Many years ago, one of my informants remarked: "I always believed I had something to tell, but no one ever asked me anything." Soviet Jews turned out to be the "Jews of silence" (Elie Wiesel), in part because no one asked them anything or gave them a voice. This is especially true for Jews who lived in the provinces.

Introduction

The basic theoretical framework for post-World War II Soviet Jewish studies was the distinction proposed by Zvi Gitelman between "thin" and "thick" Jewish culture[1]. It was argued that "thick" Jewish culture, as a composite of language, social institutions, religious and ethnographic practices, was entirely absent in the USSR. This perspective continues to serve as a sort of axiom. For example, in their monograph on the folklore of Jewish emigrants from the former USSR, M. Yelenevskaya and L. Fialkova postulated that Soviet Jews were initially deprived of any national culture in any form whatsoever[2].

In addition to the theoretical assumptions that closed off prospects for studying Jewish life in the post-war USSR, there were also methodological difficulties.

During the Cold War, the phenomenon of Soviet Jewry was studied exclusively in the West, primarily in the United States and Israel. Because the USSR remained behind the Iron Curtain, all such research relied on media and archival documents. Working with written sources is traditional for historical research, and it is natural that this method predominated in the study of Soviet Jewry. The problem lay in the limitations of the historical approach and the lack of a subject of study — namely, public Jewish politics in the USSR during the 1960s and 1970s.

Prior to World War II, the Soviet regime pursued a highly active Jewish policy. The government attempted to alter the social and economic profile of the Jewish population, campaigned against religion, and shaped a secular Jewish culture in Yiddish. The tragic period of the war was accompanied by the public activities of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. This was followed by years of overt state-sponsored antisemitism. All this political activity, both destructive and constructive, was documented extensively in archives and the press.

In the 1960s, and especially in the 1970s and 1980s, Jews and the Jewish question simply vanished from official Soviet discourse. The Soviet regime "exposed" Zionism and Israel while suppressing small groups of Jewish activists, of whom little was known by their coreligionists in the USSR. The vast majority of the large Jewish population was shrouded in a veil of silence, resulting in a near-total absence of written documents, which greatly complicated the work of historians. It is tempting to say that in the Soviet Union, Jewish history "ended" or, at least, was reduced to the history of a politically active and nationally conscious minority. Of course, even under these methodologically challenging conditions, researchers attempted to reconstruct the life of the Jewish "silent majority" behind the Iron Curtain[3]. For instance, while antisemitic intent was rightly identified in the so-called "economic trials" of the 1960s, these "trials" also bore witness to the participation of Jews in the shadow economy[4]. An intellectual breakthrough in the study of Soviet Jewish life came with the works of Mordechai Altshuler, who approached documents not only as a historian but also as an anthropologist[5]. Yet, his sources remained limited.

The situation changed qualitatively in the 1990s. First, Western scholars gained access to the archives of post-Soviet countries, which significantly enriched their work (see, for example, the studies by A. Zeltser[6] and E. Bemporad[7] on the microhistory of Jews in Soviet Belarus). Second, for the first time, it was possible to conduct field research in oral history, social, and cultural anthropology — meaning expeditions to the former shtetls of Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. This work began thirty years ago and continues today. Researchers from St. Petersburg pioneered this effort, later joined by colleagues from Moscow. The earliest expeditions were comprehensive: the collection of oral histories went hand in hand with the study of monuments of "Jewish antiquity." Only since the early 2000s did field research take on a distinct ethnographic, and subsequently, cultural-anthropological character.

From the mid-1990s, Yiddish dialect specialists Dovid Katz (Vilnius University) and Dov-Ber Kerler (Indiana University, Bloomington) began working "in the field." They organized a series of expeditions to "Yiddishland" — from Lithuania to the Carpathians — recording the dialects of the last native speakers of Yiddish. Jeffrey Veidlinger later joined this group. Participants in the dialectological expeditions did not linger long in any single place, aiming to cover as many regions as possible and record as many local speech variations as possible. They were primarily interested in "how," rather than "what," their informants spoke. However, the interviews accumulated, and the recordings, lasting up to several hours each, presented significant historical value. An archive titled AHEYM ("Archive of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories") was established, containing approximately 400 interviews. The name is self-explanatory, as in Yiddish, the word "aheym" means "home."

The findings of these impressive expeditions are synthesized in Jeffrey Veidlinger’s book *In the Shadow of the Shtetl*[8]. This monograph, along with the collection of essays *The Shtetl. 21st Century. Field Studies*[9], published by the "Petersburg Judaica" Center, became the first publications in the field of Jewish ethnographic fieldwork since the pre-war era. Veidlinger's monograph focuses on Jewish oral history of the pre-war period (excluding Holocaust commemoration), which somewhat limits its scope. First, the post-war era was precisely the period of social activity for our informants. Second, field research demonstrates that "Jewish life" (religious, communal, professional) continued after World War II and persists to this day.

The post-war period remains an enigmatic era. Pre-war Jewish life, as mentioned above, is represented in publications and archives. The post-war documentary record is significantly narrower and poorer, thereby elevating the value of oral history during these years. Unfortunately, all AHEYM interviews were conducted in Yiddish, which excluded most competent middle-aged informants, many of whom spoke Yiddish poorly or not at all. Non-Jewish informants, who sometimes possessed unique knowledge about the lives of their Jewish neighbors, were also excluded from the surveys. At the same time, comparing our findings with the evidence from the AHEYM archive was extremely useful, since several of our and the American expeditions worked in the exact same regions.

Field studies of recent decades show that the issue is far more complex than a binary distinction between "thin" and "thick" Jewish culture. Furthermore, an "anthropological revision" of the concepts of "thin" and "thick" cultures is currently underway. Anna Shternshis, for example, writes perceptively on the syncretic nature of Soviet Jewish culture[10].

During the Soviet era, a segment of the Jewish population in former shtetls and small towns maintained traditional forms of culture, including language and religious practices. Recently, there have been increasing attempts to link this phenomenon with the ethnic economy and traditional household structures. Research of this kind, focusing on both the former shtetls of Ukraine[11] and Moldova[12], as well as the suburbs of Moscow[13], concentrated primarily on economic issues, including the "shadow economy." My study addresses related issues but also seeks to answer other questions: why and for whom, despite Soviet pressure, was it necessary to preserve the forms of religious life, traditional lifestyles, language, and economic behavior.

State policies in economics, culture, education, and social engineering changed repeatedly throughout the existence of the USSR, but in one respect the regime remained consistent: pursuing anthropological aims, it sought to re-engineer human beings, reducing their economic and cultural behavioral models to a desired denominator. Under constant pressure, traditional ways of life were often altered beyond recognition, appearing as a side effect of modernization or, at the very least, transformation.

