uttering an absurdity) (apart from the main meaning of ‘to reach an

understanding’).

List 3 contains der- verbs which we find in U. Weinreich 1977, but not in Shapiro et al. 1984: (l) derbiven zikh (dobivat’sja); (2) derbejzem; (3) dergodzen; (4) derhaltn (to maintain); (5) derhajntikn; (6) derhitsn; (7) derhitsn zikh; (8) dervejln; (9) dervishn; (10) demn zikh; (11) dertrajbn; (12) dertshmeljen; (l3) derhaasn; (14) derlq'dikn; (15) derlq'zn (to redeem, save); (16) dermakhn (dodelyvat’); (17) dermigIekhn; (18) dapintlen zikh; (19) derfiln ‘to fulfil’; (20) dertsejln (doschityvat’); (21) dashtuheven (doshtukovat'); (22) dershnapn; (23)

dershpiln. It is illuminating that just four verbs-—slight1y more than onesixth—in List 3 have Russian do-equivalents. Apparently, such innovations as derhajntikn (to update), derpintlen zikh (to zero in

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Soviet Yiddish word-formation

(on)), and dershpiln (to dub in) would never appear in Soviet Yiddish. At the same time, Weinreich’s dictionary demonstrates a more conservative usage compared with Soviet dictionaries: 30.6 per cent of derverbs listed in Rokhkind and Shkljar (1940) and 22.5 per cent of the words listed in Shapiro et al. (1984) are not found in the dictionaries compiled by Lifshits (1876), Drejzin (1909), and Harkavy (1988 [1928]), whereas the same is characteristic of only 17.6 per cent of derverbs listed in Weinreich’s dic-

tionary. It is clear that the Soviet dictionaries demonstrate a tendency to use considerably more der = do-verbs (almost 50 per cent of all listed der-verbs) than the American dictionary (less than one-third). Some of the verbs with the prefix der- grated on the ears even of Soviet Yiddish literati. Thus, jeshue Ljubomirski (1962: 123), quoted the following lines from a poem by josef Kotljar: fun himl funem blojen zcj tajtlen, vajzn on,|vos darf men nokh derbojen, derflantsn un derton (from the blue sky, they [the stars] point, indicate,|what people still ought to complete building, planting and doing). According to Ljubomirski, the verb derton (to compete) should be condemned as an overt calque from Russian (dodelat’). In sum, the comparison between the der-verbs in U. Weinreich’s dictionary and the Soviet dictionaries illustrates the Soviet Yiddish -American Yiddish schism. In the United States, the Slavonic component of Yiddish became ‘frozen’, whereas Soviet Yiddish language planners continued to adjust the language to the coterritorial Slavonic languages, primarily to Russian. The Russianspeaking surroundings influenced a much wider use of der—verbs expressing the ideas analogous to those of the corresponding Russian do-equivalents. In fact, it is a particular case of the general principle that when bilinguals import into Yiddish elements from another language (i.e. Russian), they tend to create a rather stable system of borrowing (cf. Szulmajster-Celnikier 1994: 171).

Conclusion The zeal displayed by SovietJewish authorities and language planners to combine the development of Yiddish culture with the objectives of Soviet totalitarian ideology, led, in the 19203 and 19305, to an ambivalent result. On the one hand, the Bolshevik revolution paved the way for an unprecedented flowering of Yiddish printing, schooling, and creative activity. In the two decades after 1917, the Soviet regime did not promulgate any edicts which could be described as direct acts of linguicide (cf. Rudnyckyj 1976) against Yiddish. Quite the reverse, the Yiddishization drive of the late 1920s and early 19303 even involved the propagation of the language. On the other hand, ideologization and insipidity, which infested all forms of work among SovietJews, repelled and eventually reduced the clientele of Yiddish culture. In spite of the successes of some Soviet Yiddish writers, actors, scholars, and teachers, for many laymen such a linguistically rather than nationally oriented culture really only imitated mainstrearn Russian culture. The Soviet-speak of Yiddish publications, inundated with grating and unsteady borrowings from Russian, often accentuated the secondrate nature and even artificiality of Soviet Yiddish culture. As early as the 19203, a Soviet Yiddish-Russian vernacular commensurate with the new society became widespread in the country, especially among the jewish city and town-dwellers. This vernacular also intruded upon the literary language. In general, we can adopt the 19205 as the terminus a quo for the crystallization of the Soviet make-up of Yiddish. Its vocabulary expanded owing to thousands of borrowings, for the most part from Russian. The ‘functional prosperity’ of Yiddish in the early Soviet Union coincided with the suppression of the traditional Jewish tenor of life and, as a consequence, with the decline of the language, it spread—especially among the younger segment of the population, intellectuals, and migrants—to the industrial centres. In general, the cultivation of Yiddish was a political rather than national issue.

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So, ‘by reducingjewish nationality to a denationalizedYiddish language’ (Gitelman 1972: 510), the regime deprived the language of its creative capacity. Hence language-planning measures became almost the sole instrument of its development. Having such an opportunity, many Yiddish language planners came to believe that their projects would save Yiddish and, consequently, the network of Yiddish institutions in the Soviet Union. The large-scale lexical innovation had a mixed reception in the ranks of the SovietJewish intellectuals. It was in the choice of the words to be used in literary Yiddish that the sharpest controversy arose and in which the two tendencies of the period were most apparent. The most radical and denationalized part of the intellectuals embraced the intrusion of Russian Sovietisms. The opinion that ‘to preserve the “purity” of the literary language [meant] to increase the abyss between it and the vivid language of the masses of working people’ (Zaretski 1930a: 7) became widespread among the language planners. Their opponents, however, argued that Yiddish must preserve its uniqueness and, therefore, use mostly its own lexical resources for the modernization of the vocabulary. Loan translations appeared to be a compromise solution. But, all the same, numerous direct borrowings from Russian continued to invade Soviet Yiddish, in particular its spoken forms. None the less, it was not the quality of the Yiddish language used in Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, or Minsk publications that determined its destiny in the Soviet Union. The same idiom, even subjected to a large-scale shake-up of the lexicon, morpho-syntactic models, and spelling rules, might have become the sanguineous vernacular of SovietJews. In fact, Yiddish literature, pedagogy, and linguistics prepared, and to a certain extent realized, a wide functional expansion of the language into virtually all domains of modern society. The problem was, however, that in the Soviet Union there did not exist a community which needed the language. For the vast majority of Soviet jews a national language became an excessive luxury. Admittedly, jews parted with Yiddish more easily than others parted with their national languages. The revolution accelerated modernization and the attendant linguistic assimilation of the jewish community. An average Soviet jewish white-collar or industrial worker lived in Russian-speaking urban surroundings, and Russian was the language of his professional activities and pastimes. Ajewish artisan or small-factory

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worker might still continue to speak Yiddishat home and among Yiddish-speaking co-workers, but he dreamt of seeing his children make their way in life, and thus preferred sending them to a Russian school. The average Jew would not attend synagogue, fearing this might hinder his own or his children’s career, nor could he join the Bundist or Poale Zion, since all non-communist organizations were simply closed down and banned. Yiddish activities organized by the authorities were very often tailored for proletarians —‘the vanguard of society’; but, ironically, these favourites of Soviet political instructors were especially exposed to rapid acculturation in the industrial centres of the country. In fact, as early as the 19203, for a non-idealistic observer it should have been obvious that the new social and political surroundings were reducing all chances for Soviet Yiddish language planners. All statistical data showed that the proportion of Yiddishspeakers among SovietJews was steadily declining, though the government (until the early 19303) sponsored a growing number of Yiddish schools, colleges, periodicals, and other institutions. It is no mere coincidence that many Yiddish activists, both in the Soviet Union and abroad, cherished hopes for Jewish territorial units in Ukraine, Crimea, and Birobidzhan as a panacea against total assimilation. However, these rural enclaves with a small Jewish population were, at the best, hinterland oases rather than centres of Yiddish language and culture. For all that, in the 19203 and 1930s, Yiddish was still widely spoken in many parts of the country, especially in the former Pale of Jewish Settlement. Until 1938 maintenance of Yiddish in the Soviet Union was secured by a ramified system of schooling. After 1938 Soviet Yiddish language-planning activity practically ceased and the profession of Yiddish linguist and educator became almost unviable. Just a few linguists who survived the repressions of the 1930s continued to work in Kiev, Minsk, and Moscow. In a sense, Spivak’s book New Word-Formation (Spivak 1939a) summed up the discussions and successes achieved. The book became a striking illustration of an atomistic approach to the language: a particular word was ‘bad’ because it originated from Hebrew or, say, German, whereas another particular word was ‘good’, albeit it also originated from Hebrew or German; one particular Russianism was received with open arms, whereas another was absolutely inadmissible.

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In fact, there was a distinct lack of systematicity in virtually everything written by Soviet Yiddish language planners. Torn between Yiddish and Russian cultures, between Soviet patriotism and devotion to the Yiddish language and culture, between the unique functional possibilities of Yiddish and the diminishing number of its speakers, neither Spivak nor his colleagues could disentangle themselves from the ideological and cliquish fetters and abstain from the endless bickering over words. Some of them (such as Zaretski, Shtif, and Spivak) tried to find a non-existent scientific basis for makingjudgements in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Others were either visionaries or just political commissars. While in the 19203 Soviet literary Yiddish ‘tried on’ neologisms and new morpho-syntactic constructions borrowed from Russian, in the 1930s the literary language adapted many of the new lexical items and constructions. Mojshe Litvakov did not grossly exaggerate when he stated that the Yiddish in the Soviet Union had ‘no resemblance either to the pre-revolutionary Yiddish language or to the language of the . . .Yiddish literature and press in the capitalist countries’ (Litvakov 1934). Indeed, the number of innovations in it amounted to thousands of lexical items. A by no means complete list of widely used new coinages denoting social and political artefacts of Soviet life contains 1,500 items; in a newspaper text, these neologisms might make up 25—30 per cent of words (the list is provided in Shkljar 1934: 71-2). Virtually all of them were loan translations or direct borrowings of Russian lexical items. Deprived of important traditional functions (e.g. traditional socio—cultural milieu and religious life) and subjected at an overwhelming pace to new social roles in new social surroundings, Yiddish in the Soviet Union underwent significant changes. These were, as a rule, externally induced: it was Russian that became the principal force bearing on the restructuring of the Yiddish vocabulary and its morpho-syntactic and semantic make-up. Ukrainian and Belorussian also played an important role in the development of Soviet Yiddish. Although the number of borrowings from these languages was negligible compared with the influx of Russianisms, their co-territorial and political presence to a considerable degree determined the strategy of Soviet Yiddish language planners, in particular showing preference for international words, loantranslations, and Gerrnanisms rather than direct borrowings from one of the three Slavonic languages.

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Under the influence of Russian, Soviet Yiddish adopted a number of peculiar word-formation models. Some of them—especially the formation of stump-compounds, semi-abbreviations, and acronyms—were characteristic of the political lexicon and, except for direct Russian borrowings, they usually did not intrude into the spoken language. In fact, the Soviet Yiddish political and spe cial terminology was often regarded as an artificial part of the written language, possibly because this stock of words described something that—in real life—had nothing to do with Yiddish as a means of communication. At the same time, other innovations— an excessive adjectivalization, the extension of the meaning of words to include the meaning of a Russian prototype—were a direct result of the general change of Yiddish, spoken and written by people exposed to Russification. Importantly, Soviet Yiddish produced very few words without the direct influence of Russian, Ukrainian, or Belorussian. Therefore, for a non-Soviet reader who does not know (Soviet) Russian, Soviet Yiddish texts are often difficult to understand. The Yiddish spoken in the Soviet Union took the shape of a regional dialect, superimposed on the old north-eastern, mid-eastern, or southeastern dialectal peculiarities. Thus, the vocabulary of a Soviet Litvah (i.e. a speaker of north-eastern, or Lithuanian Yiddish) from, say, Minsk tangibly differs from the vocabulary of a Litvak whose parents emigrated from the same town to the USA or Israel. Clearly, this phenomenon can be partly attributed to the denationalization of Jewish life. SovietJewry had no national objective to which they could channel their culture. It is illuminating that majreuke and majrevnile—terrns associated with a ‘quasi-Jewish’ institution— are among the few examples of somewhat independent coinages. There is no doubt that if the specifically Jewish realms had been more extensive, such unprecedented Soviet Yiddish innovations would have been more numerous as well. The experience of the Soviet Yiddish spelling reforms demonstrates a particular fragility of such world-wide dispersed languages as Yiddish. Language-planning measures, even very rational and progressive ones, may easily become destructive and isolating. As a matter of fact, the Soviet reforms of Yiddish spelling may be re-

garded as a logical development of pre-revolutionary philological and political ideas of non-Bolshevik socialists and liberal champions of Yiddish expansion. But being implemented in the Soviet

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Union, the reforms very soon became a bugbear for Western Jewry—mostly because these reforms were associated with Communism. The curtailment of Yiddish educational institutions in 1938 struck an irrevocable blow to the spread of the language, especially in its written form. The annihilation of the Jewish population during the war and the reluctance of the many who fled from the occupied territories to return to their ruined homes dramatically diminished the number of active Yiddish speakers. The post-war victimization of Yiddish intellectuals, the liquidation of the few surviving Yiddish institutions and the raging of the governmentconducted anti-Semitic campaigns reduced Yiddish in the Soviet Union to a stagnant vernacular, spoken mainly by elderly provincials. The literary and language-planning practice of the 19405 and 19603-1980s did not tangibly change Soviet Yiddish, though many lexical innovations enriched the vocabulary. As in the 1920s and 1930s, Russian was the main donor language; the role played by Ukrainian and Belorussian became virtually negligible. Yiddish printing, renewed in 1959—61, mostly attracted pre-war readers. In my optimistic estimation, Sovetish hcjmland never had more than one hundred readers born after the war. In fact, it was a forum of nostalgic literature for nostalgic consumers. Even the magazine’s name itself—a collocation of the names of two previous Moscow Yiddish periodicals, the almanacs Sovetish (1934—41) and Hejmland (1947-8)—accentuated the retrospective direction of its activity. The writers, too, were in their element depicting shtetls, Jewish colonies, and the Yiddish-speaking surroundings where they grew up. They did not need to overcome the resistance of the vocabulary, except when they wrote about the contemporary milieu and current events. In the post-war period, the relationship between the Yiddish language of everyday life and the literary language became quite feeble. It is illuminating that in numerous publications on linguistic issues, which we find in Sovetish hejmland, such questions were never discussed. (In the 19205 and 19305, however, the discrepancies between spoken and written Yiddish were key issues in all language discussions.) In fact, used only for intra-family communication or fleeting metaphorical purposes (e.g. during weddings), spoken Yiddish exerted little, if any, influence on the written lan-

Conclusion

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guage. The latter, too, had a very limited impact on the spoken language since there was only one literary monthly (and that of small circulation) and a daily of even smaller circulation. A few books published each year were bought, apparently, by the same committed readers (the distribution of Yiddish books, in fact, had always been more complicated than the distribution of periodicals). As a result, the vocabulary of the spoken language was updated by Russianisms, such as pilesos (vacuum cleaner), kholodilnik (refrigerator), while their literary counterparts (shtojbzojger, kilshafe) were used only in the written language and by a few puristic speakers. Other innovations were of so-called international origin (for example, magnitofon (tape-recorder), multfilm (animated cartoon), sputnik (Sputnik), teleuizor (TV-set)), though in this case, as well, the neologisms came into writing and speech independently. All in all, the general decline of Soviet Yiddish during the postwar period was characterized by the further Russification of the spoken language. The attempt by Yiddish writers and linguists to preserve the purity of the written language made some texts rather artificial. Deprived of its functions, the language completely lost its creative energy and became a sort of huge storehouse of spare parts, the bulk of which were rusted. In the dramatically declining Yiddish world, Soviet Yiddish voices still can be heard, both in the former Soviet Union and—mostly—among the Soviet emigrants. A score of former Soviet Yiddish literati continue to write for a few beleaguered Yiddish periodicals. For all that, Soviet Yiddish is dying as a spoken variety of Yiddish. Its lustre and destitution rest in thousands of volumes, the bulk of which will never, perhaps, be reread.

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—

Index of Yiddish lexical items adobrjaen 78

atomnih 112, 162 atomokhod 112 -ator 133 a.t.s.r.p.f 155 auditorje 60, I26 auktsion 126 august 126 avtobus 126 avtomatler 99

af 125-6 af- 125-6

agev 53 agit- 144 agitator 133 agitatsje 144 agitke 157 ajn(n)emen 123 ajznban-arbeter 158 ajznbanisher arbeter 158 akademiker 113 aktivne 59, 61 -ale 80 alejn- 70

alejnkritik 70

alfarbandishe komunistishe partq' alfarbandisher tsentraler ratfun

profesionelefarq'nen 155 alk.p. 142

amunitsje 113 androjgenes 53 anonimke 157

antante 48

an(t)dekung 53 antireligjeznik 162 antojshung 53

antsikt 53

antviklung 53 antvofenung 53 arajn- 21 arbeter korespondenl 49, 143 arbetndiker 160 arbet-zuntik 51 arbkor(n) 49, 56—8, 143

arty's- 21 arojsgerukter 58 arojsloz 55 any’sloznik 162, 164 artjsrejkhem 100

arofsruf 58

any‘srukn 58

amp- 21

artel 70 artelnik 70, 162-3 as 100 -ater 133

142

ba 125—6 ba- 21, 125—6 badajt 70 badajtung 53 bagazhnik 164 bakenshtshik 163 bakvem 53 bald 78

baleguf 71 -bar 70, 158

barajkhert vern 72

bashitsnik 70 batajt 70 bavustziniker 58 bq'mer 92 bq's-hakise 78 bejs-hamikdesh lll besalmen lll bapartejner 43, 59 baprizorne 50 bild- 144 bildung 144 bit 42, 48 bjuro 43 blutgefesn 158 blut-trogndike gefesn 158 bq'let 53 bty'mer 92 bolshevik 44 brigadnik 70 bukhhalter 114 bunteven 22 buntovshtshik 163

dales-komitet 46 dalesnik 49, 162

202 datn 48 datshnik 162 dehajne 72 ddadnik 164 dernisaonermantl 158 dernisaon-mantl 158 der- 4, 21, 142, 164-8 deragznen 166 derarbetn 166 derbakn 166 derbaremenzikh 166 derbejzern 167 derbetn (zikh) 166 derbiven zikh 167 derbojen 168 derdinen (zikh) 166 derdushen 166 derendikn 166 deresn 166 derfarvos 21 derfrln 166—7 derjindn 167 derflrn 166 derflantsn 168 derforn 166 derfrty'en (zikh) 166 derngnmw 166 derfrishn (zikh) 166 derguntsn 166 dergebn 166 dergq'n 166 dergisn 166 dergodzen 167 dergrq'khn 166 dergrobn(zikh) 166 dergrunteven (zikh) 166 derhajntikn 167 derhaltn 166-7 derharg(en)en 166 derhq'bn 166 derhem 166 derhitsn (zikh) 167 derjogn 166 derkaasn 167 derkajklen (zikh) 167 derkenen 166 derkenenzikh 56 derklajbn zikh 167 derklern 166 derklingen zikh 167 derkokhn 167 derkrikhn 167 derkundikn zikh 166

Index of Yiddish lexical items derkutshen 166 derkvetshn 167 derkvikn 166 deriangen 166 deriebn 166 derlq'dikn 167 derlq'enen 166 derlq'gn 166 derlq'zn 167 derlernen 167 deriq'bn (zikh) 166 deriq'fn 167 derlozbar 70 deriozn 166 dermakhn 167 dermanen (zikh) 166 dermiglekhn 167 dermonen(zikh) 166 dermordn 166 dermuntern 167 dermutikn 166 deme(e)ntern (zikh) 166 demem 166 derniderikn (zikh) 166 derobern 166 derpintlen zikh 167 derredn (zikh) 166-7 derrufn zikh 167 dershajnen 166 dershatsn 166 dershikn 167 dershisn 166 dershitem 166 dershkuljen 167 dershlepn (zikh) 167 dershlofn 167 dershlogn (zikh) 166 dershnapn 167

dershpiln (zikh) 167-8 dershpirn 166 dershrajbn 167

dershrekn (zikh) 166 dershtekhn 166 dershtikn (zikh) 166 dershtofnen 166 dershtukeven 167 dershvimen 167 dertejtn 167 derton 167-8 dertrajbn 167 dertrakhtn (zikh) 167 dertrenken (zikh) 166 dertrinken (zikh) 166

Index of Yiddish lexical items dertrogn (zikh) 167 dertsq'ln 166—7 dertserenen 166 dertshmeljen 167 dertsien 166 dertsoln 166 dertsorenen 166 dervajtern (zikh) 166 dervajzn 166 dervakhn 166 dervaksn 166 dervaremen 167 dervargn (zikh) 166 dervartn (zikh) 166 dervegn (zikh) 166-7 dervejln 167 dervekn (zikh) 167 derverbn 167 dervergn (zikh) 166 dervidern 167 dervishn 167 dervisnzikh 166 derzen (zikh) 166—7 derzitsn 167 denogn 166 denukhn zikh 167 desantler 99

