ABSTRACT
The capital of Bukovina, Chernovicz, was a centre of Jewish philosophy and learning — known as the Jerusalem of the East — and a centre of publishing and journalism; it was the home and inspiration of a large number of internationally acclaimed painters like Marc Chagall, poets like Paul Celan and Rose Ausländer, and novelists like Manès Sperber and Joseph Roth. During the hottest phase of the Cold War, the formerly celebrated multiculturalism of Bukovina, and of Chernovicz in particular, was deliberately silenced and erased from the international agenda of cultural and literary criticism, since it appeared incompatible with the unifying and homogenizing tendencies of Soviet cultural policies. Language usage and language attitudes, being determined by the social and cultural/ethnic environment, reflect the potential range of action within society.
