ABSTRACT

The challenge of reconciling the special case of Yiddish literature with Soviet Marxist literary theory was taken up and successfully resolved by a group of brilliant Jewish intellectuals during the 1920s and 1930s. They combined commitment to communism with deep knowledge of Jewish culture and broad European erudition. In Moshe Litvakov mind, the questions of legacy and hegemony in Yiddish culture were closely connected: Soviet culture could not maintain its hegemony in the world of Yiddish unless it could justify its superior position in relation to the Yiddish cultural past. The Jewish tradition, argues Litvakov, almost did not develop until the early nineteenth century, because the guardians of the tradition in each generation approved only such contributions that did not deviate from its static spirit. The genius of Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, 'the grandfather ofYiddish literature', modernized the formal and aesthetic principles of Yiddish literature and emancipated it from the old tradition.