Modernization and Sovietization
Soviet Power and the Jews in Berdychiv
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Early Soviet nationality policy promoted the language and culture of the peo-ples who had been oppressed in the Russian Empire. The Bolsheviks wanted to win their loyalty and consolidate their own power. Jews also benefited from this policy. Yiddish was promoted, and schools and cultural institutions were established. Religious Jews, however, came under increasing pressure. This is shown in the case of Berdychiv, the prototype of a Jewish shtetl in central Ukraine. The Sovietization of life was more difficult to implement in a small town with deeply evolved structures than in a fast-paced big city. However, confronted by the development of a secular, proletarian-Jewish culture, social change, and anti-religious politics, centuries of Jewish tradition began to erode over the course of the 1920s.
(Osteuropa 12/2023, pp. 127–148)