ABSTRACT
In Berlin, where David Bergelson had settled in the spring of 1921 after leaving Kiev and spending a cold and hungry winter in Moscow, Forverts was represented by Yakov Lestschinsky, who combined the careers of scholar and journalist. Frayhayt, launched in April 1922, was the youngest of the five Yiddish dailies published in New York. Bergelson's condemnation of the anti-Sovietism expressed by Rafael Abramovitsh, a Berlin-based leading Menshevik and a regular contributor to Forverts, signalled the change of his allegiance from Forverts to Frayhayt. An immense abyss lay not only between the fictional figures of Khavele Vortman and Kalmens, but also between Bergelson and America, or between Bergelson and the non-Soviet world in general. Bergelson presents Kalmens as a man alien even in appearance, dressed in 'his odd-coloured waistcoat, the numerous pockets of which appeared to be full of incomprehensible American wisdom'.