The "anthropological" drive of the Soviet regime was most acutely directed at urban residents as the primary productive force and, concurrently, the main support of the regime. The absolute majority of the Jewish population in the USSR resided in cities, making the experiment of their forced transformation the most "unambiguous" case. It should be added that Jewish culture and the Yiddish language were protected and supported only until 1938, when Yiddish-medium schools and almost all Jewish newspapers were shut down (though theaters and publishing houses survived). From 1948, the regime shifted to suppressing Jewish cultural life, initially in highly aggressive forms (until Stalin's death), and later in much milder ones. Consequently, after the war, Soviet Jews were deprived of official protection for their cultural tradition, even when stripped of its religious component.

This makes the struggle to preserve the system of traditional values — understood as a cohesion of economic, social, religious, and linguistic behavior — demonstrated by the Jews of the Soviet provinces, all the more remarkable.

The material presented in this article was primarily collected between 2004 and 2008 in Mogilev-Podolsky, Shargorod, Bershad, and Tulchin (Vinnitsa Region), as well as Balta (Odessa Region)[14]. The choice of towns that became our primary research field was not accidental. It was not merely that a significant Jewish population, in both absolute and relative terms, survived in these towns until the early 1990s (for details, see below). A more or less significant Jewish population also resided in larger cities on the southwestern fringes of the former Soviet Union, such as Kishinev, Balti (Moldova), and Chernovtsy (Ukraine). Research groups also worked in these cities, but they focused on collecting traditional ethnographic and folklore material, which is tied to the individual memory, biography, and mnemonic capacity of a single informant. However, in a relatively large city, where not everyone knows one another, and people are segregated in physical and social space, it is difficult to conduct socio-anthropological and cultural-anthropological research.

Within the scope of this study, we were interested not in personal, but in collective memory — the "community memory," so to speak. Our task was to interview all or nearly all Jews and many long-term non-Jewish residents in the town. This requirement was best met by a town with a population of 10,000 to 30,000 residents and a Jewish community of 100 to 300 people. It was crucial to identify collectively significant narratives, practices, and themes rather than individual ones. In such a small community, the narratives of different informants are similar and easily comparable. In a Jewish community numbering several thousand, such comparison is impossible. Furthermore, in the communities of large cities, the majority are newcomers: for instance, Balti is inhabited by Jews who migrated from shtetls throughout northern Bessarabia. In Chernovtsy, there is virtually no native Jewish population: the contemporary community was formed through post-war migration from Podolia and Moldova. Meanwhile, it was important for us to interact with the long-term Jewish population deeply connected to their native town. Finally, the distant Soviet past of our informants was of great importance to us, since post-war practices of "Jewish life" are genetically linked to the pre-war period. Thus, we were interested in small communities in small, "historically" Soviet towns. The aforementioned towns of southwestern Ukraine perfectly met this set of requirements.

Our research team, consisting of 15 to 20 people, spent between two weeks and a month in each town, aiming to converse with every Jewish resident and many long-term non-Jewish inhabitants. This allowed us to record not only the personal recollections of individual informants, but also the collective memory of the community.

"Soviet" and "Non-Soviet" Jews: The Socio-Economic Fork

By 1917, the majority of Jews in the Russian Empire lived in the towns and shtetls of the Western Krai, constituting a substantial and often major part of their population. By this point, the Jewish population as a whole had become considerably modernized, being almost universally literate, including in Russian. The large middle class sought to provide their children with a secular education and was active in all manner of social, cultural, and political organizations[15]. Nonetheless, these Jews, who had become quite indifferent to religion, reacted with distress to the destruction of the traditional economic order, as well as the religious community and its institutions. Following the curtailment of the NEP, the former shtetls, where the majority of the population was engaged in trade and crafts, completely lost their economic function and rapidly impoverished. Harsh class-based stratification led to up to 40% of shtetl Jews being categorized as "lishentsy" (disfranchised persons). Shtetls turned into zones of social distress, a fact repeatedly reported in the Soviet press of the 1930s[16].

The destruction of the traditional social order led to the disappearance of the traditional status system. The self-employed (until recently) Jews were forced to work in factories, join cooperatives, or work on nearby collective farms. All of this undermined the human dignity of people accustomed to working "for themselves," devaluing the skills of craftsmen and the independence of merchants.

When transitioning to government employment or state enterprises, such individuals felt they had lost their freedom. The inability to observe Jewish holidays and keep the Sabbath became a visible manifestation of this new bondage.

One of our informants recalled that he could not observe the seven-day mourning period for his father because he was required to report for work. He sought advice from the elders, who explained how to handle the situation. Since the mourner must remain barefoot throughout the seven days of mourning, the informant was advised to go to work having poured earth into his shoes. In doing so, the elders explained this forced compliance by saying:

You are a sold man. [Inf. 1]

The same role of "destroyer" of social prestige and social hierarchy was played by the pressure exerted on communal institutions. The space of the synagogue was strictly hierarchical; permanent seats differed by degree of prestige and, accordingly, price. A seat in the synagogue represented not only symbolic but also real capital: it could be sold, pawned, or bequeathed. A man who owned such a permanent seat, who participated (including financially) in the life of the community and charity, and who demonstrated traditional learning, could clearly define his status in the social hierarchy. After the revolution, by no means all synagogues were closed, but, as A. Zeltser astutely observed, they ceased to be a venue for demonstrating and securing social prestige[17]. In the new value system, professional and status success, on the one hand, and the synagogue, on the other, became disconnected. Moreover, attending synagogue was a significant obstacle to advancement in the official sphere. Participation in religious rites could result in dismissal from work or expulsion from an educational institution.

The alternative to a "Soviet career" lay in forms of employment that the Soviet authorities deemed non-prestigious and second-class. However, these forms were perfectly acceptable to those who preferred "the path of tradition": work in cooperatives, primarily in procurement; and self-employed craft work (tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths) with a license. Often, such employment provided a higher income than "working for the state," but completely stripped a Jew of social status and a proper place in society.

Such forms of employment were highly popular toward the end of the Stalinist era, when the state was largely indifferent to how the population survived. Under Khrushchev, targeted investments in light industry and the service sector began, accompanied by an assault on the private sector. Characteristically, many of our informants, especially the elderly, turned out to be spontaneous "Stalinists": the state antisemitism that affected the metropolitan intelligentsia did not touch them, but they remembered vividly how, under Khrushchev, private craftsmen were forced to work in state-run service combines.

