ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses fragments from such interviews with people from different Ukrainian shtetlekh. These fragments concentrate on the effect of official policy upon the daily life of ordinary Jewish families living in the shtetlekh in 1920s and 1930s. The interviews arguably represent the first attempt to reconstruct, on the basis of living voices, the reality of a Soviet Jewish shtetl on the eve of the Holocaust. The historiographic problems facing students of Soviet Jewry in the pre-World War II period become even more pronounced when one tries to explore daily life and local cultural activities. Contemporary Soviet press, films and scripts of radio programmes reflect only the official side of the story. These sources only tell them what Jewish Life was supposed to be in the ideal Soviet world rather than what it was in reality. Thus they are scarcely of any use as a reliable source of information on the actual popularity and rootedness of Soviet culture among Jews.
