The Attitude toward Yiddish of the Russian authorities in Vilna during the 1860s: on the history of Jewish bookselling in Vilna

ENThe beginning of the nineteenth century is a period of ascent in the history of the Yiddish book. The Yiddish book—or more correctly, Yiddish booklet—which was already a mass-produced article, was now receiving a more widespread distribution. The appearance of Isaac Meir Dik [well-known novelist, 1807–1893] gave rise, certainly, to a continually growing circle of Yiddish readers. The Yiddish booklet gained new, wide-ranging masses of readers. The editions of Yiddish books in Vilna, for example, far exceeded the similar editions in all other languages of Vilna. This increase in consumption naturally called for a greater volume of business for Yiddish book sales. In Vilna, the center of Jewish book production, there were a few young maskilim [adherents of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment] who wanted to open new bookstores, seeing in Yiddish bookselling a source of income. One of them was a certain Rafael ben Feivish Falk. At that time, obtaining permission for such a business in Vilna was not an easy matter. After the Polish Uprising in 1863, the drive for Russification here intensified, and permission to open a bookstore had to be obtained from the governor, who in such cases would conduct an entire shayle-utshuve [rabbinic “question-and-answer” court proceeding]. [p. 255].