Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union during the 1920s, Yiddish was promoted as the language of the Jewish proletariat. It was one of the official languages of the Byelorussian SSR, as well as several agricultural districts of the Ukrainian SSR. A public educational system entirely based on the Yiddish language was established and comprised kindergartens, schools, and higher educational institutions (technical schools, rabfaks and other university departments). A Jewish Autonomous Oblast was even formed in the Far East with Yiddish as its official language, with the expectations that Soviet Jews would move there. At the same time, Hebrew was considered a bourgeois language and its use was generally discouraged. The vast majority of the Yiddish-language cultural institutions were closed in the late 1930s along with cultural institutions of other ethnic minorities lacking administrative entities of their own. After the Second World War, growing anti-Semitic tendencies in Soviet politics drove Yiddish from most spheres; the last Yiddish-language schools, theaters and publications were closed by the end of 1940s. Yet it continued to be widely used as a spoken medium for decades in the areas with compact Jewish population (primarily in Moldavia, Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Belorussia).

In the former Soviet states, presently active Yiddish authors include Yoysef Burg (Chernivtsi, b. 1912), Zisye Veytsman (Samara, b. 1951), and Aleksander Beyderman (see German-language Wikipedia article) (Odessa, b. 1949). Yiddish language radio programs are produced in Chernivtsi and Chişinău. Publication of an earlier Yiddish periodical was resumed in 2004 with the annual דער נײַער פֿרײַנד (der nayer fraynd, St. Petersburg). Two newspapers include Yiddish sections, דער ביראָבידזשאנער שטערן (der birobidzhaner shtern, Birobidzhan) and אונדזער קול (undzer kol, Chişinău).