-(d)ik 70, 159

diktatura proletarjata 79 dinje 113 diskont 48 divan 113 dneprobq' 49 dokter 133 doktor 133 dolg 60 dorjhojz 54 dorjkorfn) 57 dorfrat 55—6, 87 dorfsovet 87 dot 100 draj umbajt-sistem 58 drajek 58, 87 drang 53 drvshe-geshank 111 drvung 53 druzhinik 87, 162 durkh- 21 durkhkemen 100 durkhq'sike brigade 58 durkhrajs 58 dushnik 22 dzot 100

e 70, 80

qferzukht 53 -q'ish 133—4 ejropq'ish 133—4 ele 80 element 43—4 ent/er 78 -ean 80 -entsje 80 -er 99, 133, 161 erdloz 70 erev-prizivnik 163 ershtklasnik 163 ershtkursnik 163 -evdik 70 -eve~ 22

fabkom 44, 49, 60, 143, 146 fabrik-arbeter 88 fabrikisher arbeter 88 fabrik-komitet 49, 143 fabrik-zavodishe shul 155 fabzautshnik 57

fajervarfer 99

faUt 100 falshivke 157 far!- 21 farantvortlekher mentsh 44 farat 53 farbandfun sovetishe sotsialistishe republikn 49, 155

farbindler

99

farq'n 48

farejnikung 100 farq'n-mitgiid 48 fargg'n (inflang) 100 fargezelshafllekhn 58 farhq'rat vern lll

farheltnsmesik

53

farkriplung 53 farlobung 111 farmakhte (farzamlung, zitsung) 43

farnikhter 99 famikhtler 99

farprizivnik 162 farshljapen 73 farshulnik 163-4 farshverung 53 farzarnlungfen) 43

fashist 48 fezeu 57

filt(e)r 133 filtirazhke(s) 57—8, 74, 157

203

Index of Yiddish (and: items

204

fin- I44 finants 144

jininspekter 55 fukulturnik 162 flisungfun arbet-krafl 58 foder-pazitsje 100 folkorn(-) 143, 146 folkomat(n) 146 folkombild 142, 146 fohonyin 146

foUwrnnats 146 foUts-kornisar 143 folks-komisarjat far bildung 142 for- 21 fonetsung 70

fiernderelernent

44

friling 80

fs.s.r. 49,155—6 fun 72, 150, 158 funktsionalke 157 f.z.sh. 155-5 gajstlekhe 111 garderobshtshik 163 gazirovke 157 gebetbukh 111 gvfilflhzz 184

W

48 gegntkom 151 gegntrat 151 gegntsovet 151 gernq'nde 111 gerikht 80 geshmadter lll getq'fter lll

gimnazistke 22 gliklekher cy’sgeshrej 158

harbst 80 haskole 111 hebnjish 133 Ws 53 hernshekh 70 hen. hen 53 hetse 53 hishtadles 53

horepashnik(es) 67

ibermoln 100 iber(r)ajsn 123 ibershtajgn dem plan 59 idejish 135 indfinplan 59

infanten'st 99

inhaltlekh paralele vortshafimg 82 inspehtor 133 inteligent 44 inteligentshtine 76 -ish 134 ispoflrom 151 -ist 99 ivre 49 izlishek 57

jaridnik 162 jatshejke 43, 47—8, 50, 57 je 92

jedinonatshalje 57 jid- 144, 153 jidish 144 jidishe arbet 28, 62 jidishe sektsjds) 49, 142, 154 jidseh 149 jidseheven 149 jidsektsje(s) 49, 142, 154 jo 92 jomkipemik 50, 164 kad(e)r 133

kajln lll kalendar 1ll kandidatfun paflej/partje 44 kanfe 112 kantonist 99 kapitalist 99

hant-kojlnvarfer 100

kavenik 164 -ke 4, 22, 157-8 kehile lll kq'tlung 59 kemerl 43, 50, 59 kenen 92

Index of Yiddish lexical items kern-kost 59 kerosinke 157 keser 112 kesl 100 khalturnik 162-3 khasene-rnatone 111 khaver 139 khejlek 78 khezhbnjirer 114 khezhbnik 49 khmurne 61 khq'deshdike optsoln 158 khq'deshnik 49—50, 164 khq'desh-optsoln 158 kholodilnik 164, 175 khozajstvenik 47 khozrastshotne brigade 60 khupe-kidushn 111 khutspenik 162 kilshqfe 175 kindkodn) 57 kineskop 112 klej-kojdesh 111

klejnbirger 44 klem 100 kler lll klirnaks 114 knasmol 111 knup 100 kofq'nik 164 kojrlem-kol 53 kojlen 111 kq'lnvarfer 99-100 kg'lnvarfler 99 koksirndike hojln 159 kol- 144 kolbojnik 162 kolektiv 144 kolgotkes 112 holhosp 53 kolkhoz(n) 73, 92, 151-2 kolonist 99 kolvirt(n) 55-6, 59, 141, 147—52 kolvirtisher handl 59 kolvirtnik(es) 70, 141, 150, 163 kolvirtnitse(s) 150 (-)kom(-) 144, 146

komandir 144 komdiv 146 kornkor 146 komisar 48

komitet(n) 144, 146

komjug 49, 143, 149—51

komjugist 55, 59 homnezam 54—5 kompartq' 49, 154 komsomol 151 komunale virtshafi 154 komunist 44 komunistish 144 komunistishe dertsiung 43 komunistishe partq' 49, 154

komunistisherjugnt-farband 49, 143

komunvirtshafl 154

konjukturnik 163—4 konjushne 73

konen 92 konkurents 80

konkurentsje 80 kopirke 157 kor'(n) 57 kosmonavt 112 krajzkom 59

krernl 134 kritike 70 kulak 75 kulakan 87 kult- 144, 153 kultur 144 kulturele 80 kulturne 80 kurortnik 162 kustaron praves 44 kustkorfn) 57 kvalitet 59 kvartalnik 164

lehote 48 lejenshtibl 55 leninizm 48 leninke 157 -ler 70, 80, 99 levone vegele 112 lgote 48 lhote 48 likameratses 154 likvidatsjefun ameratses 154 linje 43 lishenets 75

lit- 144-5, 153-4

lit-dinstik 154 literarish 144 lit-grupe 154 lit-kolegy'e 154 lit-krajz 154

lit-organizatsje 154

205

206

Index of Yiddish lexical items

lit-aunt 154 lit-sektsje 154 lit-studje 154 lit-tuer 154 litun 57 lit-zajtl 154 litunstve 57 ljottshik(es) 78 lojnbar 70 lojnevdik 70 -loz 70. 158 luekh lll luflgrub 112, 114 lunokhod 112

magnitifon 112, 175 majkhldik 49 majovke 87, 157, 173 majrev 53, 63 majrevke 63, 158 majrevnik 163, 173

makhne 49 marksist 99 marudnih 161 mashin 87 mashin-traktorishe stantsje 155 masovke 157—8

masterskaja 57 rnatsev 53

mavkhin zajn 49 med- 144—5 medfarzorg 154 meditsinish 144

meraglim 46 meres 79

mesiresnefeshdik 84

metalist 55, 99 metodkom 142 rnetodisher kornitet 142 metsarefzajn 78 rnevusemdike brie 78 militsioner 56 minen-feld 100 minenvarfer 100 minenvarfler 99 minirer 99 mishmq're 49 mbpalelimchajzer 49 mcy‘red 101 molodjmhner konvq'er 60

multfilm

175

43, 57 najbojung 114 narjad 75 narte 114 nats- 144, 153

natsional 144

me 61, 80, 161

nedove 50

nq'tik 92

nekomenerner 101

nemen zikh 59

nemlekh 72

nepman 44, 49 nervne 61 nest 100

nezamozhne holova 55

naamozhnik(es) 55

nigzl 78 -nik 4, 22, 49—51, 70, 80, 99, 142, 161—4 nisashervern 72 nisher-khojv 49 nit(-)derzogt 135 nit gekukt afdem vos 21 nit(-)gut 135 nit kukndik derufvos 21 nitl 49 nq'tik 92 nudnik 161 oboz 75 obshtshestuenik 58 obtshestvene arbet 60 odler 100 ofene (fanamlung, zitsung) 43 ojs- 21

(y'sg'lajkhung 59 ojsshpirer 99 olrajtnih 161 on- 21, 70, 158 onbodndik 159 onerdik 70 onferdik 159

