AVROM PRIBLUDE

AVROM PRIBLUDE (April 1, 1900-1978)

            A journalist, ethnographer, and historian, he was born in Balte (Balta), Russia, into the family of a bookbinder. From early youth, he worked with his father and became a bibliophile. He studied in religious elementary school, later in a Russian high school. Later still, he graduated from the law faculty of Odessa University. He worked as a teacher of Jewish history, before moving over to law and working in the office of national minorities in the Odessa municipal court; he translated into Yiddish the criminal and land legal codes. He later moved to Moscow, where he undertook research into Jewish anthroponymy and the role of Jews in social and political life in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, in the civil war, and in WWII, as well as on Jewish diplomats and state leaders. From the 1970s, he wrote articles for Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) in Moscow, Folksshtime (Voice of the people) in Warsaw, and other Yiddish and Russian serials about the roots of Jewish given and family names, as well as documentary jottings about the role of Jews in the revolutionary movement and the like. His publications include: “Tsu der geshikhte fun yidish familye-nemen” (On the history of Jewish family names), Sovetish heymland 6 (1987).

Sources: Sovetish heymland, Materyaln far a leksikon fun der yidisher sovetisher literatur (Materials for a handbook of Soviet Jewish literature) (September 1975-); M. Grayzer, in Morgn frayhayt (New York) (December 18, 1974).

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 435; and 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. 286-87.