Dissidence of a Communist Yiddish Writer: The Soviet Life and Fate of Chaim Gildin

Abstract

Abstract: The article focuses on the rise and demise of Chaim Gildin (1883/4–1943), one of the most vociferous Soviet Yiddish writers, a pioneer of proletarian poetry and prose. It is also aimed at providing a broader perspective on the perilous Soviet Yiddish literary terrain, especially during the Stalinist repressions. In 1936, Gildin lost his Communist Party membership but was spared from arrest. Nevertheless, the secret police came after him in 1940, generally considered as a “quiet year.” His attempts to organize a collective protest—to compel the authorities to reverse the process of closing down Yiddish institutions—might have played a fatal role in his fate. It seems that Yiddish writers of proletarian persuasion generally tended to be more prone to activism than their former “bourgeois” counterparts, and this—rather than their writings—made them more vulnerable during the purges aimed to make the population fully obedient. Although Gildin’s secret police file is full of diligently collected information about his “harmful” prose and poetry, his oeuvre clearly played a secondary role in the decision to prosecute him. It seems that this was the pattern for the entire period of Stalinist repressions: while Yiddish literati were not prosecuted specifically for literary motives, investigators would pay much attention to their writings, whose ideological “defects” helped them to make the indictment look more convincing.