48 onivredik 159 onlodung 43 onmezumendik 159 onperzonikajt 157 onprotsentik 159

Index of Yiddish lexical items onshtendik 53 ontsolik 159 onzogn zohir vaohir 78 onzotlen 100 op- 22, 144 opfal 59 opflusfun arbeter 59 opkhazernzikh 83 oprnakh 53 op(p)atern 134 oporosenzikh 83 opravdajen di doverje 60 opru-hojz 114 -or 133 orator 133 orempojer 54 org- 144 organizator 144 organizatsionel 144 orl lll osjen 80 otdelfun prijom zakazov 60 otdel snabzhenja 58 othhajen 164

otrjad 75

otshered 48 otsherk 75

Mall 48 paromshtshik 163

part- 144 par-tbilet 44 panel 144 panel" 44

partq'ets 44, 60 partq'ish 133, 144 partej-kemerl 43 partkemerl 43 partkom 43, 146-7 partorg 146 paskudnik 161 pastronik 22 ped- 144 Pedagvgfih 144 pedinstitut 153 pejsekhnik 50—1, 164 pekhotiner 99 peredvizhke 58 pereobutshenets 73 pilesos 175 pilotke 157 podvig(n) 78 polishuk(es) 55

207

polit— 144, 153, 158 politike 70 politish 144 politisher tuer 154 polit-ivre 49 politkrajz 43 politmasovke 157 politruh 151 polit-tuer 154 poljarnik 162 poljus 126 polufabrikat 58 povestke 48 predfabkom 58 privatnik 54, 162 priziv 75, 163 probleme 70, 80 prvdavshtitse 88 produtsir-baratung 59 prof- 144, 153 profarejn 49, 59, 154 profarejnish 144 profesionel 144 profesionelerfarejn 49, 144, 154 profesor 133 prvfkom 146 profshul 55

programe 70, 80

progul 58, 75 progulsht(sh)ik 58, 73, 163 prvizvodstve 58 proizvodstvenik 58 promfinplan 58

Wall 48 prvriv 58

(nit) praverete arbet 60

pshorenik 163 pudnik 22 putjovke 87

raj- 144 rajkom 43, 146 rajon 144 raketler 113 ratfar kegrlzajtiker ekonomisher hilf 113 ratn-majontek 46 ratn-ongeshtelter 44 ratsion 48 razrjad 58

razlq'orstke 75 reaktiver aemplan 113 redagir-kolegje 154 redaktir-koleg'e 154

208 redke 60

redkolegje 154

reforme 70, 80

rej 49

rejnikung 59 rejtlen zikh 92 rekhilesnik 162 revoljutsje 60, 126 rikhter 80 ring 49 rizlekh 49 (di) rojte 160 rojter vinkl 43 rojtlen zikh 92 sabotazhnik 162 samokritike 58, 60 san— 144 sekretar 43 selrade 53 serjozne 61 shabesnik 49-50, 55, 164 shajekh 53 shakhmatist 99 shakhtjor 75 shedikeraj 59 sheftum 59 shekhtn 111 shetekh 84 shkurnik 47, 162 shlimezalnik 162 shlogler 59, 88 shlognik 70 shpajzler 80 shpajznik 80 shtejger 49 shtepn 100 shtq'bzly'ger 175 shtotkom 151 shtotrat I51 shtotsovet 151 -shtshik 163 shuts-rand 100 sider lll sklad sirja 58 skver 114 sluzhashchi 50 smene 58, 60, 78 snajper 99 soglaseven difrage 60 sojuz 48 sojuznik 48 sotsderts 142

Index of Yiddish lexical items sotsdertsiung 142

sotsgevet 59, 154 sotsiale 80 sotsiale dertsiung 142 sotsialistishergevet 154 sotsialne 80 sotssorevnovanje 58 sovet 48, 73, 75 sovkhoz 46 sovnarhhoz 46 sovnarkom 46, 92

spasajen 78

spets 145 spets- 144-5, 153 spetsialist 145 spetsiel 144—5 spetskh'dung 59, 145 spetsoptejl 145 spilke 54 spirtovke 157 spravke 48, 75 sputnik 175 s.s.s.r. 156 stanok 58, 73, 75 starorezhimnik 44 statistishe sektsje 154 statsektsje I54 storozh 73

subotnik 75 sud 80 sudja 80 sug 49 svodke 73

tabelshtshikt 163 talq'snik 162 tankist 99 tasklekh 112

teat(e)r 133

tejkef 78 tejl 78, 100 televizor 175

temfl lll

tendents 80 tendentsje 80

-ter 133

terets 78 tkhum-shabes 112 tkies-kaf 112

tnoim lll -tor 133

torpede 100 torpedn-kater 100

Index of Yiddish lexical items traktorist 88 transportler 88 ts.a.b.b. 142 tsajger(s) 59 tsajl 49 ts.a.k. 155 Lsarizm 48 tse- 22 tseka 156 tsekist(n) 42 tselina 113 tsentklasnik 163 tsentrale (jidishe bildungs-) ljuro 142 tsentraler (q'sfrr) kornitet 49, 155 tsentral-komitet 142, 156 tserabkopske kredit 60 tshajnik 22 tshashke 22 tsheka 42-3, 156 tshekist 42-3 Lsheljuskintses 78 tshistke 58, 60 tshlen 60, 87, 156 tsimtsem 49 t.s.k. 49, 142 tsojrekh andjekhojles 49 tsu- 22 tsufestikn 59 tsushojer 53 tsung 100 tsuzamenshlus 59 tqu'tjornik 163 tsvinter 111 tsvishnfelkerlekh 113 tushonke 157 udamik 58, 73, 92, 162 uf 125-6 uf 123, 125-6 ufkler-arbet 59 ujklerung 111 ml: 151 umbajt 59 umbarnlsuiniker element 44 umetum-gq'er 113-14 umivalnik 58 umpartejish 43, 59 untergq'n 49 unterfr)ajsler 99 untervaserler 99 uravnilovke 58 urlq'bnik 163 utshot 48

vajbernik 164 vajnakht 49 (di) vajse 160 vajterjirung 70 vakhte 59 valke 54—5, 59, 75 vant-tsajtung(en) 57, 59 varfn zikh (in atake) 100 vatnik 164 verblekhe kooperatsje 48 vertoljot 113 vesne 80 vesovshtshik 163 vidvizhenets 44, 58, 75 vikhovanek 54 vilkir 53 virt- 144-5 virtshaft 144-5 virtshaftlekh 144 virtshafllekherjor 59 virtshaftler 80 virtshaftnik 70, 80 virtshafl-rekhenung 59 vkradtse 60 vq'enkomat 151 vq'nkoop 50 volinke 60 voskresnik 51 vuz 156 vznos 50 zak 100 zaml-tsekh 59

zapas 75

zatshot 75 zavkhoz 58 zbornertsekh 78 zelbst- 70 zelbstkritik 59, 70 zenitke 157 zenitler 99 zhilko(o)p 50 zikhaantviklendikeindustrie 159 zikh-bafrajendike mentshhajt 159 zikh-bojendiker sotsializm 159 zikh-farfestikndike kredit-sistem 159 zikh-farsharfndike stires 159 zikh-koksirndike kq'ln 159 zikh-rq'kherndik 159 zikh-shoklendik 159 zikh-shpilndik 159 zikh-shvartsndik 159