Even after the forced integration of most craftsmen into the system of service combines in the 1960s, they continued to work "for themselves" most of the time. Procurement agents controlled significant material resources (scarce goods that were bartered with peasants for agricultural produce) and "cash" money. Formal legal activity bordered on the entirely illegal world of "tsekhoviki" (underground manufacturers). On the whole, this entire layer can be characterized as a "shadow economy"[18]. People employed in these lucrative but non-prestigious sectors could be prosecuted under economic laws (which happened frequently), but they could not be dismissed from work (one cannot fire a shoemaker or a ragman) for attending synagogue or speaking to a client in Yiddish at the workplace.

It was precisely among cooperative workers and craftsmen that forms of traditional culture and religious behavior were preserved (in a transformed state). The religious community, charity, and the ritual system became spheres where the not entirely legal, and sometimes semi-criminal, income of a private operator or cooperative worker could be converted into social prestige and status.

Such was the primary mechanism of the Soviet Jewish province, set in motion in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In many respects, this world of "underground shtetls" was destroyed by the war, but there remained regions where the above scheme operated until the early 1990s.

During World War II, southwestern Podolia (part of the Vinnitsa and Odessa regions of Ukraine) was controlled by the Romanians, who named this region "Transnistria." Although the Romanian occupying authorities liquidated Jews in several shtetls and forced the population of others into ghettos and concentration camps, the majority of the Jews survived the occupation. Moreover, most survived it "in their own homes." Thus, after the war, the southwest of the Vinnitsa region and the northwest of the Odessa region of Ukraine emerged as one of the few regions of the USSR where "ethnographic" Jewish communities survived with near-pre-war numbers.

Despite the fact that mass emigration between 1993 and 1996 reduced the Jewish population of these areas tenfold or more, small, long-standing Jewish communities, well-organized on an institutional level, survived in the small towns. This circumstance made the region the primary "field" for the study of Jewish folklore and ethnography. The material presented in this article allows us to understand, through specific examples, the mechanisms of the alternative economy and the forms of communal and religious life it generated in the late Soviet period.

For instance, in the largest city of the region, Mogilev-Podolsky, out of 30,000 residents in the 1980s, at least 6,000 were Jews. Of course, many Jews died during the war on the front, in ghettos, and in Romanian concentration camps. However, the post-war years saw a compensatory growth of the Jewish population due to migration from neighboring smaller shtetls, which were completely abandoned by Jews in the early 1960s. This influx offset the losses of Mogilev's Jewish population during the Holocaust. If one excludes rural suburbanites leading a peasant lifestyle from the urban population, Jews constituted at least a quarter of the population of Mogilev-Podolsky at the end of the Soviet period. In the early 1990s, the percentage of the Jewish population in this town was likely the highest among urban settlements in the European part of the former USSR. The recollections of the residents of Mogilev and other towns and settlements that fell "under the Romanians" regarding "Jewish life" rely primarily not on fragmented childhood impressions or stories from older relatives dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, but on personal experience from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Mogilev-Podolsky, in addition to the standard state, educational, and medical infrastructure of a Soviet district center, possessed significant industrial potential, notably the Kirov Flour Milling Equipment Plant, an enterprise of All-Union subordination[19]. Securing employment here was difficult, as the plant guaranteed decent wages, good working conditions, and, importantly, a high level of social prestige. One of our informants recalled with pride:

On October Revolution Day, you march in the demonstration. The announcer declares: "The column of the Kirov Plant enters the square. At the head is the shock worker of socialist labor, turner L. B[20]." [Inf. 2].

Many workers of the Kirov Plant, its engineering and technical staff, and its founding director were Jews, but, naturally, working at this enterprise precluded appearing in synagogue. Even linguistic behavior changed. People who spoke exclusively Yiddish within the family spoke Russian at work, even if it involved certain difficulties.

The alternative to the factory was the low-prestige but lucrative work of a tailor, registered at a service combine but actually working "for himself," a procurement agent in a cooperative, a market vendor, a butcher, and the like. All these workers (as well as less successful shoemakers, barbers, etc.), who appeared to the authorities and "proper" Soviet citizens as second-class, engaged in various "enterprises" on the edge or beyond the law, constructing an alternative system of success, prosperity, and social prestige. Religious life and communal charity played a massive role in this system. The picture of this alternative behavior, assembled from fragments of individual interviews, turned out to be quite coherent. Significantly, even those who did not belong to the world of the shadow economy participated in its formation. This is a characteristic of a small town — "Soviet" and "non-Soviet" people lived too close to one another and knew everything about each other. Listed below are individual fragments that compose this mosaic. The bulk of the narratives refer to the 1970s and 1980s.

The Concept of the "Illegal"

The epithet "illegal" was widely used by our informants whenever the conversation turned to anything "Jewish."

In Mogilev, there were three synagogues, and all three were unregistered. This was a widespread practice. Identical unregistered but permanently functioning synagogues existed in several neighboring towns, such as Shargorod and Chernevtsy. Our informants referred to all these synagogues and the activities of their congregants using the adjective "illegal." For example:

In Mogilev there were three synagogues, and all three were illegal [Inf. 3].

Or:

Researcher: And did they go to morning prayers?Informant: Absolutely. Every morning there was aminyen (minyan, prayer quorum — V.D.). The old men came illegally. [Inf. 1].

Or:

For Yonkiper (Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement — V.D.) people would gather. Many people: maybe a thousand, maybe more. Dressed up, with wives, with children. Everyone stood right here, on Stolyarnaya (the street where the synagogue is located — V.D.), waiting for the rabbi to come out and blow (the shofar — V.D.). But all of this, of course, was illegal. [Inf. 4].

Clearly, as is often the case with local variants of the Russian language, the meaning of the word "illegal" in the speech of our informants does not match the dictionary definition, but rather means "unofficial," "not authorized, but not forbidden either."

It must be said that in Mogilev-Podolsky, the buildings of five municipal synagogues were confiscated and subsequently demolished by the authorities prior to World War II. All three "illegal" synagogues were opened in private houses, specifically acquired for this purpose, after the war. Formally, these houses of prayer were listed as residential. Gradually, by the late 1970s, as the older, more religious generation passed away, two closed, while the third survived "illegally" on Stolyarnaya Street near the bazaar, in the very center of the town, until Perestroika, when it was registered and ceased to be "illegal."

Even more striking were the accounts of podryads (the Yiddish term for seasonal cooperatives for baking matzah). These "illegal" productions were associated not only with religious practice, but also with unlawful economic activity. The organizers of the podryads purchased flour and sold matzah. However, matzah could also be baked using the customer's flour. Since the Mogilev podryads supplied matzah not only to the residents of the town, but also to the surrounding shtetls, a vast quantity of matzah was baked, estimated at several dozen tons.

The work began approximately two months before Pesach and was physically extremely taxing. Remarkably, young workers and high school students looking to earn extra money were frequently recruited for these podryads. Informants recall:

I bought a suit after the podryad to go dancing [Inf. 2].

Or:

In the podryad, I earned enough for a bicycle [Inf. 3].

These young people — Komsomol members — had no interest in religion and did not attend synagogue. Yet, the entire situation seemed completely natural to them.

The question arises as to how the authorities reacted to the functioning of illegal synagogues and matzah bakeries in a small town where everyone knew one another. It is clear that payoffs were involved, though our informants remember or know nothing specific about this. At the same time, the Soviet and party leadership did not wish to alienate a significant portion of the population of "their" town.

From time to time, a "new broom" would arrive, staging a raid on an illegal synagogue, which involved the wanton and demonstrative desecration of synagogue property and sacred objects. Such incidents generated a highly characteristic folklore about divine retribution for the desecrator. We managed to record several of these entirely typical folkloric motifs. Thereafter, everything returned to the status quo.

Soviet Cooperative Shechita

A significant issue for the older generation was access to kosher meat, in this case, poultry slaughtered by a shochet (ritual slaughterer). The Jewish population in the post-war years was not highly religious, but it remained conservative and traditional, particularly in the kitchen. Women, who had inherited the tradition from their mothers and grandmothers rather than in a cheder, had no intention of changing their lifestyle.

The issue of "kosher chicken" in Mogilev-Podolsky, Tulchin, Balta and, judging by individual accounts, in many other towns of Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus until the 1980s was resolved as follows. In the market stood a booth of the procurement cooperative. Inside sat an elderly, bearded Jewish man who slaughtered live chickens purchased at the market free of charge. The payment for his labor was the down and feathers, which he was required to collect. He plucked and dressed the chicken, easing the housewife's labor. The old man slaughtered chickens for anyone interested, but for Jews, he did so while reciting the appropriate blessings. Everyone knew that the old man at the market was a professional shochet who had once received semikhah (rabbinical ordination for ritual slaughter). Thus, in a form permitted by the regime, one of the key religious needs of the Jewish population was met, which the state had no intention of supporting.

In 2018, our expedition worked in the Transnistrian city of Rybnitsa, a former Podolian shtetl that became part of Moldova. From 1945 to 1972, Chaim-Zanvl Abramovich, the renowned Rybnitser Rebbe, the last Hasidic Tzaddik on Soviet territory, resided there. His figure is vividly preserved in the memory of the town's residents. The Rybnitser Rebbe was a rabbi who regularly gathered people for prayer in private homes, a mohel, but most importantly, a shochet. At the same time, like any Soviet citizen, he had to work somewhere or at least be registered. And indeed, he was officially registered in the local cooperative as a "feather collector."

The Synagogue Congregants

As part of our fieldwork, the theme of the use and gradual decline of Yiddish (which will be discussed below) was examined. To my direct question: "In which social layer did Yiddish persist the longest?" one of the informants, a highly intelligent, informed individual who was eager to assist me, unexpectedly replied:

In fact, it was mostly craftsmen who went to the synagogue [Inf. 2].

This response is highly revealing. For the informant, occupation, synagogue attendance, and the constant use of Yiddish constituted a single, indivisible complex. Professional status was inextricably linked to linguistic and religious behavior.

Virtually until the war (as is known both from our interviews and memoir sources), underground cheders operated in the former shtetls[21]. One informant indicated that after the war, cheders no longer existed, but in some families, a melamed (cheder teacher) was invited to the home to tutor the son. To my question, "what kind of families were these, perhaps exceptionally religious ones?" the informant replied:

The wealthier ones. For instance, the butchers. They would invite the melamed and also have their children taught the violin [Inf. 5].

In other words, religious education was not a universal norm, but a prestigious commodity accessible to the most affluent, particularly those not employed in the state sector.

Another form of traditional behavior reflecting social prestige was charity, closely linked to participation in the life of the religious community. For example, regarding one of the procurement agents of the local cooperative, reputed to be the wealthiest man in Shargorod, people said that he:

Always went to the synagogue, helped the poor, fed the whole town [Inf. 6].

In Mogilev-Podolsky and Tulchin until the 1980s, traditional forms of charity persisted, such as collecting dowries for poor brides and purchasing new clothes for children, as well as matzah and other food for the needy before Pesach. The collection of funds was entrusted to the most respected congregants. This was an honorable duty assigned to the person who had contributed the largest sum himself. For instance, in Mogilev-Podolsky, this role was invariably assigned to the director (and effectively the owner) of the cooperative sausage factory.

One of the most striking manifestations of such charity was the establishment of a Talmud Torah in Mogilev-Podolsky in the post-war years. A traditional Talmud Torah, as it existed before the revolution, was a school for orphans and children from poor families, maintained by communal funds. According to information obtained from informants, an illegal Talmud Torah for boys whose fathers had died at the front was opened in Mogilev-Podolsky in 1945. It operated for about two years, until approximately the end of 1947. I was shown the large, two-story house in which it was located, which had been purchased by the community specifically for this purpose. The children came there for a short time, for an hour and a half to two hours after state school. They were fed there, which was of great significance during the hungry post-war period. What could the boys be taught in such a short time, given the long-destroyed system of traditional education? They were taught only one thing — to recite the Kaddish. The community decided that if a child's father was alive, the duty of teaching the son the memorial prayer lay with the father, as it would eventually be recited for him. War orphans had the duty to recite the Kaddish, but no means to learn it. Our informants no longer remembered who exactly funded this orphanage Talmud Torah, but all agreed it was:

Tsvey-dray raykhe yidn (Two or three wealthy Jews — V.D.) [Inf 4].

In this case, a traditional form of communal charity merged with the Soviet concept of assisting children who had lost their fathers at the front. An analogy can be drawn with the Suvorov Military Schools established in 1943 for war orphans.

It would seem that earned money (often at the risk of arrest), under the conditions of Soviet provincial life and a semi-subsistence economy, had nowhere to be spent. In reality, income from traditional forms of economic activity (crafts, middleman services, trade) was exchanged for traditional forms of honor and prestige. This meant a more prominent seat in the community and the synagogue. (Note that the seat closer to the eastern wall, the most honorable in the synagogue, is called "oybenon" in Yiddish, meaning "high up.") Such a seat could, in turn, be earned by actively spending money on the synagogue and communal charity.

Transformation of the Community

That the synagogue is less a house of prayer and more a locus of symbolic exchange and the acquisition of status "denied" to workers of the shadow economy becomes clear when we analyze the transformation of the community after Perestroika.

In the 1990s, religion once again became a socially acceptable and respectable phenomenon. Consequently, employees of the Kirov Plant, who had never appeared there before, began attending the Mogilev-Podolsky synagogue (by then registered). This was not merely due to the legalization of religion; many had an abundance of leisure time upon retirement.

The composition of the congregation changed significantly. Previously, as noted, the synagogue was frequented primarily by craftsmen and cooperative workers. Now, everything was different. The duties of the cantor are performed by the former head of the factory's design bureau, the community treasurer is the former head of the quality control department, and the warden is one of the former shop managers. Former engineers sit on the front benches, closer to the Aron Kodesh, while former workers sit at the back, near the entrance. In other words, Jews who once held managerial positions at the factory now led the religious community. They justify this by claiming they are "more educated." However, this is likely about preserving the traditional factory hierarchy. In this respect, the comment of one parishioner, a former shop manager at the Kirov Plant, is characteristic. He was not born in Mogilev, was raised in the family of a Soviet officer, studied in Leningrad, and was assigned to Mogilev. Regarding the synagogue service, he remarked:

I understand nothing of this. It is extremely boring. But I can hardly not go — all our people are there (meaning colleagues, other shop managers — V. D.) [Inf. 7].

The old congregants, of whom few remain (most emigrated, as their cottage industry could only survive under conditions of total commodity scarcity), appear in the synagogue only on holidays. A comprehensive explanation was provided by an elderly barber, once a devout member of the community. He said:

Why should I go there? I know no one there, and their conversations do not interest me [Inf. 8].

Economic transformation rendered the shadow economy obsolete, and with it, the old community. This collapse is perhaps the clearest marker of the interdependence between the shadow economy and the "shadow" community. Nonetheless, the "change of guard" among the congregants (similar processes with minor variations occurred in Tulchin and Balta) demonstrates that the synagogue served for a long period as a domain for the formation and functioning of a status system alternative to the Soviet one.

Traditional Jewish culture, language, and lifestyle have always been associated with small towns and shtetls. One of the unintended consequences of the post-revolutionary destruction of the market economy was a process of de-urbanization: out of every four or five small shtetls, only one retained its urban or town status, while the rest reverted to villages. Along with the small towns, their traditional middle class — the shtetl Jews — began to disappear. They moved to larger centers where state pressure was felt more acutely. Nevertheless, a segment of the Jewish population sought to preserve their traditional way of life: their native language, the religious community, the system of charity, and traditional professions. Since the alternative of assimilation, which promised certain material and status benefits, was always available, it must be acknowledged that the struggle to preserve the traditional way of life was non-economic in nature. It was a form of resistance driven by a conscious, if not always articulated, distinction between personal and group values and those imposed by the state.

The Fate of Yiddish: How and When It Ceased to Be Spoken

A century ago, Yiddish was the primary language of the Jewish population in the shtetls of the former Pale of Settlement. Furthermore, as a kind of lingua franca, it was spoken passably well by the local non-Jewish minority. At the same time, Yiddish possessed low status — unlike Hebrew, the language was not perceived as a symbolic value, and unlike Russian, it offered no career advantages. Over the past century, the status and functions of Yiddish have shifted. Before discussing these changes, we should briefly outline the evolution of Yiddish in the former shtetls during the twentieth century. This linguistic evolution consists of several stages.

The first major milestone was the closure of Jewish schools in 1938. This automatically meant that Jews born after 1930 had no opportunity to attend a Jewish school. Consequently, at the time of the expeditions (2004–2008), the vast majority of our informants under the age of eighty could neither read nor write Yiddish. While remaining a language of communication throughout the post-war decades, Yiddish functioned increasingly as an unwritten language with each passing year.

Today, the generation of former students of Soviet Jewish schools has practically passed away. Thus, the layer of people for whom Yiddish was a language possessing a full range of communicative functions has nearly disappeared.

The closure of Jewish schools had another consequence. Instruction in them had been conducted in the literary, so-called "standard" language (klal-shprakh). Following the liquidation of the schools, Yiddish rapidly reverted to dialectal speech. Today, the entire Jewish population of the former shtetls capable of speaking Yiddish uses only the local dialect, the so-called "tote-mome lushn" (literally, "father-mother tongue"). A few former pupils of Jewish schools are clearly aware of the difference between their dialect and what they call "literarish" (literary) and are capable of speaking both variants. But for the majority, literary Yiddish "does not exist"; moreover, they do not always recognize it as Yiddish, mistaking it for German or some other language.

The next major milestone in the life of Yiddish in southwestern Podolia was World War II and the occupation. The Jewish population was forced into Romanian concentration camps and ghettos, where local Jews were joined by deported Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina. Bukovinian Jews did not speak Russian, and among coreligionists from Bessarabia, only the older generation, which had held Russian citizenship prior to the revolution, possessed some command of Russian. Thus, the arrival of deported Jews in some way "revived" Yiddish.

In addition, Jewish families belonging to the local bureaucracy and intelligentsia, in which Russian had already predominated in the 1930s, came into close contact in the ghettos with "ordinary" Jews who continued to speak Yiddish. Many informants reported that they acquired Yiddish after being placed in Romanian ghettos as children.

During and after the war, under the impact of the Holocaust and against the background of the decline of Hebrew in the absence of a system of religious education, Yiddish began to acquire the character of a symbolic value, unique to the layer that did not work for the state and assimilated much more slowly. One informant (a cooperative salesman) interpreted the change in the status of Yiddish as follows:

Informant: Before the war, most Jews in Mogilev spoke Russian. At home, they spoke to me only in Russian. Before the war, I went to kindergarten, and spoke with the other kids in Russian. My parents spoke Jewish among themselves only so I wouldn't understand. Otherwise, Russian.Researcher: And when you ended up in the ghetto, did they speak Jewish there?Informant: Everyone in the ghetto spoke Jewish. I learned Yiddish in the ghetto. Yiddish is mome-loshn (mother tongue, literally "maternal" — V. D.). My late grandfather said: the war started because your name is Fima. What kind of Fima are you, you are Chaim. My grandfather was a melamed. Grandfather said: the war started because you do not know your own language. What is this? Roma is a Russian name. Why such a name, his name is Ruvn. Russians are not afraid to speak Russian. Why should we be afraid? Before the war, my grandfather spoke to me in Russian. But after the war, in Jewish. In the ghetto, everyone started speaking Jewish — they were asking God for redemption. After the war, people began speaking Jewish more than before the war. After the war, they were not ashamed of anyone; they spoke it at work and on the street. [Inf. 5].

