ABSTRACT
In 1961, when the Yiddish literary magazine Sovetish heymland was launched in Khrushchevian Moscow, its prosaists and poets certainly did not see this as an opportunity to write about the shtetl. The strongest wave of enthusiasm was associated with the new Programme of the Communist Party, the draft of which was published on 30 July 1961, or a couple of weeks before the appearance of the first issue of Sovetish heymland. Khrushchev's Utopian Programme, adopted in the year by the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party, solemnly promised the Soviet people that in two decades' time they would find themselves in communism. Rural settings were generally popular among Soviet Yiddish writers, including those who were born in towns. Many of the magazine's editors and contributors had a full and thorough education behind them, including Yiddish secondary school and a degree in Yiddish from a university or a teacher training institute.
