The Judgments of David Bergelson

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I read the Yiddish author David Bergelson’s statements at his secret trial through the lens of his own earlier fiction about Soviet justice, especially his novel Judgment. I examine Bergelson’s self-fashioning as a Jewish writer and how he uses his own Jewish background as a justification for his failures as a Soviet person. I offer some contextualization of Bergelson’s statements in light of other trials of other writers both before and after 1952, and compare his declaration of love for Yiddish with other, similar expressions. Bergelson does not merely defend himself, he creates a memory about his legacy for the future.

KEYWORDS:

• David Bergelson
• memory
• trials
• Yiddish

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Anna Schur for inviting me to participate in this cluster, and to the editors and reviewers of EEJA for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank Danijela Stajic for her work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Harriet Murav is professor of Slavic languages and literatures and comparative and world literatures at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and editor of Slavic Review. Her most recent book is Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia (Stanford University Press, 2011). Her study David Bergelson’s Strange New World is forthcoming from Indiana University Press in 2019.

Notes

1. See Sherman, “David Bergelson (1884-1952): A Biography,” 57. For a translation of the speech, see Redlich, War, Holocaust and Stalinisme), 180–81.

2. For a discussion that focuses on this aspect of Bergelson's wartime journalism, see Shneer, “From Mourning to Vengeance,” 8.

3. Transcript of radio address of August 22, 1943.

4. Rubenstein and Naumov, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, 488. This is the most complete English-language source for the trial.

5. For the English translation and a brief introduction, see Wisse, “At the Depot.,”.

6. See for example, Mayzel, “David Bergelson: Tsum ershaynem fun ale zayne verk in Berlin,”; Mayzel, “Yontevdikayt,”; Vayter, “David Bergelsons ‘Arum vokzal,’”.

7. Kazovskii, Khudozhniki Kulʹtur-Ligil. For an analysis of Bergelson's literary and cultural activity leading up to the Kiev Kultur-Lige, see Estraikh, “From Yehupets Jargonists to Kiev Modernists.”.

8. I base my account of Bergelson's life on Sherman, “David Bergelson (1884-1952): A Biography.”

9. Sentiments he expresses in his correspondence; see for example David Bergelson, March 20, 1922, RG 1139, Abraham Cahan, YIVO. For a discussion of the correspondence with Cahan, see Kellman, “Uneasy Patronage,” 34.

10. For a comparison of Bergelson's literary response to Moscow with that of other prominent Yiddish writers of the time, see Estraikh and Rabinovitch, “The Old and the New Together,”.

11. Bergelson, “Moskve,”

12. For a discussion that sees Bergelson's Judgment in a similar light, see Slotnick, “The Novel Form in the Works of David Bergelson,” 233, 330. For a different view, see Krutikov, “Narrating the Revolution,” 7.

13. Naumov, ed., Nepravednyi sud, 80.

14. Bergelson, Judgment, 107. For the Yiddish, see Bergelson, Mides-hadin, 137.

15. Bergson was widely known in Russian and Yiddish circles in the early part of the twentieth century. Discussions of his work appeared in one of the Yiddish journals Bergelson edited before World War I. I discuss this in David Bergelson's Strange New World, forthcoming from Indiana University Press.

16. Rubenstein and Naumov, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, 151.

17. I made a similar argument about Dostoevsky's “Muzhik Marei” in “Dostoevskii in Siberia.”

18. Rubenstein and Naumov, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, 452.

19. For example, during the Soviet time, and in the manner of writing between the lines, the Russian-Yiddish dictionary lists under the entry for the ordinal number 12, “the twelfth of August.” See Shapiro, Spivak, and Shulman, eds., Russko-evreiskii slovar’, 121.

20. Rubenstein and Naumov, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, 478. For the Russian, see Naumov, Nepravednyi sud, 370.

21. Rubenstein and Naumov, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, 459.

22. For an account of the arrest, see Sicher, Babel’ in Context, 24.

23. Shentalinskii, Raby svobodyil.

24. Sicher, Babel’ in Context, 89.

25. For a longer discussion, see Murav, Russia's Legal Fictions.

26. Rubenstein and Naumov, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, 452.

27. Harshav and Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry, 365.

28. For a discussion of Glatshteyn's later period in the context of his work as a whole, see Galchinsky, “One Jew Talking,”.

29. Yiddish Book Center, Jacob Glatstein on Yiddish Poetry after the Holocaust, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYEkAvnXvBc.

30. Bergelson, “Materyaln tsu D. Bergelsons bio-bibliografye.”