This statement requires analysis. First of all, "redemption" in this context refers to "ransom from slavery," meaning "deliverance, liberation." This refers to an idea expressed in the Midrash (Midrash Rabbah) commenting on Exodus. It states that the Jews in Egypt were as much sinners as the Egyptians, yet they were brought out of Egypt by the Almighty because they "did not change their language, their names, or their garments." The statement above refers precisely to names and language.

Confinement in the ghetto did not merely awaken national and religious feelings, but was perceived through the paradigm of "Egyptian bondage." The suffering endured in the ghetto and the fact that the Soviet regime had, on the one hand, permitted the occupation, and, on the other, shifted to a policy of state antisemitism after the war, legitimized "non-compliant" behavior for some Jews. The informant's claim that everyone began speaking Jewish is debatable; however, there is no doubt that for those who were less dependent on the state and adhered to traditional values, Yiddish became in those years something more than merely a spoken tongue. It began to transform from a vernacular into a high-status symbolic language.

After World War II and until the early 1970s, the primary trend for the district centers of the Vinnitsa and Odessa regions (towns with populations of 15,000 to 30,000) was the gradual departure of Jews (primarily youth) to large industrial and university cities. Paradoxically, however, during this same period, the Jewish population, including Yiddish speakers, in these district centers did not decline but could temporarily increase.

The key event for the evolution of Yiddish was the migration of Jews from former small and tiny shtetls with populations of several hundred to 2,000–3,000 Jews into the district centers. This migration occurred primarily in the late 1950s and 1960s. Even before the war, the process of transforming small shtetls into villages had begun, where Jews became collective farmers. In the late 1950s, collective farmers received passports and, consequently, the opportunity to move to towns.

During the same period, a process of district consolidation took place: one district was created out of three or four. Many former shtetls lost their status as district centers and became villages. This led to the elimination of various vacancies associated with the local administration, which also prompted Jews to relocate at least to the nearest town.

By the early 1960s, the Jewish population of the former small shtetls had declined sharply, and by the end of the decade, it had practically disappeared. The new migrants settled in relatively large district centers. These settlers, generally with low levels of education, spoke primarily Yiddish. Their second language was often not Russian, but Ukrainian, which was of little use in a "real" city. Thus, although the number of Jewish communities decreased, in the most viable centers, the number of Jews remained constant or even grew.

In the post-war period, social differentiation intensified between Jews who used Yiddish in daily life and those who did not. On the one hand, Yiddish, which was not only unsupported by the state education system but also became "unwelcome" during the years of state antisemitism, rapidly fell out of use; on the other hand, the language began to mark both adherence to national-religious values and membership in a specific social class. The rejection of Yiddish was clearly associated by our informants with the splintering of the community into those who went to work for the state and those who remained craftsmen or procurement agents — that is, those who chose a traditional occupation and, simultaneously, a traditional way of life. The following interview excerpt illustrates how this process unfolded:

Informant: Here, no one was ashamed to speak Jewish. Who lived here? Salesmen, shoemakers, hatters, tailors. Private operators, sitting in little booths, on small chairs. Galosh makers. The same hatters and tailors. <...> In complete families, they spoke Yiddish. My father was killed, I grew up with my mother and grandmother, mostly on the street, at school. And I spoke more Russian.Researcher: When did the Jewish language begin to fall out of use?Informant: There were the first post-war classes graduating from the tenth grade. And the majority of the kids left to study in Russia: Perm, Sverdlovsk, Pskov. Because in Ukraine, it was impossible to gain admission. The bulk of them left for those places. And when they returned to Mogilev after finishing their studies and working for three years, they spoke Russian. And their children spoke Russian. Doctors, teachers, factory engineers — the conversation was already in Russian. At work, they spoke mostly Russian. [Inf. 2]

By "work," the informant refers to the aforementioned Kirov Plant, whose engineering staff and director were Jews. The question of the use of Yiddish at the plant was specifically put to our informants. All of them considered the use of Yiddish in the workplace to be "unseemly," with the abandonment of their native tongue viewed as an act of conscious conformism.

Particularly interesting in this regard is the assertion of one of our interlocutors, a Jew who worked at the Kirov Plant as a loader, thus belonging to the factory "plebeians." He also stressed that all employees spoke Russian, but, in his imagination, at closed meetings (which he, naturally, never attended), the director, his deputies, and the shop managers spoke to each other exclusively in Jewish. In his view, it was more convenient for them, while "ordinary" people had to "struggle" and speak Russian. This almost comical story demonstrates that Yiddish had gradually turned into a "luxury item" accessible only to the "management."

The next milestone in the history of Yiddish in the former shtetls was the late 1980s and early 1990s. Two key events occurred during this period.

First, the generation of Jews born in the 1900s and 1910s, for whom Yiddish was their first language, passed away en masse. This was the generation of the parents of the 60- to 70-year-olds — our primary informants. From this point on, Podolian Jews practically ceased to use Yiddish in daily communication. They used Yiddish to communicate with their parents, preferring to speak Russian not only with their children and grandchildren, but also with their peers. Thus, by the time of our expeditions (2004), many informants had not used Yiddish for 15–20 years.

During the same period, mass Jewish emigration to Israel, the United States, and Germany began. In the first half of the 1990s, the Jewish population of the small towns of Podolia, as mentioned, decreased tenfold or more. Consequently, the circle of Yiddish speakers shrank dramatically.

Nevertheless, from several dozen to several hundred Jews still reside in many district centers of southwestern Podolia today. The linguistic competence of local Jews in Yiddish varies greatly. It depends on age, biography, family, and personal abilities, ranging from complete bilingualism to almost total ignorance of Yiddish. But even those fluent in Yiddish generally do not know how to read or write the language and rarely use it in daily communication. At the same time, Jews who claim to know no Yiddish at all frequently use a wide range of Jewish words and expressions in their speech.

How Yiddish Is Used by Those Who Do Not Know It

By the 2000s, Yiddish had almost completely lost its direct communicative function. It was still possible to encounter elderly couples who communicated with each other in Jewish. But such families were few. Many informants spoke of not having spoken Yiddish for 20 years and having forgotten the language. A common formula was "I understand, but I cannot speak." What then are the functions of Yiddish in the former shtetls at the beginning of the 21st century, apart from the nearly lost oral interpersonal communication? In our view, there are three such functions.

Jewish Glosses

Even a Jew who does not speak Yiddish, or indeed understand the language, will eagerly insert Jewish words and expressions into their speech to describe certain aspects of "Jewish" reality, namely: terms relating to religion, customs, family life, and culinary traditions.

Thus, one informant, who by his own admission had begun to forget the language and indeed spoke almost exclusively in Russian, would insert Yiddish words and expressions in appropriate situations, such as:

...then they asked us fir kashes ("four questions," referring to Pesach).

