Re: Future of Yiddish Eastern Europe in no-WWII world

On Jul 10, 3:35=A0am, "Michele" <nospammiar...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> <randy.mcdon...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ha scritto nel
messaggionews:29419f3b-cce8-492=
1-9684-75a1622f23d7@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Jul 8, 11:56 pm, bm2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
>
>
>
> > [deletia]
>
> > 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?).
>
> I'd separate the Soviet Jews from the non-Soviet central and eastern
> European Jews. Soviet Jews, as has been noted elsewhere in this
> thread, were assimilating strongly to Russian culture even before the
> Revolution.
>

"Soviet Jews" could not assimilate _before_ Russian Revolution just
because there were no _Soviet_ Jews in Tsarist Russia. The Jews of the
Russian Empire, OTOH, did not assimilate 'strongly' into the Russian
culture because goverment put numerous obstacles to such
'assimilation'. Actually, this policy was one of the main reasons for
(a) big emigration and (b) active participation of the young Jews in
the revolutionary movements.

After Revolution and Russian CW the Jews of the former Russian Empire
ended up as the citizens of the SU (after it was created), Poland,
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Those who became the Soviet citizens did predominantly assimilate into
Russian culture.