209

210 zikh tsunojf- 22 zikh uf- 22 zikh-vekndiker shotn 160

Index of Yiddish lexical items zikh-vigndik 159 zitsung(en) 43

zuntiknik 49551, 164

Index of names and subjects abbreviation 23, 49, 141-3, 151-7, 173 Abchuk, Avrom 40—1, 43, 45, 49—51. 54, 56—7, 61, 68, 154 Abram, Lejb 73 acculturation l, 7, 10, 15, 25, 30, 52, 67, 102, 171 Achad Ha-Am 5 acronyms 4, 49, 92, 155—6, 173 adjectivalization 4, 133-5, 158—60, 173 affixation 49. 61, 83, 88, 93, 126, 134, 136, 142, 161 affixoids 145 Afn shprakhfront (At the Linguistic Front) 64, 79 Afn visnshafllekhnfiont (At the Scientific Front) 64 agentive nominalization 22, 70, 99, 133, 16243 agglutinative features 145—6 Agurski, Shlojme (Sam) 75-6, 81-2, 91 Alexander 1 9 Alexander 11 5 Alik, Sh. 73—4, 76—7, 81-2, 91 allographs 115, 124—5 All-Ukrainian Yiddish Language Conference 74—5, 78—85 All-Union Central Committee of the New Alphabet 40 All-Union Conference of the Evsektsija 28—9, 37, 47 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 27 anti-daytshmen'sm 80—1, 84 anti-Semitism 25—6, 102, 174 anti-Zionism 27, 110 Apikojres (Atheist) 64 Arabic alphabet 124, 127 Aramaic 3,115,117, 121, 139 Argentina 104, 137 Armenia 104 Armenian language 130 Asch, Sholem 12, 95, 134 assimilation 1, 5, 9, 15-8, 25, 27—8, 31-3, 36, 38, 47-8, 53, 104, 170—1 Association for the Rural Placement of Jewish Labourers see OZET Association of Revolutionary Yiddish

Writers in Ukraine 40 Australia 104 Austria 104 Azerbaijan 104,127 Babel, Isaac 6 Baku 14 Baltic countries 24, 97 Basle 5 Bashevis Singer, Isaac 96, 136 Bashkir Republic 104 Bastomski, Shlojme I37 Bejlin, Sholem 139 Belaja Tserkov 32 Belgium 104 Belorussia 6, 23, 25, 37—8, 41, 51—2, 62-3, 75, 79, 82—3, 93—4, 104—5, 123, 131, 152,172—4 Belorussian Academy of Sciences 65-6, 71 Belorussian language 1—2, 6, 37-8, 53—6, 71, 83, 123, 130, 147, 165 Belorussianisms 53, 56, 83—4 Berdichev 24, 32, 37, 64 Bergelson, David 24, 69, 78, 91, 94—6 Berlin 69, 104, 112 Bessarabia 97 Bialik, Chaim Nakhman 134 bilingualism 47, 65, 117, 146, 148, 165, 168 Birnbaum, Nathan 116 Birnbaum, Solomon 112 Birobidzhan 3, 26, 62, 64-5, 79, 90—1, 93—4, 96, 101-5, 132, 136, 171 BirobidzhanYiddish Language Conference 90—6, 132, 134 Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan Star) 64, 91, 97, 103, 105, 112, 136 Borokhov, Ber 76, 116, 118 Brazil 104 Brjansk 104 Buenos Aires 137 BukharanJews 127 Bukovina 97 Bulgaria 104 Bund 5, 7, 19, 21, 27-8, 42, 68, 117, 120, 137, 171

212

Index of names and subjects

calques see loan translations Cahan,Abraharn 161 Canada 104 censuses

of the Russian Empire, 1897 5, 8, 33 of the Russian Empire’s Primary Schools, 1911 12 of the Soviet Union, 1926 31, 33 Central Committee of the Communist Party 24, 42, 49, 103, 109, 130 Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party 74 Central Committee of the Ukrainian Komsomol 27 Central (Yiddish) Orthographic Commission 131-2 Cheliuskin (ice—breaker) 78 Chemeriski, Alexander 36—7 Chernobyl 37, 55 Cheljabinsk 104 Chernin, Velvl 107

Chukovskij, Komej 12 Civil War 24, 32 clipping 57, I45 Committee for the Rural Placement of Jewish labourers seeKOMZET Communist University of the National Minorities of the West 28, 63, 78, 158, 163 compounding 50, 70, 88, 133—5, 142-56, 158, 161 Constituent Assembly 7, 119 Crimea 26, 62, 103, 171 CrimeanJews 127 Cheljabinsk 105 Cherkassy 103 Chernovtsy see Czernowitz Cyrillic alphabet 127, 130, 155 Czech alphabet 129 ‘Czech transcription' for musical notation 130 Czechoslovakia 104 Czernowitz 103 Czernowitz Yiddish language Conference 7, 12, 116 Das NeueDorf 87 daytshmerisms 70, 74, 84-5. 146 de-etymologiration 116, 149 dehebraization 68—70, 84, 109, 115, 121, 126 Denmark 104 Der alruslendisher shabesnik (All-Russia

Subbotnik) 50 Der arbeter ( Worker) 64 Deremes (Truth), newspaper 39, 40, 45-7, 51-2, 64, 74—5, 77. 91, 118, 133, 135, 155 Der Emes (Truth), publishing house 98, 133 Derjunger arbeter ( Young Worker) 64 Der kustar (Artisan) 64 Der Nister 24, 125 Der odeserarbeter (Odessa Worker) 64, 66, 73-6, 80—1 Der shtern (Star) 36, 52, 64, 74, 78, 97, 151 Der tog (Day) 76 Der veg(Way) 106 Der veker (Alarm Clock) 45—7 Di garber un bershter shtime (Tanners and Brushmakers’ Voice) 37 Dijidishe gas ([ewish Street) 108, 140 Di ny'te nodl (Red Needle) 37 Di rq'te velt (Red World) 64 diglossia 15 Dimanshtejn, Shimen 24, 91, 130 Dnepropetrovsk 31, 78, 103 Donbass 31 Donetsk 103 double consonants 126, 134, 136 Dubnov, Simon 5, 8, 81

Ejnikajt (Unity) 98, 101 elliptic nominalization 160 Esperanto 107, 116 Esther see Frumkin, Malka Estonia 104 evseks 23, 28, 37, 42 Evsektsija 2, 23—30, 36—7, 62, 65—6, 120—]

Falkovich, Elje 67, 69, 91, 110, 129, 133—4 Fefer, Itzik 40, 65, 125, 150 Finkel, Khaim 84 Finland 104 First All-Ukrainian Congress of Jewish

culture activists 29 First Conference of Yiddish teachers in latvia 136 First Conference of Yiddish teachers in Poland 124 First Congress of Soviet Writers 65 First World War 11-12, 24, 32. 50 Folks-blat (People’s Paper) 135

Index of names and subjects Folks-shtime (People’s Voice) 106 Forpost (Outpost) 94 Frajnd (Friend) 14,116 France 104,107 Frumkin, Malka 28

gender assignment 93—4, 121 Georgia 104 Georgian language 130 German colonial dialects 60, 85—9, 153 German language 3—5, 7, 9—10, 17, 20-2, 38, 60, 115-16, 120-1, 129-30, 146 Gerrnanisms 20—2, 48, 53, 70, 80, 83—5, 112,161, 171—2 Germany 104 Gildin, Khaim 39 Gitlits, Mordechai 161 Gladkov, Fedor 44—5, 50 Gordon, Shmuel 66 Gorky, Maxim 51, 77 Gorky 104—5 Gomel 45 Grande, Bentsion 71, 128 Great Britain 104, 107 Grimberg. Faina 107

Haisin 63 Hajnt (Today) 24 Halkin, Shmuel 102 Ha-Shiloah 5 Haskalah 9, 25 Hebraisms 3—4, 48, 53, 68, 70, 72, 74, 83—4, 109-10, 125—6, 136—7, 140, 171 Hebraists 11,14 Hebrew 6—8, l2, 14, 19—20, 107, 110

