bm2617@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> Assume No Hitler, and that a war vs the Red Menace doesn't take the
> place of OTL WWII: at most, a limited Cold War of sorts and perhaps
> some sort of dustup in the Pacific with Japan vs Whoever. Stalin, if
> he gets around to seriously persecuting Soviet Jews, doesn't kill more
> than, say, 25% of them.
>
> Under this sort of scenario, what odds that a high percentage of the
> Yiddish-speaking Jews of eastern Europe still are doing so in 2008?
> Given nationalist pressures to assimilate, and efforts to make them
> proper Soviets in the USSR, possibly at gulag-point, one would think
> there would be a serious drop in the number of Yiddish-speakers: and
> not only by assimilation, but also by emigration (in a WWII-free
> world, how long does the US keep its immigration as restricted as it
> was during the 30's?).
>
> Even with no Holocaust, it seems likely that the old world of Yiddish-
> speaking ghettos and shtetls would still be a largely "lost world" by
> the present date: how far assimilated would the Jews of Poland,
> Romania, the USSR, etc. be? (Those who hadn't moved to the US,
> Australia, France, etc.)
>
> OTOH, might the Soviets, always happy enough to ID their population by
> nationality, decide that the "Jewish nationality", although of course
> having to learn Russian in school like anyone else, needed their
> culture protected and promoted in the usual faux-multicultural style
> ("traditional" clothes and dances, godawful socialist realist
> paintings, etc.) for international consumption, including the use of
> the Yiddish language?
Happened in our timeline -- there was a Jewish autonomous
something-or-other.
--
Dan Goodman
"I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers."
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Expire
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