Stalin's cultural ideologues planned to deploy the music of the Yiddish-speaking Jews of the Soviet Union as a building block for the new Soviet music, whereas the Jewish religion with it's traditional way of life was damned as counter-revolutionary. The anthology "Shalom Comrade!" tells the forgotten history of Yiddish music in the Soviet Union and contains rare recordings from the archive of the ethnomusicologists Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin. Featuring Misha Aleksandrovich, Mikhail Epelbaum, Marina Gordon, Emil Gorovets, Anna Guzik, Solomon Khromchenko, Nechama Lifshitsaite, Saul Liubimov, Solomon Mikhoels, Debora Pantofel-Nechetskaia, M. I. Rabinovich, Zinovii Shulman, Sidi Tal, and many others. This anthology is part of Wergo's Jewish Music Series, edited by Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin.
