Eliyahu "Elye" Spivak (, ; 10 December 1890 – 4 April 1950) was a
Soviet Jewish
The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is inextricably linked to much earlier Expansionism, expansionist policies of the Russian Empire conquering and ruling the eastern half of the European continent already before the Bolshevik Revolution ...
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
Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...
, and
Kharkov, and was appointed professor of
Yiddish linguistics at the
Odessa Pedagogical Institute in 1925.
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').
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.
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.
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
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into Intraparenchymal hemorrhage, the tissues of the brain, into its Intraventricular hemor ...
while under interrogation.
Work
Spivak played a major role in Soviet Yiddish
language planning. He sought to compromise between
Russification
Russification (russian: русификация, rusifikatsiya), or Russianization, is a form of cultural assimilation in which non-Russians, whether involuntarily or voluntarily, give up their culture and language in favor of the Russian cultur ...
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. Spivak opposed new coinages based on Hebraic elements not present in
pre-revolutionary Yiddish, promoting instead the introduction of
Russian,
Ukrainian and
Belarusian
Belarusian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to Belarus
* Belarusians, people from Belarus, or of Belarusian descent
* A citizen of Belarus, see Demographics of Belarus
* Belarusian language
* Belarusian culture
* Belarusian cuisine
* Byelor ...
internationalisms.
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.
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.
The dictionary was published posthumously in 1984.
Publications
The following is a partial list of Spivak's publications (not including textbooks):
* ''Yidishe shprakh 1: Intonatsye, fonetik un ortografye, elementn fun morfologye'' (, 'Yiddish Language, Part I: Intonation, phonetics and orthography, elements of morphology') (Kiev:
Kultur-lige
The ''Kultur Lige'' (Culture League) was a secular socialist Jewish organization established in Kiev in 1918, whose aim was to promote Yiddish language literature, theater and culture.Marek Bartelik, "Early Polish modern art: unity in multiplicity, ...
, 1925)
* ''Yidishe shprakh 2: Morfologye un sintaks'' ('Yiddish Language, Part I: Morphology and syntax') (Kiev: Kultur-lige, 1926)
* ''Metodik fun shprakh un literatur in shul'' ('Methods for language and literature in school') (Kiev, 1928)
* ''Shprakh-kultur: teorye un praktik'' (, 'Language culture: theory and practice') (Kiev, 1931)
* ''Maks un engels vegn shprakh-problemes'' (, '
Marx and
Engels on language issues') (Kiev, 1934)
* ''Matematishe terminologye'' ('Mathematical terminology') (Kiev, 1935)
* ''Geografishe terminologye'' ('Geographical terminology') (Kiev-Kharkov, 1936)
* ''Naye vortshafung'' ('New Word Formation') (Kiev, 1939)
* ''Sholem-aleykhems shprakh un stil: etyudn'' (, '
Sholem Aleichem's language and style: studies') (Kiev, 1940)
* ''Rusish-yidisher rekhtlekh-administrativer verterbukh'' ('Russian-Yiddish Dictionary of Legal and Administrative Terminology') (Kiev, 1941)
* ''Di shprakh in di teg fun der foterlendisher milkhome'' (, 'Language in the Time of the Patriotic War') (Kiev, 1946)
See also
*
Night of the Murdered Poets
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spivak, Elye
1890 births
1950 deaths
20th-century lexicographers
Inmates of Lefortovo Prison
Jews executed by the Soviet Union
Jewish Ukrainian writers
Linguists of Yiddish
People from Vasylkiv
Soviet Jews
Soviet male writers
Ukrainian Jews
Ukrainian lexicographers
Ukrainian philologists
Ukrainian textbook writers
Writers from Kyiv
Yiddish-language writers
Yiddish–Russian translators
Jewish Ukrainian social scientists
20th-century translators
20th-century philologists
Hlukhiv National Pedagogical University of Oleksandr Dovzhenko alumni