SHIMEN DIMANSHTEYN (SEMYON DIMANSHTAIN) (February
19, 1888-August 28, 1938)
He was born in Sebezh,
Vitebsk region. His father Mortkhe was a
tinsmith. He studied in the yeshivas of
Telshe (Telz), Slobodka, and Lyubavitsh.
He received rabbinic ordination from many rabbis, among them: R. Chaim
Ozer Grodzensky. Over the years
1903-1904, he became captivated by the revolutionary burst of energy. He moved to Vilna to pursue his studies and
there was drawn to socialist circles. At
the same time he began his literary activities and translated into both Yiddish
and Hebrew the programs of the “Russian Social Democratic Party” (the Hebrew
text was published in 1906 in Hazman
[The times] in Vilna). Over the years
1905-1908, he helped to transport illegal literature, and he worked in the
publishers of the Bolsheviks’ northwestern committee in Minsk. He was arrested in 1908 in Riga at a Party
meeting and was sentenced to five years hard labor. In 1913 he was exiled to Siberia. On the eve of WWI, he escaped initially to
Germany and later to Paris. He worked
there in a factory, and he graduated from a school for electrical technology,
led anti-war agitation, and founded a Jewish workers’ club. He returned to Russian in May 1917 and
assumed an assortment of positions in the Party organization. After the October Revolution, he worked in
the People’s Commissariat for Labor. On
January 20, 1918 he was appointed by Lenin to be Commissar for Jewish National
Affairs. He edited the organs of the
Jewish Commissariat. He was the first
editor in the Yiddish Communist press.
In the spring of 1919, he was named People’s Commissar for Labor in the
Lithuanian-Byelorussian government in Vilna.
When this state was occupied by the Poles, he escaped, returned to
Moscow, and again assumed his position as Commissar of Jewish Affairs. He was also chairman of the Jewish Section in
the Communist Party, manager of the division for national minorities in the central
committee of the Russian Communist Party.
He worked in Turkestan, 1920-1921, as People’s Commissar for Education,
and assumed high positions in Tashkent, Orenburg, and Krasnoyarsk. From 1922 he was in charge of “political
enlightenment” and assistant to the head of the cultural division of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and from 1924 until
February 1930 he was the representative of the head of the cultural division to
the Central Committee of the Party in Byelorussia, as well as chief of the
sector for national minorities.
Dimanshteyn later returned to Moscow and became chairman of the central
administration of Gezerd (All-Union Association for the Agricultural Settlement of
Jewish Workers in the USSR), a member of the Communist Academy, director
of the Institute of Nationalities at the Central Executive Committee of the
Soviet Union, and editor of the Russian publication, Revoliutsiia i natsional’nosti (Revolution and nationalities). He wrote as well under the pen names: Naftali
Gorfinkel, Dan, and A Royter, among others.
Among his longer works: Baym likht
fun komunizm (By the light of Communism), articles (Moscow, 1919), 295 pp.;
Der tsienizm unter a komunistishn shlayer
(Zionism under a Communist mantle) (Moscow, 1919), 16 pp.; A yor komunistishe arbet (A year of Communist labor), the
activities of the Central Jewish Commissariat and the Jewish Communist Section
(Moscow, 1919), 32 pp.; Natsyonale
momentn afn 13tn tsuzamenfor fun der rk”p (National considerations at the
13th Conference of the Russian Communist Party) (Moscow, 1924), 64
pp.; the preface to the volume (in Russian) by Professor S. Semkovskii on
Marxism and the national question (Kharkov, 1924); a foreword to a book by B.
Orshanski (Minsk, 1925); “Di revolutsyonere bavegung tsvishn di idishe masn un
der revolutsye fun 1905 yor” (The revolutionary movement among the Jewish
masses and the Revolution of 1905), Royte
bleter (Red leaves) (Minsk) 1 (1929), pp. 1-42; Di revolutsyonere bavegung tsvishn di idishe masn un der revolutsye fun
1905 yor (Moscow, 1929), 93 pp.; Di
problem fun natsyonaler kultur (The problem with national culture) (Moscow,
1930), 80 pp.; “Stalin vi a bolshevistisher teoristiker fun der natsyonaler
frage” (Stalin as a Bolshevik theorist on the national question), Tsaytshrift (Periodical) (Minsk) 4
(1930); a detailed introduction to a volume (in Russian) on the revolutionary
movement among the Jews (Moscow, 1930), from the section on learning about the
revolutionary movement among Jews for the association of those exiled to hard
labor; Der kamf fun leninizm kegn
lyuksemburgizm (The struggle of Leninism against Luxemburgism) (Moscow,
1933), 104 pp.; Di natsyonale frage afn
tsveytn tsuzamenfor fun der partey (The national question at the second
conference of the Party) (Moscow, 1934), 82 pp.; Di yidishe avtonomye gegnt, a kind fun der oktober-revolutsye (The
Jewish autonomous region, a child of the October Revolution) (Moscow, 1934), 56
pp.; “Fun tsarishn tkhum biz sovetisher avtonomye” (From the Tsarist pale to
Soviet autonomy), in his edited anthology Yidn
in fssr (Jews in the USSR) (Moscow, 1935), pp. 13-27; “Tsu der
shprakhbaratung” (To the language conference), Afn shprakhfront (On the language front) (Kiev) 3-4 (1935), pp.
