Elye Spivak Explained

Elye Spivak
Native Name:עליע ספּיוואַק
Native Name Lang:yi
Birth Date:10 December 1890
Birth Place:Vasilkov, Russian Empire
Death Place:Moscow, Soviet Union
Alma Mater:Moscow State University[1]
Discipline:Linguistics, dialectology, lexicology
Workplaces:Odessa Pedagogical Institute, All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences

Eliyahu "Elye" Spivak (; 10 December 1890 – 4 April 1950) was a Soviet Jewish linguist, philologist, and pedagogue.

Biography

Spivak was born to a religious Jewish family in Vasilkov, Kiev Governorate in the Russian Empire. He survived the 1919 Vasilkov pogroms, in which Symon Petliura's armies massacred over fifty Jews. Spivak worked as a teacher in various cities, including Vasilkov, Glukhov, Kiev, and Kharkov, and was appointed professor of Yiddish linguistics at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute in 1925.[2] Spivak published some fifty Yiddish textbooks and teaching aids, in collaboration with David Hofstein and others, and co-edited the pedagogical journal Ratnbildung ('Soviet Education') from 1929 to 1931.

Following Nochum Shtif's death in 1933, Spivak was appointed director of the linguistics section of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture and editor of its journal, Afn shprakhfront ('On the Language Front').[3] The Institute was closed down in early 1936 amid the Great Purge, with many of its staff members arrested on charges of Trotskyism. The smaller Office for the Study of Soviet Jewish Literature, Language, and Folklore was created in its place, with Spivak as director.[4] Along with the rest of the Office, Spivak was evacuated to Ufa, Bashkiria with the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, and returned in 1944.[5]

Spivak, a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was arrested in January 1949 under charges of Jewish nationalism. He died on 4 April 1950 in the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow from an intracerebral hemorrhage while under interrogation.

Work

Spivak played a major role in Soviet Yiddish language planning. He sought to compromise between Russification of Yiddish and the purported nationalism of the use of words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin, and wrote in favour of a partial de-Hebraization of Soviet Yiddish.[6] [7] Spivak opposed new coinages based on Hebraic elements not present in pre-revolutionary Yiddish, promoting instead the introduction of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian internationalisms.[8] [9]

While at the Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture, Spivak put forward the idea of compiling a comprehensive Russian-Yiddish dictionary, a project which began in 1935.[10] Though completed in 1948, the dictionary's manuscript and other research materials were confiscated by the Soviet security organs upon the arrest of Spivak and its other authors.[11] The dictionary was published posthumously in 1984.[12]

Publications

The following is a partial list of Spivak's publications (not including textbooks):

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: И словарь, и памятник. Леонид. Флят. November 2009. Мы здесь. ru. 2019-02-05. 2018-09-09. https://web.archive.org/web/20180909150430/http://www.newswe.com/index.php?go=Pages&in=view&id=1945. dead.
  2. Encyclopedia: Estraikh. Gennady. 2010. Spivak, Elye. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. 4 February 2019.
  3. Encyclopedia: Rakhmiel. Peltz. 2nd. Encyclopedia Judaica. 2007. Spivak, Elye.
  4. Encyclopedia: Bilovitsky. Vladimir. Aronson. I. Michael. 2010. Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. 4 February 2019.
  5. Web site: Elye Spivak. Joshua. Fogel. Yiddish Leksikon. 20 May 2018. 4 February 2019. Aleksander. Pomerants.
  6. Book: Spivak, Elye. 1939. Naye vortshafung. New Word Formation. yi. Kiev. 50183516.
  7. Elye. Spivak. Vegn dehebreizatsye un vegn dem hebreishn element in yidish. yi. Dehebraization and the Hebrew Element in Yiddish. Afn Sprakhront. 2. 1935. Kiev.
  8. Book: Greenbaum, Avraam. Politics of Yiddish: Studies in Language, Literature and Society. Dov-Ber. Kerler. Sage Publications. 1998. 978-0-7619-9024-6. Yiddish Language Politics in the Ukraine (1930–1936). 23–28. https://books.google.com/books?id=zcdlnosYFKsC&pg=PA23.
  9. Book: Estraikh, Gennady. Soviet Yiddish: Language-Planning and Linguistic Development. 1999. 978-0-19-818479-9. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184799.001.0001.
  10. 10.1080/13501678408577465. Wolf. Moskovich. An Important Event in Soviet Yiddish Cultural Life: The New Russian‐Yiddish Dictionary. Soviet Jewish Affairs. 14. 3. 31–49. 1984.
  11. Book: Moskovich, Wolf. The Russian-Yiddish Dictionary of 1984 and the Problems of the Maintenance of Soviet Yiddish after the Second World War. 232. Under the Red Banner: Yiddish Culture in the Communist Countries in the Postwar Era. Elvira. Grözinger. Magdalena. Ruta. Harrassowitz Verlag. 2008. 978-3-447-05808-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=M1TSi_QnJOIC&pg=PA232.
  12. Book: Moyshe. Shapiro. Elye. Spivak. Moyshe. Shulman. Russko-evreysky (idish) slovar / Rusish-Yidisher verterbukh. Russian-Yiddish Dictionary. Russian, Yiddish. Moscow. Russky yazyk. 1984. 122650969.

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