Soviet Yiddish

by G. Ėstraĭkh

This is the first comprehensive study of Yiddish in the former Soviet Union. A chronicle of orthographic and other reforms - from the state of the language in pre-Revolutionary Russia, through active language-planning in the 1920s and 1930s, repression, and subsequent developments up to the 1980s - is recreated from contemporary publications and archival materials. Later chapters draw on the author's own experience as a Yiddish writer and lexicographer in Moscow.