ABSTRACT
On 19 February 1956, the Morgn-Frayhayt published Moyshe Katz's article 'Peretz Markish', based on a communication published on 29 December 1955 in the central organ of the Soviet Writers' Union, Literaturnaia Gazeta. In November 1947, the American Yiddish Culture Conference paraphrased Moyshe Olgin's definition of progressive Jewish culture as a culture consisting 'of all those aspects of the collective Jewish life which express the positive, forward-looking aspirations of the Jewish people'. In contrast to the Soviet Union, Poland boasted a fairly vibrant Jewish communal life and a relatively strong group of Yiddish literati who had a few Warsaw-based outlets for their journalistic and literary production. In the mid-1950s, the pro-Soviet Yiddishists were undergoing a profound crisis of identity — one that eventually left them as little more than fringe groups on the periphery of the Communist movement.
