The Communist Daily Worker took the Soviet Union to task yesterday for its failure to implement announced plans for the revival of Yiddish culture in the USSR.
In an article by Chaim Suller, manager of the Yiddish language Communist daily newspaper “Morning Freiheit,” the Worker called “incorrect” a policy which held that “all the Jews in the Soviet Union are linguistically and culturally assimilated and have no need for separate institutions.” Mr. Suller, who visited the USSR a year ago, cited his own experiences with packed Yiddish concert performances as evidence that “large masses of Jews in the Soviet Union are hungry for the Yiddish word.”
Mr. Suller denied, however, that in their refusal to permit or assist the revival of Yiddish culture on a wide scale Soviet leaders are anti-Semitic. He offered examples of some limited developments in the field of Yiddish culture. He also referred to “nationalist tendencies” among Soviet Jews which, he said, had been “strengthened by the administrative shutting down of all Yiddish cultural institutions.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