288-338; Der prezidyum funem tsentraln
oysfir-komitet fun fssr vegn der yidisher avtonomer gegnt (The Presidium of
the Central Executive Committee of the USSR concerning the Jewish Autonomous
Region) (Moscow: Emes, 1936), 24 pp. In
addition to those mentioned above, he also edited Di varhayt (The truth), organ of the Social Democrats (Bolsheviks)
and Left Socialist Revolutionaries (first issue appeared in St. Petersburg on
March 8, 1918; from no. 4 it was being published in Moscow by the Jewish
Commissariat); Evreiskaia tribuna
(Jewish tribune), Russian-language organ of the Jewish Commissariat, together
with Tuvye Akselrod, Nokhum Bukhbinder, and Zerekh Grinberg; Der emes (The truth), daily newspaper,
organ of the Jewish Section of the Russian Communist Party (Moscow, 1918-1919),
last issue appeared February 13, 1919, after which the name (Emes) was spelled out phonetically
(rather than in its Hebraic form); Kultur-fragn
(Cultural issues), anthology edited with N. Bukhbinder and Z. Grinberg (St.
Petersburg: Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, 1918), 95 pp.; Di komunistishe velt (The Communist
world), organ of the Jewish Commissariat (Moscow), fifteen issues in all (May
1, 1919-March-April 1920); N. Lenin, Di
natsyonale un yidishe frage, fun onhoyb imperialistisher milkhome (The
national and Jewish question, from the start of the imperialist war), in Oysgeveylte verk (Selected writings),
vol. 8 (Moscow, 1929); Yidn in fssr,
zamlbukh (Jews in the USSR, an anthology) (Moscow, 1935), 284 pp.; Forpost, literarish-kinstlerisher un politish-gezelshaftlekher
zhurnal fun der yidisher avtonomer gegnt birobidzhan (Outpost, literary-artistic and political-community journal of the
Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan), of which he was a member of the
editorial board, 1932-1937; According to certain information, he was executed
when the Soviet regime liquidated Gezerd in 1937.[1]
Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1, p. 694; D. Tsharni
(Charney), in Tog (New York) (January
18, 1926); Tsharni, in Parizer bleter
(Paris) (February 16, 1926); A. Glants, in Tog
(June 25, 1932); Kh. Dunets, In kamf af
tsvey frontn (Struggling on two fronts) (Minsk, 1932), p. 11; A, Brakhman, “Der
lenin-zeksband af yidish” (Six volumes of Lenin in Yiddish), Emes (Moscow) (1934); Di komunistishe velt (Moscow) 10-11
(1934), p. 35; Kh-n, in Shtern (Kharkov)
208 (1934); Oktyaber (Minsk) 5
(1935); Yidishe bilder (Riga) 44 (76)
(November 1938); G. Aronson, in Der veker
(New York) (March 1, 1939); Tsharni, in Tsukunft
(New York) (June 1939); Tsharni, A
yortsendlik aza (A decade like that) (New York, 1943), pp. 208-14,
217, 218, 224-27, 250-57, 273-77; Tsharni, in Davke (Toronto) (1951), pp. 13-17; H. Vaynraykh, Blut af der zun (Blood on the son)
(Brooklyn, 1950), p. 157; Ben-Tsiyon Kats, in Hadoar (New York) (Sivan 15=April 25, 1956); Kats, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (1954).
Aleksander Pomerants
[Additional
information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon
fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New
York, 1986), col. 198.]
[1] Translator’s note.
More recent information has found that Dimanshteyn was criticized for “nationalist”
views within the Communist world in 1937 and executed for them in August 1938.
Hi Joshua, thanks for making this translated leksikon entry web-accessible! Great to see Yiddish cultural figures and activists online. I noticed that your article has an image created by the digital artists at Yiddishkayt, but it doesn't link back or reference the original post. As you can see, it's featured here: http://yiddishkayt.org/view/shimon-dimanshteyn/. Would you be able to add this information in? Thankyou!
ReplyDeleteSHIMEN DIMANSHTEYN wrote a foreword to M. Altshuler's Antireligiezer lernbukh (Antireligeous textbook).- Moscow, 1929.- 230, [2] pp.
ReplyDeleteאנטירעליגיעזער לערנבוך
מ. אלטשולער ; פארװארט - ש. דימאנשטײן
מאסקװע : צענטראלער פעלקער-פארלאג פון פססר
SHIMEN DIMANSHTEYN edited Komyugishe politshmuesn :lernbukh far komyugishe politshuln in dray heftn (YCL political talks : anthology for YCL political schools in 3 parts).- MoskveTsentraler felker-farlag fun FSSR, 1929-1930
ReplyDeleteקאמיוגישע פאליטשמועסן
לערנבוך פאר קאמיוגישע פאליטשולן אין דרײ העפטן
אונטער דער רעדאקציע פון ש. דימאנשטײן
מאסקװע : צענטראלער פעלקער-פארלאג פון פססר