Source: M. J. Olgin: Leader and Teacher
Published: Workers Library Publishers, New York, December 1939.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2006. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source.
HERE is a shelf in the Hall of Science, Literature and the Press in the Soviet Pavilion at the World’s Fair. On this shelf there are specimens of books produced in the Soviet Union. As I handled these books one after the other to learn the name of the authors, to scrutinize the paper, the printing and the binding — which, by the way, are excellent — I discovered also a book in Yiddish. It was a volume of folk songs with notes. The book is printed on fine paper with an artistic finish, and the binding is soft leather which it is a joy to touch. The book would be a grand addition to the library of the most fastidious book-collector. It looks like a true work of love: both the text, carefully chosen and arranged, and the exterior bespeak an attitude of great respect and affection for the work at hand.
I held this book in my hands and I thought that this is perhaps the only Yiddish book in the entire Fair. There isn’t a single pavilion of any other nation where Yiddish books are shown. There isn’t a single nation in the world which has that attitude of deference and fondness for the cultures of minority nationalities which we find in the Soviet Union. On that shelf the Jewish book is not the only representative of a cultural minority; there are books in Georgian, in Armenian, in Uzbek, in Tartar, not to speak of the books in the Ukrainian language which was persecuted and suppressed before 1917.
When you walk through the Hall of Art of the Soviet Pavilion, you will see paintings, sculptures, wood-carvings, embroideries, lacquered woodwork produced by the various Soviet peoples. The work of each one is cherished, collected, shown to the world.
After leaving the Soviet Pavilion, I read in a paper on the train the Nth declaration that the Soviet Union gives no freedom to its citizens and that the Soviet Union is classed with Germany and Italy among the totalitarian states. I do not know whether to laugh in derision or cry in anger. On second thought I remain calm. The truth cannot be concealed, I say to myself. The truth, like life, has its own irresistible power. In our days you cannot keep it away from the people for long.
In one of the latest issues of the Yiddish magazine Shtern published in Minsk, there is a facsimile of an official letter addressed by the governor of Minsk to the chief of police of Minsk, dated 1914. The letters reads as follows:
“To the Minsk Chief of Police:
“I instruct your High Nobility to inform Boruch, Davidov Krasner, who resides in the city of Minsk, in Zacharyevsky Alley, in the house of Shapiro; that his petition about permission to arrange a reading by the writer-humorist Sholom Aleichem (Sch. Rabinovich) in the spoken Jewish language in the town of Baranovichi, has been left by me without satisfying it.
“You are to collect from the said person stamp tax in this case to the amount of 1 ruble and 50 kopeks and to deposit that sum in the local treasury as income of the treasury department, and to inform the Minsk treasury chamber about it.”
In 1914 one needed the governor’s permission to organize a reading by Sholom Aleichem of his work. In most cases this was prohibited. From the same magazine it is evident that another reading which a society wished to organize for Sholom Aleichem in Minsk also failed to obtain the governor’s permission.
This year the Soviet Union is celebrating the eightieth birthday of Sholom Aleichem. It is a celebration not only of the Jews but of the entire Soviet Union. Many of the wonderful stories and sketches by Sholom Aleichem have been translated into Russian and a variety of other languages. Sholom Aleichem’s works are being distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies....