Joel of Far Outliers has another goodie from Culture.pl, European Nationalist Revolts in 1905, quoting an article by Zachary Mazur; this is the bit I thought belonged here:
For the next two years following the events of January 1905, protests and strikes broke out all over the Russian Empire. […] In October, the tsar issued a decree that allowed for limited democratic freedoms of press and assembly and the formation of a parliamentary assembly, called the Duma. […]
Prior to this moment, censorship had been stifling, strictly regulating the languages in which books could be published or theatre performed. Lithuanian, Yiddish and Ukrainian had been banned for decades. While the suppression of the Ukrainian language continued – seen as a threat to the Russian ‘heartland’ in a policy of identity erasure that remains tragically relevant today – Lithuanian, Yiddish and other suppressed languages finally began to gain legal recognition within the empire.
Lithuanians gained the right to publish newspapers in the Latin alphabet as early as the spring of 1904, but the popular press exploded thanks to the Revolution of 1905. The proliferation of daily newspapers, such as the Vilniaus žinios (Vilnius News) signalled the beginning of a mass Lithuanian culture. The first great national assembly of Lithuanians took place in Vilnius, with 200 delegates, between 4 to 5 December 1905. All sections of society – from Belarus, East Prussia (where many Lithuania speakers lived as well) – took part.
They ended by demanding political autonomy for Lithuania, and to have their own provincial parliament with boundaries defined on ethnographic terms. Lithuanian scientific and artistic associations grew at the time, establishing the cultural arms of the Lithuanian national movement. These became vital just a few years later for the establishment of the independent Lithuanian state after World War I.
Yiddish too experienced a renaissance (or naissance) based on new-found freedoms in cities with large Jewish populations, such as Warsaw, Łódź and Vilnius. The tsarist authorities lifted bans on Yiddish printing and theatre in 1905, allowing for the creation of art and literature in a vernacular that practically all Jews used on a daily basis. Finally distinctly Jewish art could move to the public stage and reach audiences that had never experienced such forms of culture. The demand was clearly there, since four new theatres popped up in Warsaw almost immediately after the ban was lifted. In Mokotów, there was Bagatela, Elizeum on Karowa Street, Jardin d’Hiver on Chmielna and Muranower on Bonifraterska, all performing exclusively in Yiddish. Sholem Aleichem’s play Scattered and Dispersed saw its debut at this time (directed by Mark Arnshteyn). Yiddish dailies also appeared, and their content shows the popularity of theatre at the time. Jardin d’Hiver was playing two shows per day, with the exception of Shabbat. In 1908, the dedicated journal Teater Velt (Theatre World) appeared. All this newfound energy for Yiddish culture caused a modernisation of the language and uniformity that did not exist before among the Jews of the Russian Empire. This emergence also allowed for literary theatre to grow. On top of that, American actors with new plays written in New York came over and were the most commercially successful pieces.
Click through to read about other topics, like the Pimps’ Pogrom (“Pimps supported the Tsarist status quo rather than the revolutionaries, as they could turn a profit under the state’s protection”).
What about Boris Hrinchenko’s four volume Ukrainian dictionary, published in Kyiv in 1907-1909? It was so good that in the 1960s it was reprinted in Soviet Ukraine because there simply hadn’t been any decent Ukrainian dictionary published in the intervening decades.
Look here if you want the details. In short, by 1905 it wasn’t a total ban, but strict and somewhat haphazard limitations.
“Pimps’ Pogrom” suggests to me a pogrom conducted by pimps rather than against pimps, but the latter was apparently what happened. The narrator’s attempt to handwave away any suggestion of anti-Semitism is somehow unconvincing-sounding. (It may be true as a matter of history; I’m just reacting to it as a piece of rhetoric.)
Well, here’s the relevant paragraph:
While I agree that one should look askance at attempts to handwave away anti-Semitism, especially in Eastern Europe, if in fact Jewish workers were part of the crowd “gathered on the streets to exact vengeance” it seems unlikely it was yer average pogrom. I don’t think Jews were among the attackers in Kishinev, for example.
Well, you’ve got three different causal theories in two sentences right there … Perhaps not all rioters had the same motivations. If there’s an outburst of public agitation against e.g. the Rothschilds, the agitated may well be a mix of people who dislike bankers qua bankers, people who dislike Jews qua Jews, and people who are more difficult to sort. The rhetorical problem may have been the use of “pogrom,” which forced a preemptive “oh, but not really that kind of pogrom you might understandably have been thinking of” hedge. Call it something else! If it’s called a погро́м in the Russian sources, just accept that the Russian word has wider semantic scope and doesn’t always have to be translated into English as “pogrom.”
Agreed on all counts.
Cynically, I would expect a proportion of the agitated to be people who don’t so much dislike anyone as simply like to riot.
@aj
In Dublin, people see a queue and join it. In Tsarist Russia, people saw riots and joined them. As predicted by the theory of dialectical materialism, this resulted in the rise of Soviet power, after which Russians were successfully educated to see queues and join them.
“semantic scope”
Same or similar thing but against people of a specific (disreputable) profession rather than ethnicity (we’re disgusted by xenophoby).
If the difference in attitude (in parentheses) doesn’t play a role, I’d say, the English word is hyperspecified and reminiscent of how I can think of a Tunisian, but not Russian маршрутка as a “louage” rather than “маршрутка” (for a French speaker both are louages).
I wouldn’t call it difference in “semantic scope”.
Both words mean same thing, but louage when I think it evokes Tunisian associations and context.
Note BTW that publication in the Lithuanian language per se was not banned. Rather, what was banned starting in the 1860’s was publishing LIthuanian-language texts in the “Polish” (alias Latin) alphabet. The czarist regime initially promoted/subsidized the publication of Cyrillic-scripted works in Lithuanian (part of a strategy to separate Lithuanian nationalism from Polish nationalism, which did eventually happen even if not via that path) although they didn’t get many takers, before shifting their attention to trying to stem the illegal influx of Latin-scripted Lithuanian works being published across the border in East Prussia. The funniest passage in the wikipedia description may be “Attempts were made to circumvent the ban by using Gothic script. However, that was also banned in 1872.”
I’m sure we discussed that here at some point, but I can’t find the post.
Googling knygnešiai site:languagehat.com brings up this from 2006.
It’s the only result. I attribute that to enshittification. But it’s much better than nothing.
Note this from a lengthy quote from Tomas Venclova in the prior comment thread just linked by David M.: “Language was hypostatized [by the Lithuanian-nationalist intelligentsia]: it took the place of the individual, it could be victimized and even martyred.” Weren’t we just discussing the verb “to hypostatize” elsewhere?
“could be … even martyred”
“Linguicide” is modern, though.
Dead and living languages are both modern and old terms, but I don’t know how old.
i wonder whether any attempts were made to get around the restrictions on ukrainian by using latin script (or, i suppose, ksav ashuri or arabic script) – seems unlikely, but stranger things have certainly happened. (i’d try to look it up, but i’m in rural portugal with limited bandwidth)
Well, there’s this, but it doesn’t involve Ukrainian except maybe by the most generous definitions, and it doesn’t seem to have been used for such a purpose…