Culture League ( Yiddish קולטור-ליגע - Jewish Culture League ) is an association of Jewish artists, writers, directors and publishers created in the Russian Empire in Kiev in early 1918 to develop Yiddish culture [1] [2] .
| Kultur League | |
|---|---|
| Yiddish קולטור-ליגע | |
| Administrative center | Kiev |
| Official language | Yiddish |
| Base | |
| Established | 1918 |
| Liquidation | |
| 1920 (1924) | |
| Industry | the culture |
The organization included various sections: educational, publishing, library, music, theater, literature and art [3] [2] . In 1918, departments of the Culture League were created in almost a hundred cities and towns of the Ukrainian part of the Russian Empire [4] . Then, from the end of 1918, the branches of the art section of the Culture League were founded in several cities of the Russian Empire: Moscow , Riga , Warsaw , Vitebsk [2] , Petrograd , Crimea , Minsk , Grodno , Vilna , Bialystok [4] .
In April 1918, the constituent assembly of the Culture League was held and the foundation was laid for the creation of two governing bodies - the Central Committee and the Executive Bureau, and the first Minister for Jewish Affairs in the government of the Central Council of Ukraine Moses Zilberfarb was elected head of the Executive Bureau [5] .
Members and participants of the organization were Alexander Tyshler [6] , Mark Epstein [6] , Issakhar-Ber Rybak [6] , Boris Aronson [6] , Nisson Shifrin [6] , Joseph Elman [6] , Isaac Rabinovich [6] , Mark Chagall [6] , El Lissitzky [6] , Abram Manevich [6] , Solomon Nikritin [6] , Sarah Shor [7] , Joseph Tchaikov [6] , David Hofshtein [4] , Pepper Markish [4] , Leib Kvitko [ 4] , Chaim Shloime Kazdan [4] , Avrom Golomb [4] , Moses Beregovsky [4] , Mikhail Milner [4] and others. Artists members of the Culture League were among the first in Kiev to use elements of abstraction in illustrations for books [8] .
In the second half of 1920, Soviet power dissolved the Central Committee of the Culture League and instead established its own Organizational Bureau where almost all were communists [4] . Almost all institutions of the Culture League were forcibly selected by the Soviet government and transferred to the People's Commissariat of Education [4] . Formally, we can say that the Kultur League still existed until 1924 (as a member of the Soviet Eurocommittee), and after the closure of the Cultural League, many Jewish artists left Russia and worked in Europe and America [4] .
Notes
- ↑ Culture League (Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia)
- ↑ 1 2 3 “Culture League: artistic avant-garde of the 1910-1920s”
- ↑ The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 The Riddle of the Culture League
- ↑ Cultural League Phenomenon
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Exhibition “Culture League. Art Avant-Garde of the 1910-1920s. ”
- ↑ Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
- ↑ Kiev Culture-League: echo of the 20s