ABSTRACT
The establishment of the Soviet regime after the events of 1917 provided new opportunities for cultural development amongst national minorities previously oppressed under the tsarist regime. Belorussians and Jews, among others, were offered the right and the material means to develop their own culture in their national language. The Jewish ‘cultural renaissance’, actually initiated before 1917 but vigorously promoted by Jewish cultural activists in 1917-1918, was initially supported by the Bolsheviks.1 Yiddish culture and language received the official recognition and support of the Bolshevik authorities despite the fact that Jews did not have their own autonomous region until the 1930s and the creation of the Birobidzhan. Belorussian culture and language, previously oppressed and disdained for their ‘peasant’ character, finally became the main language of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) established in 1921. The flourishing of Yiddish and Belorussian cultures was particularly striking in literature, theatre and scholarship.2 This ‘liberation of the peoples’ also had its ambiguities and resulted in the suppression of some major aspects of these cultures-those connected with national or non-communist parties, religious practices or ‘social enemies’.3 Thus, the new culture had to develop in a space limited by ideological, political and social constraints.