Or:

...if, God forbid, milkhike got onto fleyshike (dairy onto meat), that was it, mother would throw it out.

Or:

When we had an agreement, we had a vort (engagement, literally "word"), so we had, probably, twenty-five people (referring to an engagement party).

Or:

I am the youngest, mizinik (youngest child, literally "little finger").

Or:

Umentashn (hamantashen) are those triangular pastries filled with either poppy seeds or jam (referring to Purim).

Jewish words and expressions serve not only as "technical" terms but also possess a highly pronounced symbolic function. The person using them demonstrates their "Jewish" competence. For example, when asked to tell their life story in Yiddish, an informant replies:

Ikh ken oykhet red af Yiddish. Un ikh red git af Yiddish (I can also speak in Yiddish. And I speak Yiddish well.) So, I went to the agricultural technical school, and there they required me to study. And I enrolled in the technical school, in the Soroki Moldavian Agricultural Technical School. I finished this technical school, etc. [Inf. 1].

And thereafter, the entire lengthy biographical narrative continues in Russian.

In the small towns of southwestern Ukraine, Yiddish is an enduring sign of urban culture; therefore, not only Jews but even the long-term Ukrainian urban population, descendants of Ukrainian townsfolk, like to insert one or two Jewish words into their speech, thereby demonstrating their knowledge of the "urban" tongue and their distinction from recent migrants from the villages.

The Language of the Ancestors

Yiddish was the language spoken by the parents, grandfathers, and grandmothers of our informants — in general, the language of the older, departed generation. When turning to the past and quoting the direct speech of a particular character, the informant most often reproduces it in Yiddish, even if moments earlier they had claimed they did not speak or had forgotten Yiddish. The entire narrative may proceed in Russian, yet the dialogue will be rendered without translation. For example, here is a fragment of a story about the matchmaking of the informant's father:

And so my parents, but they were some kind of relatives. What kind I don't remember, either my mother's father told it or my father's father, they were some kind of cousins. They met, and one says: "Ikh hob a meydele" (I have a girl). And the second: "Ikh hob a yingle" (I have a boy). Let's introduce them. [Inf. 1]

Such direct speech of the ancestors can be not just a single remark, but a lengthy narrative.

Thus, for example, one female informant reported that:

...it doesn't work out <to speak Yiddish>, I'm already used to it, I only <use> the Jewish language here... with him <with her husband>... [Inf. 3]

However, when recounting her grandmother's stories, heard in childhood before the war, she switched to Yiddish, reproducing her grandmother's words as a continuous, coherent narrative.

The Language Used to Communicate with the Dead

During visits to parental graves, typically in Elul, i.e., August–September, before Rosh Hashanah, as well as before a wedding (if the bride or groom is an orphan), or in the event of a close relative's illness, a request is made in Yiddish to the deceased to intercede before the Almighty[22]. This text, while following a certain general framework, retains an element of improvisation tailored to specific personal circumstances.

This text was recorded multiple times during our expeditions. It is used both by men, who first recite Kaddish (if they are able), and by women.

Here is an example of such an address:

Tote, ekh beyt dekh, loyf in beyt, in di kinder lomir zayn gezint, loz zey firn af der velt, lomir hobm parnuse, lomir zayn gezint, loz zayn shtil af der velt. Iz gekimen dayn zin, iz gekimen der shnir, iz gekimen dayn eynikl, ir eynikl. Ikh bet dekh shtark, loyf, lomir zayn ole gezint, lomir zayn ole gezint. Ikh hob nokh a kind in Amerike. Loz er oykhet zayn gezint. Ekh bet dekh shtark, az ole kinder, ole dayne kinder in ole kinds kinder zayn gezint. (Father, I beg you, run and pray so that the children are healthy, that everything goes well for them, that they have livelihoods, that they are healthy, that there is peace in the world. Your son has come, and your daughter-in-law has come, your granddaughter has come, your great-granddaughter. I beg you earnestly, run so that all are healthy, that all are healthy. And I have another child in America, let him also be healthy. I beg you earnestly, that all children, all your children, and all your children's children are healthy.) [Inf. 3].

The address is almost always delivered in a language "understandable" to the deceased parents, that is, in Yiddish. A similar text spoken in Russian was recorded only once. Even those who struggle to speak Yiddish will deliver such an address to the deceased in that language. Indeed, one informant explained his silence over his mother's grave by the fact that he had completely forgotten Yiddish and could not address his late mother in it.

Researcher: And when you visit your mother's grave, do you say anything?Informant: Well, what can I say...Researcher: I don't know...Informant: Well, all the same, I would have to say it to her in Ukrainian or Russian... this...Researcher: You don't say anything?Informant: I say it to myself in my mind... [Inf. 7]

Not only do the living speak Yiddish to the dead, but the dead also speak to the living. One of the most popular themes regarding dreams of the deceased is that the deceased helps disputing parents choose a name for a child. In doing so, the deceased, appearing in a dream, always addresses the dreamer in Yiddish.

Informant: My son had a daughter born. Well, and they... as they do now... make up names, they don't name after the deceased, they make up a name. Well, they were arguing among themselves what to call her. To me... I was asleep... and a woman, a complete stranger. Well, not a stranger — her daughter was my friend. And she had died in Israel. She came as if to say: Ay! Let them not argue, what difference does it make! Let them call her Marye. She was named Marye. In her honor. Well, and they named the girl Marina.Researcher: And did she speak with you in the dream in Russian or in Jewish?Informant: In Jewish.Researcher: And how did she say it?Informant: She said: "Ay! Lozn zey nisht sporen! Lozn gebm a numen Marje." (Ay! Let them not argue! Let them give the name Marye). That's all. And they registered her as Marina. But in the synagogue, when her husband went there to offer treats, she was called up to the Torah as Marye. [Inf. 8].

Thus, Yiddish, having almost lost its function of daily communication, at the same time preserved several highly distinctive and important cultural functions in the daily life of the Jewish population of the former shtetls of Podolia.

The cited examples of "unusual" Yiddish usage demonstrate that as the language leaves the sphere of everyday communication, its symbolic function becomes increasingly significant, and its status increasingly elevated.

Conclusion

Field research into small Jewish communities in provincial towns has yielded a "rich harvest" for folklorists, ethnographers, historians, and linguists. Some of these materials have been published, while others await analysis and processing. But the primary conclusion is that the Jewish population of the former shtetls did not represent anonymous "Soviet people," but rather carriers of a complex and distinctive culture. This culture differed substantially from the rich, institutionalized culture of Jews in Western countries, but did not thereby become less "Jewish" or less interesting. Furthermore, it represented a living, dynamic process where past and present, politics and national identity, the preservation of tradition and its profound transformation were intricately interwoven. One should not underestimate the influence of "ethnic" (non-religious, but sufficiently traditional) Jews on the formation of the collective mentality of Soviet Jews as a whole. First, this group was not so small; second, Jews living in megalopolises had spent their childhood and youth in such shtetls, continuing to communicate with relatives and acquaintances, and sending their children to these hospitable southern shtetls for holidays with grandparents.

