Tag #152985 - Interview #78408 (Lidia Korotina)

Ida Shteinberg, the wife of Abram Katsnelson, was a fellow student and friend of mine. Abram Katsnelson is a famous Ukrainian poet. He is Jewish, but Ukrainian was his mother tongue, and he wrote in Ukrainian his whole life. Still, his books were not published. His brother, Ilia Stebun, was deputy director of the Institute of Literature. He was accused of cosmopolitanism and even had to move away from here. He first moved to Zhytomir and then to Dnepropetrovsk or Zaporozhiye. “Rootless cosmopolitans” – many of my friends had to quit their jobs because of their Jewish nationality. I can remember meetings at the Union of Writers where many Jews were accused of communicating with “cosmopolititans.” I remember this well.