Moyshe Litvakov

Moyshe Litvakov
משה ליטװאַקאָװ
Born	1875 or 1879 Cherkasy, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	1937 or 1939
Other names	Moshe Litvakov, Moishe Litvakov, Moses Litvakov; pseudonyms Nitsuts, Simenzon, M. Lirov
Occupations	Soviet Yiddish literary critic, editor and Communist Party official
Known for	Editor of Der Emes; prominent figure in the Yevsektsiya
Political party	Zionist Socialist Workers Party (1904–1917) Fareynikte (1917–1919) Communist Party (1919–1937)

Moyshe Litvakov (Yiddish: משה ליטװאַקאָװ; also Moses Litvakov; born 1875 or 1879; died 1937 or 1939) was a Soviet Yiddish literary critic, editor and political activist. A founder of the Zionist Socialist Workers Party in the 1900s and a leading figure in the Yiddishist cultural milieu of Kyiv in the 1910s, he joined the Communist Party in 1919 and became a prominent figure in the Yevsektsiya, the Jewish section of the party. From 1921 until his arrest in 1937 he was closely associated with, and for most of that period the editor of the Moscow Yiddish daily Der Emes. As a literary theorist and critic, Litvakov became a leading authority in Soviet Yiddish cultural life and was closely involved with the Moscow State Jewish Theatre. As a Yevsektsiya leader and editor of Der Emes, Litvakov promoted a Soviet proletarian Yiddish culture while opposing Jewish religious observance and Jewish national aspirations. Through Der Emes, he also advocated the suppression of Hebrew. He survived a campaign against "Litvakovism" in 1931–32 but was arrested during the Great Purge in 1937.

Early life and education

Sources give Litvakov's birth year as either 1875 or 1879. He was born in Cherkasy, in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire, to a poor religious family; his father, a melamed, had moved there from Lithuania. He received a traditional education in the cheder and beth midrash until the age of seventeen, when he turned to the Haskalah and secular studies, passing the external examinations for the gymnasium certificate. From 1902 to 1905 he lived in Paris, studying philosophy, history and literature at the Sorbonne.

Zionist socialist activity

Litvakov's political activity began in the late 1890s as a follower of the cultural Zionism of Ahad Ha'am. He soon moved toward socialist Zionism, taking part in the group of Zionist socialists who organised the Vozrozhdenie ("Rebirth") circle after the Rovno conference of 1903. When that group constituted itself as the Zionist Socialist Workers Party (SS) at a conference in Odessa in the winter of 1904, Litvakov, still in Paris, was elected to its central committee. He returned to Russia after the revolution of 1905 and became one of the party's principal ideologues, writing for its publications under the pseudonym Nitsuts. In 1906 he edited the party's Yiddish organs in Vilna – Der Nayer Veg, Unzer Veg and Dos Vort – and published the pamphlet Der Tsienizmus un di Ugande-Frage ("Zionism and the Uganda Question"). He also wrote in Hebrew for Ha-Zman.

Kyiv years

From 1908 Litvakov was a regular contributor to the Russian-language Kyiv daily Kievskaya Mysl, writing under the name M. Lirov chiefly on Russian and Western European literature and on Jewish social questions. He was active in Kyiv's Yiddishist cultural circles as a critic, essayist and publisher; in 1911 he co-founded, with Mikhl Levitan, a secular Yiddish elementary school in the city's Demiivka district. During the First World War he worked in relief for Jewish refugees from the front zones. After the February Revolution of 1917 Litvakov helped found the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party (Fareynikte) and co-edited its daily Di Naye Tsayt. He was an active member of the Central Rada, a co-founder of the Kultur-Lige in 1918, and head of the Yiddish section of the All-Ukrainian Literary Committee (Litkom). In 1919 he edited the Kyiv collection Baginen and contributed to Eygns and Bikher-Velt. In this period he emerged as a theorist of a new revolutionary Yiddish culture that would incorporate rather than discard earlier Jewish cultural forms while reorienting Yiddish literature toward world literature through a systematic programme of translation.

Soviet career

When the Red Army entered Ukraine in early 1919, Litvakov led a split in the Fareynikte and took its left wing into the Komfarband, which merged into the Communist Party of Ukraine in May 1919. He then turned sharply against Jewish cultural institutions he regarded as reactionary, including the Kultur-Lige in which he had been active. In 1921 Litvakov assumed a leading role in the Moscow Yevsektsiya and became associated with Der Emes, the central Soviet Yiddish daily, which was the official organ of the Yevsektsiya until March 1930. The Soviet promotion of Yiddish occurred alongside the suppression of Hebrew and the subordination of the Yiddish press to Communist Party control. YIVO notes that Hebrew production was banned in the Soviet Union while the Yiddish press was made to serve the party line, identifying Der Emes, edited for most of this period by Litvakov, as its principal Yiddish daily. YIVO separately characterizes Der Emes as the Yiddish equivalent of Pravda and notes its sharply anti-Zionist and antireligious rhetoric. YIVO describes the newspaper as the Yiddish equivalent of Pravda and notes its sharply antizonist and antireligious rhetoric. He served as its editor for most of the period from 1921 until his arrest in 1937. Sources differ on the precise chronology of his editorship: the Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur states that his name disappeared as editor after October 1927 and that he was later restored to the post in 1932. In the newspaper's pages he advocated the "Octoberisation" of Yiddish literature and opposed Jewish religious observance and Jewish nationalism, while also contributing to the Russian atheist newspaper Bezbozhnik. By this period, Litvakov had become an antizionist, opposing Jewish national aspirations and participating in the Communist campaign against Zionism. Historian Colin Shindler places Litvakov among former Zionists who later participated in the Communist campaign against Zionist institutions, noting that Litvakov used Der Emes to advocate the suppression of Hebrew. Litvakov also directed the Moscow Yiddish publishing house Shul un Bukh (1924–1928), edited the illustrated fortnightly Emes-Zhurnal (January–May 1928), was a member of the Institute for Jewish Culture of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and taught Yiddish literature and Jewish history in the Jewish section of the Moscow Pedagogical Institute. With Esther Frumkin he edited an eight-volume Yiddish edition of selected writings by Vladimir Lenin.

