FROM YIDDISH TO RUSSIAN: A STORY OF LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
FROM YIDDISH TO RUSSIAN: A STORY OF LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

Summary/Abstract: This essay traces the changing status of Russian among the Jews living on the former territory of the Russian Empire and in emigration. Following its incubational period in the 1860s and 1870s, Russification was progressing inasmuch as Jews were learning more Russian than was necessary for their day-to-day lives. The returns of the 1897 census of Imperial Russia’s populations presented the sociolinguistic profile of the Jews: while only 1.3 per cent declared Russian as their mother-tongue, 30 per cent of men and 16 per cent of women could deal with a Russian text. In other words, Russian usually played the role of an acquired imperial language, similar to English in British colonies. The situation changed during the Soviet period, especially after the Holocaust, when Russian was either the Jews’ first language or the language they learned in their childhood. It was not seen any more as an imperial language imposed by another nation. Many Jews, especially emigrants, even consider their Russian – or “Jewish Russian” (e.g., intermixed with Yiddish) – as a linguistic label of their Jewishness.

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