Hq'mland (Homeland) 174 heterogeneous expanded attributes 21, 160 Hofshtein, David 24, 68—9, 80 Holland 104 Holmshtok, Khaim 91, 94 Hungary 104 hyphenation in compounds 133—6, 153—4 Ignatofl‘, Dovid 95

industrialization 10, 11, 15, 62, 169—71 Institute forJewish Proletarian Culture 65—7, 77, 79, 81-2, 90, 132 Internationale 75 intemationalisms 2, 20, 48, 55—6, 82-3, 99, 125, 129, 133, 146—7, 172, 175

213

‘introspectivists’ 136 Irkutsk 14,139 Israel 104, 106-7, 152, 159, 173 Italy 104

Japan 104

Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 98, 101 Jewish Autonomous Region see Biro-

bidzhan Jewish Colonization Association 27 Jewish Commissariat 23 Jewish girls’ education 8, 18, 118 Jewish intelligentsia 3, 5, 7, 9—12, 20, 23, 92, 169-70, 174 Jewish national regions 26 Jewish pupils 8, 12—13, 18, 27, 29 Jewish Sections in the Communist Party see Evsektsrja

Jewish sports clubs 27 Jewish students 8, 13, 16—19, 62-3, 77, 95—6

Jewish theatres

30, 47, 65-6, 92

Jofe,Judel 35 jugnt-Veker ( Young’s Alarm Clock) 137 jung kuznje ( YoungForge) 137 junge gvardie (Young Guard) 64 junger leninets ( Young Leninist) 64 jungvald (New Growth) 52, 107 Kadets l9

Kaganovich, Lazar 91

Kalinin, Mikhail 26, 90 Karnenets 32 Kamenshtejn, Mojshe 65, 70, 74—6, 80—2, 91, 127, 131 Kantor, Abraham 120 Karaites 127 Katz, Mojshe 118 Kazakhstan 104 Kharkov 31, 36—7, 52-3, 63—5, 70, 74. 76, 87, 103, 124, 130, 158, 170 Kharik, Izi 40, 65, 82 Kherson gubernija l2 Khmelnitsk 103 Khmshchev, Nikita 3, 102

Khvylja, Andrij 79—80 Khvylovy, Mykola 41 Kiev 3, 13—14, 16—19, 24, 31, 37, 40-1, 53, 57, 63—6, 85, 103, 118, 123, 128, 132, 138-9, 170—1 Kiev Institute forJewish Proletarian Culture see Institute forJewish Proletarian Culture

214

Index of names and subjects

Kiev language Congerence seeAllUkrainianYiddish language Conference

‘Kiev group’ of Yiddish writers 24 Kirghizia 104 Kolchinski, V. 128 Kolvirt-emes (Kolkhoz Truth) 64 Kolvirt-shtern (Kolkhoz Star) 64 Komsomol 27, 62 KOMZET 62

Konotop 37 Komstyshev 42 Kotljar,Josef 168 Krasnodar 104 Krasnopolje 14 Kremenchug 37, 50-1, 64 Krementshuger arbeter (Kremenchug Worker) 64

Krivoj Rog 37 Kuibyshev 104 Kultur-Lige (Culture League) 118 Kultur un bildung (Culture and Education) 118—21 kursistki 16, 18 Kvitko, Lejb 24 Larin, Boris 47, 129 latinization of Russian 128, 130 of Belorussian 130 of otherJewish languages 127 of Ukrainian 130 of Yiddish 4, 116, 126-31 Latvia 104, 136-7 Lenin, Vladimir 24—5, 28, 34. 47, 51,

127 Leningrag 104-5 Leninveg (Lenin’s Way) 64 Levin, Khana 151 Levitan, Mikhl 65 Liberberg,]osef 66, 75, 77, 81—2, 90, 96 Literarishe bleter (Literary Papers) 66 Literary Institute 107 Lithuania 6, 104 Lithuanian language 6 Lithuanian Yiddish 94, 121, 173 Litvakov, Mojshe 39—40, 45—7, 49, 51, 69, 73, 75, 77, 81-2, 86, 118, 131, 134, 172 loan translations 3, 21, 38, 51, 54—6, 58—9, 61, 70, 83, 87, 92, 99, 112, 114, 147-9, 151, 157-8, 160, 162-3, 167-8, 170, 172

loanblends 22,162—4 Lojtsker, Khaim 68—9

Lunacharskij,Anatolij 128 Lutsk 40 Macedonian language 107 MameLoshn (Mother Tongue), Moscow 107 Mame-Loshn (Mother Tongue), Odessa 140 Mark, Yudel 67—8, 78—9, 124, 145, 159 Markish, Peretz 24, 69, 96, 150 Marmor, Kalmen 77 maskilim 9, 29, 115-16, 138 May Day 42 Mendele Moicher-Sforim 12, 69, 96, 125, 138 Mexico 104 Mezhdunarodnaja kniga 103 migration 20, 25, 30—1, 33, 42, 101, 169 Minsk 24, 37, 45, 47, 52, 56, 64—5, 76, 85—6, 97, 102, 123, 134, 170—1, 173 Mogilev 14, 52 Mogilev-Podolsk 37 Moldavia 104—5 Moment (Moment) 24 Mongolia 104 Montevideo 137 Morgn-fiajhajt (Morning-Freedom) 102, 104 Moscow 1-4, 6, 13, 24—6, 29, 37, 39, 45—6, 52, 56, 63—6, 75, 95, 101-5, 107-8, 110, 118, 121, 133—5, 139—40, 170-1, 174 Moscow Teachers’ Training Institute 63, 95, 127, 134 MoscowYiddish Workers’ Club 29 MountainJews 127 Mykytenko, Ivan 43

Naje tsajt (New Time) 118, 138 neo-Haskalah 29 Nicholas] 9 Nikolacv 37,103 Novick, Paul (Pejsakh) 102, 135 Novosibirsk 104 Novozlatopol 16, 64 numerus clausus 18 Odessa 6. 11, 13, 16, 24, 31, 35, 37, 64—6, 73—4, 75—7, 82, 103, 123. 140 Oktjabr (October) 47, 52, 64, 74, 76, so,

97

Index of names and subjects

61, 70—1, 73—5, 78—80, 82-4, 87-8, 94, 98—100, 112, 114, 126, 133, 141-68,

Olgin, Mojshe 21

Omsk 104 Orland, Hershl 54—7, 61, 69 orthoepic reform seeYiddish pronunciation OZET 62

palataliration 134 Pale ofJewish Settlement 9—10, 15, 26, 31, 171 passive voice 72 Passover 42, 50 Pat,Jakov 137 Pentateuch 134 Peltz, Rakhmiel l Peretz, Y. L. 12, 69, 96 Perm 104 Peshkovskij, Alexander 128 Poale Zionists 19, 68, 117, 171 Poland 9, 24, 94, 97, 104—6, 124, 136-7 Polish language 5—6, 9-10, 17, 20, 37, 53. 121, 137, 161 Poltava 78 prefixes 21-2, 70, 123, 125—6, 144, 158-9, 164-8 prepositions 72, 125-6, 150 Proletarishefon (Proletarian Banner) 64 Proletarisheremes (Proletarian Truth) 64 Prolit (Proletarian Literature) 64 Proskurov 32, 37 provincialisms 93 purism 108, 146, I70, 175 Rafes, Mojshe 120 Ran, Lejzer 137 Rassvet (Dawn) 14 Ratnbildung (Soviet Education) 64, 127 reflective participles 159 retention of Yiddish 5—6, 12-20, 31-2, 35, 38, 97, 106 Riga 10,102 Rokhkind, Shprintsa 84, 134 Rostov 104 Romania 24, 97, 104, 139 Romanian language 6 Russian language 1-6, 8—18, 20—1, 37, 47, 49-50, 52, 55, 77, 83, 94, 96, 105, 107, 112, 117, 143, 145-6, 162-5, 169, 170, 172—4 Russian literacy amongJews 8, 10—11, 13-14, 42, 51, 53, 138—9 Russianjewish literature 12, 14 Russianisms 3, 20-1, 45-8, 53—4, 57-9,

