Inaugural Issue of Soviet Homeland

Aron Vergelis was born in Lyubar, Zhitomyr (Ukraine). He started writing in the early 1930s, shortly after moving to Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous area. After studying in Moscow and serving in the Red Army during World War II, Vergelis became a major force in Soviet Yiddish culture: hosting Yiddish radio, publishing poetry, editing journals, and translating Yiddish works into Russian. He was the editor in chief of the Moscow-based Yiddish literary monthly Sovetish heymland (Soviet Homeland) from 1961 to 1991, and of its post-Soviet sequel, Di yidishe gas.