SESSION ON RUSSIAN JEWISH HISTORY
Elina Shkolnikova
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE JEWISH SHTETL IN THE USSR IN THE 1930S
During the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century the Jewish shtetl in Eastern Europe was undergoing a process of modernization and the Jewish traditional pattern of life was gradually dissolving. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the civil war led to the hastening of this process and to the destruction of many shtetlekh. In the 1920s, the traditional Jewish shtetl was losing its socio-economic and cultural functions in the Soviet system.
However, in the 1930s the shtetl was transforming and entering the new economic and cultural life. In the present paper, based on Russian archival sources and Soviet Yiddish press, I will examine this process, and will look at the changes in social, economic, and cultural spheres of the shtetl life. Concerning the social and economic spheres, I will explore the social structure of the shtetl Jewish population, the role of the shtetl in the new Soviet economic scheme and emerging of several basic types of the shtetl. As my research demonstrates, in the 1930s, along with a certain stabilization of the Soviet economy, the stabilization of the shtetl economy occured. A mass migration from the shtetl subsided, though the migration continued slowly during the whole period. It involved mostly younger people, which led to a higher percentage of elder people among the shtetl Jewish population. At the same time the category of disenfranchized people, which represented the majority of the shtetl Jewish population in the previous decade, now has virtually disappeared. Many Jews were entering the now privileged working class and peasantry, however, most of them retained previous occupations adapting them to the new conditions. The Jewish shtetl did not create a certain economic phenomenon within the frame of the Soviet economy, and the shtetlekh were in transition to become either Soviet villages -- kolkhozy, or regular small towns with a small scale industry.
In the cultural sphere I will investigate the affect of the standardized Soviet culture, as well as the Soviet Yiddish culture, on the social and family life of shtetl Jews. As many Jews in the shtetl, including both young and old people, were attracted to the new culture and ideology, the majority tried to retain their national life, combining it with the new way of life. The Jewish school, though it still comprised the majority of Jewish children in the shtetlekh and played a great role in implanting Soviet values and ideology in the new generation, was dying gradually as the whole Soviet Yiddish culture was. Though the Jewish religious community ceased to exist by the 1930s, every shtetl had a small religious minority where all ages could be represented.
Thus my topic will also be the interrelation between the new consciousness and way of life, and the system of Jewish traditional values and national identification; the participation of different age and social groups in the processes of cultural transformation of the shtetl.