This study has touched upon only some aspects of the culture of Jews in the Soviet provinces. Much has remained outside the text. Nevertheless, two conclusions appear indisputable:

1. The social and economic elements of the Jewish population's behavior are closely linked to their cultural behavior;

2. No matter how far the forms of self-organization of the Jewish population in the Soviet Union were from the life of a "normative" Jewish community, they were undoubtedly deeply rooted in national tradition and national consciousness.

Informants

Inf. 1 — A.T., born 1940, lived in Mogilev-Podolsky, currently resides in the USA.

Inf. 2 — L.B., born 1943, resides in Mogilev-Podolsky.

Inf. 3 — R.S., born 1938, resides in Tulchin.

Inf. 4 — E.S., born 1936, lived in Mogilev-Podolsky.

Inf. 5 — E.G., born 1936, lived in Mogilev-Podolsky, currently resides in Israel.

Inf. 6 — E.B., born 1952, resides in Shargorod.

Inf. 7 — S.Y., born 1950, resides in Mogilev-Podolsky.

Inf. 8 — I.K., born 1928, resides in Mogilev-Podolsky.

[1] Gitelman Z. “Thinking about Being Jewish in Russia and Ukraine”. Jewish Life after the USSR. Eds. Zvi Gitelman etc. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003, p. 49-63

[2] Yelenevskaya M., Fialkova L. Russian Street in a Jewish Land. A Study of the Folklore of Emigrants of the 1990s in Israel. — Moscow, 2005

[3] See, for example, Pinkus, B., Frankel J., The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948 — 1967. A Documented Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984

[4] Ro’i Y., “Economic Trials”, in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. Vol. I. Gershon D. Hundert, eds., 454. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008

[5] Altshuler M., “Soviet Jewry Since the Second World War. Population and Social Structure”, Studies in Population and Urban Demography, No. 5, Greenwood Press, CT, 1987

[6] Zeltser A., “The Shtetl During the ‘Great Watershed’ of 1929 — 1931: The Case of Vitebsk Region”, Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe. 2001 (Winter): p. 5-33

[7] Bemporad E., Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013

[8] Veidlinger J., In the Shadow of the Shtetl. Bloomington & Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2013. See also my review of this book with its detailed analysis: Dymshits V. Review of Jeffrey Veidlinger, In the Shadow of the Shtetl. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013. Forum for Anthropology and Culture, No. 26, 2015, p. 293-302

[9] The Shtetl, 21st Century: Field Studies. Compiled by V. A. Dymshits, A. L. Lvov, A. V. Sokolova. St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2008

[10] Shternshis A., Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923 — 1939. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006

[11] Hakkarainen M., “Jewish Tradition Faces the Soviet Economy: Moral Dilemma of ‘Shadow’. Entrepreneurship in the Former Pale of Settlement, Ukraine”, East European Jewish Affairs, 2013, 43:2, 190-205

[12] Kushkova A., “An Essay on Jewish Ethnic Economy: Case of Belz (Moldova)”, East European Jewish Affairs 2013, 43:1, 77-100

[13] Kushkova A., Accommodation and Survival in Moscow’s Post-War ‘Soviet Jewish Pale’. A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences. Chapel Hill, 2017

[14] The first trip to Mogilev-Podolsky in 2004 was carried out within the framework of a study supported by a grant from the International Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry (Moscow). The expeditions of 2005–2008 were organized by the "Sefer" Center (Moscow) and the "Petersburg Judaica" Center (European University at St. Petersburg) with the support of the "Avi Chai" Foundation (USA). The interviews cited in the article are kept in the archive of the "Petersburg Judaica" Center. Currently, gathering work in this region continues.

[15] The life of Jews in the Russian Empire in the pre-revolutionary decades is discussed in detail in several monographs, including the now-classic books by Zvi Gitelman (Gitelman Z., A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) and Benjamin Nathans (Nathans B., Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002)

[16] An important comprehensive study of the Jewish shtetl from the perspective of its economic, social, and cultural life in the era of revolutionary change was presented by the students of V. G. Tan-Bogoraz in the collection "The Jewish Shtetl in the Revolution" (The Jewish Shtetl in the Revolution. Edited by V. G. Tan-Bogoraz. Moscow — Leningrad. Gosizdat, 1926). For modern research on this topic, see Pinchuk B., Shtetl Jews Under Soviet Rule: Eastern Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass., USA: B. Blackwell. 1991; Zeltser A., Jews of the Soviet Province: Vitebsk and the Shtetls. 1917 — 1941. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006

[17] Zeltser A., Jews of the Soviet Province: Vitebsk and the Shtetls. 1917 — 1941. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006

[18] On the "shadow economy" in the USSR, see Katsenelinboigen A., “Coloured Markets in the Soviet Union”, Soviet Studies Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan.), 1977. p. 62-85; Humphrey C., “Traders, Disorder, and Citizenship Regimes in Provincial Russia”. In Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World. Michael Burawoy and Katherine Verdery, eds., 19-53. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. 1999. On the participation of Jews in the "shadow economy", see Hakkarainen M., “Jewish Tradition Faces the Soviet Economy: Moral Dilemma of ‘Shadow’. Entrepreneurship in the Former Pale of Settlement, Ukraine”, East European Jewish Affairs 2013, 43:2, 190-205

[19] On the real and symbolic role of the Kirov Flour Milling Equipment Plant in the life of Mogilev-Podolsky, see Lurye et al. "The Local Text of the City and Its Lexical Description." Dictionary of the Local Text as a Method of Describing the Urban Cultural Tradition (using the example of Mogilev-Podolsky). Edited by Mikhail Lurye. The Shtetl, 21st Century: Field Studies. Compiled by V. A. Dymshits, A. L. Lvov, A. V. Sokolova. St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2008, p. 186-196

[20] Here the informant mentions his name.

[21] See, for example, Shekhter D. Soldiers at the Crossing. Memoirs of Chabad Hasidim, collected and literary edited by David Shekhter. — Moscow: Knizhniki, 2014

[22] For more details on the practice of visiting cemeteries by Jews in Podolia, see Dymshits V., "The Jewish Cemetery: A Place Where People Do Not Go." The Shtetl. 21st Century. Field Studies. St. Petersburg: 2008, p. 135-158