ABSTRACT
The political left was by no means a natural or obvious home for David Bergelson. Born in the Ukrainian shtetl of Okhrimove on 12 August 1884, he was the son of wealthy and distinguished parents, a fact that was to haunt him subsequently in the Soviet phase of his literary career. The extent and nature of Bergelson's involvement with the left varied over the years, between the failure of the 1905 Revolution and his death on 12 August 1952, when he was shot on Stalin's orders. An assessment of his literary reputation is inextricably linked with his political engagement. At the height of his powers, he was considered to be a master Yiddish stylist and one of the great hopes of Yiddish letters. The question, however, that has divided his admirers and detractors, is when, exactly, was the height of his literary powers? More precisely, how is his place in Yiddish literature to be assessed, given the sharp discontinuity between his pre-Revolutionary works, relatively few in number, and the stream of stories, novels and theoretical essays he produced after 1917, and especially after 1926, the pivotal year when he declared himself a Soviet writer?