215

171-5

Russification 8-10, 13—15, 53, 67, 71, 76, 80, 82-3 ‘sabesdiker losn’ 93 samr'zdat 107, 112 Saratov 104 Schaechter, Mordkhe 108 Schechtrnan, Eli 159 Second Conference ofJewish Cultural Workers 124,131 Second Moscow State University see Moscow Teachers’ Training Institute Sejmists 19 Selishchev,Afanasij 153 semantic extension 100 Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party 131 Shaikevitch, Nakhum Meier see Shomer Shapiro, Mojshe 93, 108-10 Shatski,Jakov 137 Shejngold, M. 76, 123 Shepetovka 32 Shirokoe l2 Shkolnik, Leonid 105 Sholem Aleichem 5, 12, 68—9, 95—6. 101, 139 Shomer l2 Shor, Rosalia 130 Shpilrejn, Itshe-Mejer 52, 127 Shrajbman,Jiekhiel I39 Shtajnberg, Eljezer I36 Shtern (Star) 52, 64 shtetl 9—10, 12, 14, 24—5, 28, 31, 42, 65, 95, 174 Shtif, Nokhem 68-70, 74, 82 Shtolene nodl (SteelNeedle) 74-6, 79—80 Shulman, M. 92, 118—9, 127 Shvartsman, Osher 24 silent letters 115-16, 118-19, 123—6, 136 Singer, IsraelJoshua 56, 136 Skrypnyk, Mykola 76 Slavisms 3, 54 Slavuta 79 Slutski, Ber 71, 81, 128, 138, 148 Social Democrats 19 Socialists 7, 19, 25, 27, 119 Society for Dissemination of Education AmongJews 10 Sojuzpechat 103, 106 '

216

Index of names and subjch

Sosis, Israel 138 Sotsialistishedorf (Socialist Village) 64 Sovetish (Soviet) I74 Sovetish hq'mland (Soviet Homeland) l, 4, 135-6 Sovetskij pisatel’ (Soviet Writer) 102—3, 108 Soviet-Nazi pact 97

Spartacus 137 spelling of Hebrew words 4, 116-17, 119-21, 125, 136-8, 140 Spivak, Elje 82-3, 91, 154 Stalin,Joseph 28, 39, 47, 76, 91

Stalindorferemes (Stalindorf Truth)

64

status

of Hebrew 7—8, 14, 19—20. 118 of Russian 11, 30, 53—4, 65, 96 of Ukrainian 54, 65, 83 of Yiddish 7, 19, 29—30, 37, 102 St Petersburg 6, 10, I3, 104, 116 subordinative sentences 21 suffixes 22, 49—50, 61, 70, 80, 99, 133-5, 151, 157-9, 161-4 Sutzkever, Abraham 160 Sverdlovsk 104-5 Swedish language 107

Tajikistan 104 Tajtsh, Mojshe 39, 89 Tatar Republic 104 Tatar spelling 124 Thailand 104 Third All-Ukrainian Conference of the Evsektsija 121 tkhines 6 Tolstoy, Leo I2, 155 Torchin 40 trade unions 32-8, 41, 62

transmorphemization 60, 157 transphonemization 60 Tshemjavski, Mojshe 39 Tsiolkovskij, Konstantin I28 Tsvajg, A. R. 92 Tulchin 32 Turkmenistan 104 Ukraine 6—7, 23, 25-6, 31-3, 37, 40—1, 57, 62-3, 65-6, 79. 83, 94, 103, 105, 123,131, 147, 152, I71 Ukrainian Academy of Sciences 65 Ukrainian language 1-2, 6, 9, 54-6, 65, 71, 77, 83—5, 147, 165, 172-4 Ukrainian literacy 53—4

Ukrainianisms 53—4, 75, 80, 83, 162 Ukrainization 53,80 Uman 32, 37

Undzerjornkipernik (Our Yorn-Kippurnik)

50 Undzerlebn (Ourere) II urbanization 3, 10-12, 14, 25, 30—3, 80 Uruguay 104 USA 89, 104, 107, 127, 136—7, 165 Uzbekistan 104-5

Vejnger, Mordkhe 116, 123—4, 131 verbal nouns 22 verbal prefixes 21, 164—8 verbal sufiixes 22, 70 Vereshchagin, Evgenij 85—6 Vergelis, Aaron 102-3, 105, 109—10, 140

Verne,Jules I2

Vilenkin, Lejzer 56-7, 61, 72, 84 Vilna 5, 32—4. 69, 84, 102, 121, 123. 135, I37 Vrlnerernes (Vilna Truth) 135 Vinnitsa 32, 37, 64, 103 Vitebsk 50, 52 Vladimir 104 Volgograd 104 Volobrinski, Aaron 46, 73, 75—6, 81—2 Vologda l4 Volhynian oblast 40 Voroshilovgrad 103

Warsaw 6, 10, 23—4, 66, 106, 116, 137 Weinreich, Max 123, 137 Weinreich, Uriel 86, 138 Weissenberg, Isaac Meir 95 word-final allographs elimination 124, I26, 132 reintroduction 135—6 word order 21, 160 worker correspondents 56—7 World Zionist Organization 5 Yiddish book publishing 11,98, 101—2, 108, 136, 149 Yiddish colleges 62-3 Yiddish courts 56, 62 Yiddish dictionaries 22, 71, 84. 99, 108—13, 125, 132, 135. 165 Yiddish factory newspaper 57, 74 Yiddish higher education 29, 62—3, 97, 107 Yiddish libraries 12, 37, 51, 90

Index of names and subjects Yiddish periodicals 11,24, 37, 45, 50. 52, 64-5, 67, 89, 97, 103, 105—6, 118, 122, 132, 137, 139 Yiddish pronunciation 92—4, 121, I24, 128, 133 Yiddish punctuation 67, 91 Yiddish readership 6, 12,24, 37, 42, 47, 51-2, 67, 73—4, 83, 89, 95, 103-7, 132, 138, 140 Yiddish schools 11, 27, 29—30, 62-3. 118-20, 124, 137 Yiddish textbooks 72, 97, 130—1 Yiddish wall newspapers 57 Yiddish writers 11-12, 20-1, 24, 39—40. 65-6, 70, 89, 94—6, 101—3, 106—7, 137, 140, I74 YIVO, Yiddish Scientific Institute 69,

217

84, 137 YIVO spelling 137

Zaj grejt (Be Ready) 64 Zamenhof, Ludwig 116

Zaporozhe 103 Zaretski, Ajzik 38, 47-9, 67, 70, 75, 80. 82-4, 91-4, 117, 120-5, 127-36, 143, 154, 156, 158 Zhabotinsky, Zeev 77 Zhirmunskij, Victor 85—6 Zhitomir 24, 37, 66, 103 Zionists 7, 19, 25, 27, 77 Zionist-Socialists 19

Zlatopol 79

Zola, Emile l2