Kultur Lige

Last updated

The Kultur Lige (Culture League) was a secular socialist Jewish organization established in Kiev in 1918, whose aim was to promote Yiddish language literature, theater and culture. [1] The league organized various activities, including theater performances, poetry recitals, and concerts in Yiddish with the aim of disseminating Jewish art in Eastern Europe and Russia. Among some notable members of the organization were the scenic designer Boris Aronson (who later worked on Broadway), [2] the artist and architect El Lissitzky, [2] the writer David Bergelson, [3] the sculptor Joseph Chaikov, the writer Peretz Markish, [4] the poet David Hofstein, [5] and artist Issachar Ber Ryback. [2] Bergelson, Markish and Hofstein were later executed on Joseph Stalin's orders during the Night of the Murdered Poets, in 1952.

Artists like Ryback and Lissitzky who were members of the group tried to develop a distinctively Jewish form of modernism in which abstract forms would be used as a means of expressing and disseminating popular culture. [2]

The manifesto of the group, published in November 1919, stated:

"The goal of the Kulturlige is to assist in creating a new Yiddish secular culture in the Yiddish language, in Jewish national forms, with the living forces of the broad Jewish masses, in the spirit of the working man and in harmony with their ideals of the future." [6]

It also listed the "three pillars" of the Kultur Lige as Yiddish education for the people, Yiddish literature, and Jewish art. [7]

In 1919 members of the group, Victor Alter and Henryk Berlewi, organized a major exhibition of Polish-Jewish art in Białystok under the name "First Exhibition of Jewish Painting and Sculpture". The exhibition was targeted at the Yiddish speaking Jewish community, as well as the Polish workers of the city. During the same year, the organization helped to sponsor sixty three Yiddish schools, fifty four libraries and many other cultural and educational institutions. [8]

In 1920 the Kiev branch of the organization was taken over by the Bolsheviks and the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party, Yevsektsiya, and subjected to the bureaucracy of the Soviet state. [6] Its printing presses were taken away, it was denied paper for publishing and its central committee was forcefully disbanded. [6] As a result, the Warsaw branch became the main center for the organization. [1]

Afterward, the remains of the Kultur Lige in the Soviet Union continued under the auspices of the Yevsektsiya as a publishing house, mostly focusing on Yiddish textbooks for children. In Poland, the League established offices in other cities such as Wilno and Łódź. In 1924, it began to issue the Literarishe Bleter  [ he ] magazine (based on the Polish Wiadomości Literackie  [ pl ]) (Literary News), which became the main forum for discussions by the Yiddish intelligentsia on subjects of art, literature and theater. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solomon Mikhoels</span> Soviet Jewish actor and chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (1890-1948)

Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels was a Latvian born Soviet Jewish actor and the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Mikhoels served as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II. However, as Joseph Stalin pursued an increasingly anti-Jewish line after the War, Mikhoels's position as a leader of the Jewish community led to increasing persecution from the Soviet state. He was assassinated in Minsk in 1948 by order of Stalin.

A Yevsektsiya was a Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party. These sections were established in fall of 1918 with consent of Vladimir Lenin to carry communist revolution to the Jewish masses. The Yevsektsiya published a Yiddish periodical, der Emes.

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, abbreviated as JAC, was an organization that was created in the Soviet Union during World War II to influence international public opinion and organize political and material support for the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany, particularly from the West. It was organized by the Jewish Bund leaders Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter, upon an initiative of Soviet authorities, in fall 1941; both were released from prison in connection with their participation. Following their re-arrest, in December 1941, the Committee was reformed on Joseph Stalin's order in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities. In 1952, as part of the persecution of Jews in the last year part of Stalin's rule, most prominent members of the JAC were arrested on trumped-up spying charges, tortured, tried in secret proceedings, and executed in the basement of Lubyanka Prison. Stalin and elements of the KGB were worried about their influence and connections with the West. They were officially rehabilitated in 1988.

Rootless cosmopolitan was a pejorative Soviet epithet which referred mostly to Jewish intellectuals as an accusation of their lack of allegiance to the Soviet Union, especially during the antisemitic campaign of 1948–1953. This campaign had its roots in Joseph Stalin's 1946 attack on writers who were connected with "bourgeois Western influences", culminating in the "exposure" of the non-existent Doctors' Plot in 1953.

The Moscow State Jewish (Yiddish) Theatre, also known by its acronym GOSET (ГОСЕТ), was a Yiddish theatre company established in 1919 and shut down in 1948 by the Soviet authorities. During its time in operation, it served as a prominent expression of Jewish culture in Russia under Joseph Stalin. Under its founding artistic director, Alexander Granowsky, productions were heavily influenced by the avant-garde trends of Europe and many reflected an expressionistic style. Summertime tours to rural shtetls were extremely popular. At the end of a 1928 tour in Germany, Granowsky defected to the west, and Solomon Mikhoels became artistic director in his place. During Mikhoels' tenure the theatre branched out beyond classic Yiddish theatre productions to include works by Soviet Yiddish writers and William Shakespeare. The theatre continued to operate during World War II in Moscow and, after the evacuation of the city in 1943, in Tashkent. Mikhoels was murdered by the MVD in 1948 and his successor, Benjamin Zuskin, was arrested shortly after. In 1948 the Soviet authorities ordered the theatre to be shut down along with all other Yiddish theatre companies in the Soviet Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Bergelson</span>

DavidBergelson was a Yiddish language writer born in the Russian Empire. He lived for a time in Berlin, Germany, before moving to the Soviet Union following the Nazi rise to power in Germany. He was a victim of the post-war antisemitic "rootless cosmopolitan" campaign and one of those executed on the Night of the Murdered Poets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peretz Markish</span> Russian Jewish poet and playwright writing mainly in Yiddish

Peretz Davidovich Markish was a Russian Jewish poet and playwright who wrote predominantly in Yiddish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Der Nister</span> Soviet writer and translator

Der Nister was the pseudonym of Pinchus Kahanovich, a Yiddish author, philosopher, translator, and critic.

Itche Goldberg was a Polish-born Yiddish language writer of children's books, poet, librettist, educator, literary critic, camp director, publisher, fundraiser, essayist, literary editor, Yiddish language and culture scholar, and left-wing political activist. He devoted his life to the preservation of the Yiddish language and secular Yiddish culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">El Lissitzky</span> Soviet artist and architect (1890–1941)

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, better known as El Lissitzky, was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design.

Dovid Hofshteyn, also transliterated as David Hofstein, was a Yiddish poet. He was one of the 13 Jewish intellectuals executed on the Night of the Murdered Poets.

The accusation that Joseph Stalin was antisemitic is much discussed by historians. Although part of a movement that included Jews and rejected antisemitism, he privately displayed a contemptuous attitude toward Jews on various occasions that were witnessed by his contemporaries, and are documented by historical sources. In 1939, he reversed Communist policy and began a cooperation with Nazi Germany that included the removal of high profile Jews from the Kremlin. As dictator of the Soviet Union, he promoted repressive policies that conspicuously impacted Jews shortly after World War II, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. At the time of his death, Stalin was planning an even larger campaign against Jews. According to his successor Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin was fomenting the doctors' plot as a pretext for further anti-Jewish repressions.

Yidisher Kultur Farband was a Communist-oriented organization, formed for preserving and developing Yiddish culture in Yiddish and in English, through an art section, a writers' group, reading circles, and publications. YKUF was founded in Paris in September 1937 by Jewish Communists and their supporters as an international body to disseminate ideology to the Yiddish-reading and Yiddish-speaking community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Holocaust in Russia</span> Nazi crimes during the occupation of Russia by Nazi Germany

The Holocaust in Russia is the Nazi crimes during the occupation of Russia by Nazi Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish Communist Labour Bund (Ukraine)</span> Political party in Ukraine

The Jewish Communist Labour Bund, or the Kombund (קאמבונד), was a Jewish Communist political party in Ukraine, formed after a split in the General Jewish Labour Bund (Bund). Moisei Rafes and Aleksandr Chemerisky were the main leaders of the party.

Joseph Moisevich Chaikov was a Russian Imperial and Soviet Russian sculptor, graphic designer and teacher of Ukrainian Jewish descent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esther Frumkin</span> Belarusian Bundist revolutionary and publicist, Soviet politician

Esther Frumkin, born Malkhe Khaye Lifshitz and also known as Mariya Yakovlevna Frumkina, was a Belarusian Bundist revolutionary and publicist and Soviet politician who served as leader of the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, and later of the Yevsektsiya in the Soviet Union. An ardent proponent of the Yiddish language, her political position on Jewish assimilation satisfied neither traditional Jews nor the Soviet leaders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Issachar Ber Ryback</span> Ukrainian-French Jewish painter (1897–1935)

Issachar Ber Ryback, also Riback was a Jewish-Ukrainian-French painter.

Eliyahu "Elye" Spivak was a Soviet Jewish linguist, philologist, and pedagogue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rimon–Milgroim</span>

Milgroim. Journal for Art and Literature was a Yiddish cultural magazine that was published between 1922 and 1924 in Berlin by Rimon. At the same time, the Hebrew language magazine Rimon was published in a similar format. Milgroym and rimon means "pomegranate" in Yiddish and Hebrew, respectively.

References

  1. 1 2 Marek Bartelik, "Early Polish modern art: unity in multiplicity, Issue 7255", Manchester University Press, 2005, p. 140,
  2. 1 2 3 4 Aviel Roshwald, Richard Stites, "European culture in the Great War: the arts, entertainment, and propaganda, 1914-1918", Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 123,
  3. Joshua Rubenstein, Vladimir Pavlovich Naumov, "Stalin's secret pogrom: the postwar inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Issue 4713", Yale University Press, 2001, p. 145,
  4. Jeffrey Veidlinger, "The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish culture on the Soviet stage", Indiana University Press, 2000, p. 119,
  5. Nora Levin, "The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917: paradox of survival, Volume 1", NYU Press, 1990, p. 201,
  6. 1 2 3 Victor Margolin, "The struggle for utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, 1917-1946", University of Chicago Press, 1997, p. 27,
  7. Benjamin Harshav, "The Moscow Yiddish Theater: art on stage in the time of revolution", Yale University Press, 2008, p. 6,
  8. 1 2 David E. Fishman, "The rise of modern Yiddish culture", Univ of Pittsburgh Press, 2005, p. 83,