Literary and cultural work

Litvakov was one of the leading Soviet Yiddish literary critics of the 1920s and a leading spokesman of "proletarian criticism" in Yiddish letters. His criticism addressed the relationship between pre-revolutionary Jewish literary traditions and the developing Soviet Yiddish canon. His essay collection In Umru examined what Soviet Yiddish writers had inherited from Morris Rosenfeld, Abraham Reisen, Sholem Aleichem and I. L. Peretz, while arguing for the predominance of the emerging Soviet literature. Literary scholar Mikhail Krutikov has examined Litvakov's theories of cultural "legacy" and Soviet literary hegemony as part of his effort to construct a specifically Soviet Yiddish literary tradition. He was closely involved with the Moscow State Jewish Theatre under Aleksei Granovsky, serving on its governing board, writing extensively on Yiddish theatre, and publishing a monograph on the company's first five years in 1924. YIVO describes Litvakov as championing the Moscow State Yiddish Theater as a medium for promoting Communist ideals among Jewish audiences. As a member of its governing board and a prominent Communist Party figure, his repeated demands for revolutionary and Soviet themes helped reshape its repertoire and keep the theater close to the party line. His criticism and institutional position gave him substantial influence over the theatre's repertoire, particularly its turn toward revolutionary and Soviet themes. His position also made him a prominent participant in the ideological disputes of the period. In 1929 the poet Leyb Kvitko published a satirical caricature of Litvakov; the resulting controversy became a significant episode in Soviet Yiddish literary politics.

Campaign against "Litvakovism"

Litvakov's continued engagement with the pre-revolutionary literary heritage left him exposed to ideological criticism. In July 1931 the Minsk monthly Shtern published an editorial accusing him of Menshevism and "national democratism", of hampering the development of proletarian literature and of suppressing self-criticism, and calling on the forthcoming congress of Yiddish proletarian writers to put an end to "Litvakovism". The attack came from former Yevsektsiya figures in Minsk and caused a sensation in the Soviet Yiddish press; Der Emes defended its editor while conceding that he had faults. Litvakov was removed from the editorship for a time, but after a period of public self-criticism in 1931–32, in which he acknowledged errors and recanted earlier positions, he was restored to his post.

Arrest and death

Attacks on Litvakov continued through the 1930s, and during the Great Purge his opponents accused him of Trotskyist tendencies. In 1937 the Soviet authorities refused permission for a proposed delegation of five prominent Soviet Yiddish cultural figures – Litvakov, Solomon Mikhoels, Dovid Bergelson, Itsik Feffer and Izi Kharik – to attend the World Yiddish Cultural Congress in Paris. Litvakov was arrested in the summer or autumn of 1937 as an "enemy of the people". Sources disagree on the circumstances and date of his death. The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that he was taken to Minsk and executed in December 1937, while the Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur records an official report that he died in prison shortly after his arrest. The YIVO Encyclopedia gives 1939 as his year of death. Der Emes continued after Litvakov's arrest but ceased publication in 1938.

Works

• Der Tsienizmus un di Ugande-Frage (Warsaw: Medina, 1907/08; the Encyclopaedia Judaica dates it 1905)
• In Umru, vol. 1 (Kyiv: Shul un Bukh, 1918) – articles from 1906 to 1918
• Finf Yor Melukhisher Idisher Kamer-Teater, 1919–1924 (Moscow: Shul un Bukh, 1924)
• In Umru, vol. 2 (Moscow: Shul un Bukh, 1926)
• Af Tsvey Frontn (Moscow, 1931)

Further reading

• Shneer, David (2004). Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 1918–1930. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521826303.
• Estraikh, Gennady. "The Yiddish-language Communist press", in Jews in Eastern Europe 2 (2000), pp. 25–55.
• Reyzen, Zalmen. Leksikon fun der yidisher literatur, prese un filologye, vol. 2 (Vilna, 1927), cols. 35–41.
• Bikl, Shloyme. Shrayber fun mayn dor, vol. 1 (New York, 1958), pp. 287–304.

External links

• Moyshe Litvakov at the Posen Library
• "Litvakov, Moyshe" at the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe