AVROM-YITSKHOK
SLUTSKI (January 30, 1876-1936)
He was born in the town of Monastyryshche,
near Nyezhin (Nizhyn), Kiev district, Ukraine.
He studied in religious elementary school and, after moving to Nizhyn, in
the city’s Russian school, from which he graduated in 1890. He prepared to enter university and supported
himself by giving lessons. In 1902 he
moved to Kiev where he worked as a teacher in an illegal public school which introduced
Yiddish as a subject. While still in
Nizhyn, he was active in illegal student circles. In Kiev he took part in Zionist socialist
groups—“Vozrozhdenie” (Renaissance) and “Es-Es” (Sotsialisti-Sionisti). In 1904 he was an active member of the
Bund. He led a struggle, 1904-1905, in
the “Mefitse haskole” (Society for the promotion of enlightenment
[among the Jews of Russia]) on behalf of
introducing the Yiddish language into its educational institutions. He was a delegate to a conference of the
Mefitse haskole in St. Petersburg. In
1908 he was among the founders of the united teachers’ organization in Kiev and
a cofounder of the historical-ethnographic commission. In 1909 he was a delegate to meetings devoted
to the issues surrounding professional education for Jewish women and read
aloud a resolution for Yiddish to be used as a language of instruction for all
topics in Jewish schools that were being founded at the time in various
communities. In 1910 he was one of the
most active contributors to Kyever
tsaytung (Kievan newspaper), where he once more raised the same issue. During WWI he worked among victims of the war
as well as for ORT (Association for the Promotion of Skilled
Trades). In 1917 he was a member of the
Kiev committee of the Bund and council member of the new democratic Jewish
community of Kiev. He worked in the
education department of the Jewish Ministry—later, the Jewish Commissariat. Until 1926 he was a member of the Kiev City
Council, director of the provincial division for social education, scholarly
secretary and manager of the department of social pedagogy at the Kiev
Pedological Station, and director of the Kiev Jewish Pedagogical
Technicum. His writing activities began
in 1906 with correspondence pieces from Kiev in the Vilna Bundist Folkstsaytung (People’s newspaper), in
which he published articles under such pen names as: Avrom, A-m, and Der
Zelber. He contributed to Kyever vort (Kievan word), which he
edited with M. Litvakov and Y. Leshtshinski, and wrote mainly about educational matters. In Vestnik
Obshchestvo
rasprostraneni︠a︡ prosvi︠e︡shchenii︠a︡ mezhdu evrei︠a︡mi v Rossii (Herald of the
Society for the dissemination of education among the Jews of Russia) 13 (1912),
he placed a piece about children’s literature in Yiddish. He was especially focused on researching the
upbringing and popular education of Jews, and on this theme he prepared a
series of works, of which not all were published. He was as well a contributor to Shul un lebn (School and life), organ of
the Kiev “Kultur-lige” (Culture league)—in issues 1 and 4-5 he published a work
concerning Jewish education in Ukraine.
From 1919 he was publishing in Komfon
[= Komunistishe fon]
(Communist banner). From 1922 he was
co-editor of Pedagogisher buletin (Pedagogical
bulletin) in Kiev. He published a series
of research works on pedagogical topics in the Russian and Ukrainian
periodicals: Radian’ska osvita (Red
education) in Kiev (1924, issue 1, an essay on school cooperatives) and Radian’ska shkola (Red school) in Kiev
(issues 7 and 9-10, an essay on pioneering work in the school), among
others. Over the years 1923-1928, he dedicated
himself to work on the history of the revolutionary movement, and, together
with Tsvi Fridland, he published a book in four parts: Geshikhte fun der revolutsyonerer bavegung in mayrev-eyrope 1789-1923
(History of the revolutionary movement in Western Europe, 1789-1923), textbook
and reader (Moscow: Central Publ.: part 1 (1925), 241 pp.; part 2, covering the
period 1848-1851 (1926), 187 pp.; part 3, covering 1848-1871 (1927), 190 pp.;
part 4, covering 1871-1923 (1928), 223 pp.
Slutski published several treatments of the history of the Jewish
socialist movement in 1905 in Yiddish in Yubiley-tsaytung
(Jubilee newspaper) in Kiev (October 1927); and in Russian in Proletarskaia pravda (Proletarian truth)
1 (1928). He published a piece as well
in the anthology Kamf af tsvey
frontn in der pedagogik (Struggle on two
fronts in pedagogy) (Kharkov-Kiev: Ukrainian Academy of Scholars and the
Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture, 1932). In the journal Visnshaft un revolutsye (Science and revolution), edited by G. Gorokhov,
Y. Khintshin, and M. Levitan, 1 (8) (1936), published by the Institute of Jewish
Proletarian Culture in Kiev, Slutski’s last work appeared: “Di yidishe
natsmenshevistishe pedagogik un ir noente fargangenheyt” (The Jewish national
Menshevik pedagogy and its recent past).
Slutski took part in the All-Soviet Conference of Marxist Historians
which convened in Moscow in late 1928-early 1929. His activities were cut short in 1936—together
with several other contributors to the Kiev Institute for Jewish Culture. He disappeared in the arrests of the time and
died in 1936.
Source:
M. Flakser, A. Pomerants, and L. Ran, bibliography of Soviet Jewish literature
(1918-1948), in manuscript in YIVO, New York.
Leyzer Ran
[Additional
information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon
fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish
writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York:
Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 264-65.]
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