Too Much Shalom Aleichem Jewish Communist Press Complains

The Jewish Soviet Publishing Houses are the subject of a great deal of criticism in the Charkoff Yiddish Communist organ “Stern”, which complains that they are publishing too many works by dead Yiddish writers, to the detriment of the living Yiddish soviet and proletarian writers. The complaint is directed particularly against the constant reprinting of the works of Shalom Aleichem, generally without emendations and explanatory notes to correct his bourgeois ideas, which produce a bad effect on proletarian readers, and especially on children and young people.

Of course, the Yiddish-reading proletariat should be acquainted with our bourgeois classics, the article says, but that does not mean that we are obliged to spread the ideologies of those writers whose ideas are opposed to our own, and to feed our readers on the successful works of yesterday, and neglect the Soviet writers of to-day. Since the Revolution there has been a constant publication and republication of the works of Shalom Aleichem, single volumes and collected editiions, selected tales, and children’s stories. Also, Shalom Aleichem’s works are sold much more cheaply than books of the same some by Soviet writers, and the result is that proletarian literature is being relegated to the background and ideas which are unhealthy to Soviet Society are being spread at its expense.