Sovetish heymland (Moscow, 1961-1991), Navigation Tool and Critical Commentary on a Yiddish-Soviet Literary Journal in the Soviet Union.

• Applicants: Dr. Bettina Kaibach; Dr. Daniela Mantovan
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 289083727

After the dissolution of Jewish institutions in 1934 and the murder of Jewish intelligentsia between 1948 and 1952, Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist. The death of Stalin and the subsequent rule of Khrushchev opened the way for the posthumous rehabilitation of the murdered Yiddish writers and for the publication of Yiddish literary works. For the first time since the annihilation of Yiddish culture in Stalins time, a Yiddish literary journal appeared in Moscow in July-August 1961: Sovetish heymland. Tsvey khadoshimdiker literarish-kinstlerisher zshurnal. Organ fun shrayber farband fun kh.s.s.r. (Soviet Homeland. A Bi-monthly Literary and Art Journal. An Organ of the Writers Union of the USSR). The journal, issued monthly from 1965, was the only public cultural forum of the Yiddish speaking minority in the Soviet Union until 1991. In the first decade of publication, important documents, bibliographies, previously unpublished manuscripts, and a number of memoires on Yiddish writers and literary critics who had fallen victim to Stalins repressions, could finally be published. In the following decades, new documents kept surfacing, although the journal focused increasingly on the present. The editor had to comply with party dictates, while at the same time representing the Yiddish speaking minority of the Soviet Union and its cultural heritage. The strain of maintaining such a dual stance is evident in the mix of party loyalty and of high quality work which characterizes the journal. A systematic and exhaustive analysis of Sovetish heymland has not been undertaken to date.Sovetish heymland has been frequently quoted in the recent past; however, the content of the journal is not easy to access. This is partly because of the often fragmentary collections of the journal in European libraries. At the same time, the structure of Sovetish heymland is in itself a problem for the researcher. Its lists of contents are only minimally informative, while the unbalanced mix of texts of varying significance hampers research work. The projects aims are therefore1. To compile a digital navigation tool, i.e. a detailed index organized and itemized according to authors, works and themes, which will facilitate the use of the journal for research. The navigation tool will be put online. 2. To provide a critical commentary of the 30 years history of the publication of Sovetish heymland, whose main focus will be on the literary content of the journal and on its development in the light of political change. The planned volume will be published by the completion of the project.3. Given that the technical resources (OCR for Yiddish) will be available within the next three years, a third step would be the digitization of the complete publication. (See research proposal: 2.2, Ziele).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants