s and theater. They flourish as long as they are permitted, until the mid 1930s.
At your left,
an Yiddish school in Kharkov, Ukraine, in 1922. The banner reads: "Children's
home - the home of Communist culture." As the schools were Yiddish in language
only, and Judaism the target of the anti-religious curriculum, the number of
pupils diminished rapidly.
The newly established Yiddish schools are very popular at first. But as only few secondary school and no university courses are in Yiddish, their numbers decline. At the end of the 1930s, they have completely disappeared.
With the almost complete elimination of organized Jewish religious and communal life, the Yevsektsii have become redundant and are dissolved in 1930. During the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s, most of its members are accused of having had "nationalist tendencies," and are deported or killed.
At your left,
graduates and teachers of the Yiddish Professional Technical School in Cherkassy,
Ukraine, in 1929.
The economic life of the shtetl lies in ruins after the successive disasters of the First World War, the Civil War and the years of "War Communism." The New Economic Policy of 1921 brings some relief as farmers and artisans are once more allowed to trade their own products, but this policy is reversed with the introduction of the first Five Year Plan in 1928.
The following rapid industrialization and collectivization completely destroy the socio-economic fabric of shtetl life. Traditional Jewish occupations like shopkeepers, artisans and traders disappear, and tens of thousands of Jews have to leave their homes to work in the new industries. Because of their relatively high level of education, many Jews find employment in government services or work as doctors, engineers, managers, accountants etc. In order to promote agricultural work among Jews, and to offer a Soviet alternative to Zionism, the government establishes a Jewish Autonomous Region in the far-eastern region of Birobidzhan.
At your left,
poster from the campaign against the intensifying anti-Semitism at the end of
the 1920s. This was the only campaign of its kind in the Soviet Union.
But the plan is a failure. The climate is extremely harsh, and the region is too far from the major centers of Jewish life. The Jewish population of Birobidzhan reaches its peak with 24 percent in 1937.
The massive migration of Jews out of Belorussia and the Ukraine, and the radical change in their occupational structure, result in a rapid assimilation into Soviet society. Yiddish is more and more replaced by Russian, and the number of mixed marriages rises to almost a third in the 1930s. In the lifetime of one generation, the Russian Jewish community has undergone fundamental change.