SH. LIPSHITS

SH. LIPSHITS

            He came from Ukraine.  Until 1937 he lived in Kharkov and Kiev.  He was a leader in the Komerd (Committee for Land Settlement of Jewish Laborers [Komzet in Russian]) and Gezerd (All-Union Association for the Agricultural Settlement of Jewish Workers in the USSR) movements.  He was also a manager in the social-economic section of the Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and he traveled around with its brigade researching the condition of the Jewish town after the Revolution.  He wrote for: Der shtern (The star) and Royte velt (Red world) in Kharkov; and Proletarishe fon (Red banner) in Kiev (1930-1936); as well as Radians׳ka Ukraïna (Red Ukraine) in Kiev, in which he published articles on socio-economic questions.  He penned a series of anonymous pamphlets of Gezerd agitation literature in Yiddish and in Russian—see, for example, Proletarishe fon (January 29, 1932).  His book, Vegn shtetl (On the town) (Kharkov-Kiev, 1932), 69 pp., was a polemic on the transformed structure of the Jewish town after the October Revolution, including such authors as: I. I. Vaytsblit, “Vegn altn un nayem shtetl” (On the old and new town); A. Skuditski, “Dos ekonomishe lebn in yidishn shtetl” (The economic life in the Jewish town); and M. Kiper, “Dos yidishe shtetl in ukraine” (The Jewish town in Ukraine); among others.  In 1937 he was arrested for “Jewish nationalism” and thereafter no one heard anything about him.

Sources: Y. Liberberg, in Proletarishe fon (Kiev) (January 18, 1932); N. Rubinshteyn, Dos yidishe bukh in sovetn-farband 1932 (The Yiddish book in the Soviet Union, 1932) (Minsk, 1933), see index; Yivo-bleter (Vilna) 6.1 (1934); Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1961), see index.

Khayim Leyb Fuks