Solomon Goldelman Ukrainian Jewish political and public figure, historian, political scientist, economist. Country: Israel

1. Biography of Solomon Goldelman
2. Early Life and Career
3. Involvement in Ukrainian Politics
4. Emigration and Academic Career
5. Life in Israel and Later Works

Biography of Solomon Goldelman

Solomon Goldelman was a Ukrainian Jewish political and public figure, historian, political scientist, and economist. He was born in the district of Soroki, Bessarabia (now Soroca district, Moldova) in 1885. Known for his multilingual abilities, Goldelman wrote in Ukrainian, Yiddish, English, German, and Russian.

Early Life and Career

Goldelman began his career in 1901 at the Kerch newspaper "Southern Courier" where he specialized in theater criticism, writing under the pseudonym "Sig." In 1905, he joined the Zionist Social-Democratic Labour Party "Poale Zion." He obtained his degree from the Kyiv Commercial Institute in 1913. During the February Revolution in Ukraine, Goldelman actively participated and was a member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Labour Party. He contributed to publications in both Russian and Ukrainian under the pseudonym "S. Zolotarenko."

Involvement in Ukrainian Politics

In February 1917, Goldelman was appointed as the head of the Ukrainian department of the Ministry of Labor under the Provisional Government, responsible for six provinces in Ukraine. He played a significant role in the recognition of the Ukrainian Central Rada by the Poale Zion party in April, and in June 1917, he was elected as a member of the Ukrainian Central Rada and its executive body, the Small Council, representing the Poale Zion party. He later became the Deputy Secretary of Labor in the first government of the Ukrainian Directorate. During the Hetmanate period, from May to November 1918, Goldelman led the Odessa edition of the official "Poale Zion" newspaper, "Undzer Lebm" (Our Life), in Yiddish. In November, he supported the uprising against Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi. On his suggestion, on November 10, 1918, the Directorate passed a resolution on national-personal autonomy for national minorities in Ukraine. In December of the same year, he became a comrade (deputy) secretary of labor and performed the duties of the secretary for national minorities until Abram Revutsky (1889-1946) was appointed on December 26. In subsequent governments, Goldelman served as a comrade of the Minister of Labor and later as a comrade of the Minister of Trade and Industry in Volodymyr Chekhivsky's government. He resigned together with Chekhivsky in early 1919. In April 1919, after the resignation of the Ostapenko government, Goldelman became an expert on labor and trade in Bohdan Martos' cabinet, and later served as the Deputy Minister of Labor under Ivan Mazepa. In 1920, he finally resigned due to disagreements with the territorial concessions made by President of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), Andriy Livytskyi, and Chief Ataman Symon Petliura during negotiations with Poland.

Emigration and Academic Career

From 1920 to 1922, Goldelman lived in Poland and later Vienna, where he worked at the Ukrainian Sociological Institute and the Ukrainian Free Academy. He actively published in the Ukrainian emigrant press and in Yiddish periodicals. He published his first book, "In goles ba di Ukrainer: briv fun a idishn sotsial-demokrat" (In the Ukrainian Diaspora: Letters from a Jewish Social Democrat) in Vienna in 1921, in Yiddish (later also in German and Ukrainian). In 1922, he moved to Prague and joined the editorial board of the journal "Novaia Ukraina" (New Ukraine). From 1925, he worked as a lecturer and later as a professor at the Economic-Commercial Faculty of the Ukrainian Economic Academy and the Ukrainian Techno-Economic Institute in Podebrady. In 1922, he published the work "Antisemitism, Bolshevism, and Jewish Politics" in Ukrainian, and in 1930, "Essays on the Socio-economic Structure of the Jewish People." During the 1920s, some of Goldelman's articles were published in Soviet periodicals in Russian. From 1930 to 1939, he was an activist in Zionist organizations in Prague, establishing a small private publishing house, "Professor Salomon Goldelman," specializing in Zionist literature, mainly in German. Until 1938, he led the re-established Higher Zionist School (initially the Institute of Zionist Education). In 1937, he published a work in German in Vienna, titled "Does Communism Solve the Jewish Question: Red Assimilation and Soviet Zionism," dedicated to the Birobidzhan project. In 1939, an updated edition of the book was published in Hungarian in Timișoara. Starting from the late 1930s, Goldelman also began publishing in specialized English-language periodicals. His historical and economic reviews were translated into Hungarian, Czech, and other languages.

Life in Israel and Later Works

From August 1939, Goldelman resided in the British Mandate of Palestine, first in Haifa and later in Jerusalem until his death in 1974. He worked at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and continued publishing economic and political analysis in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English newspapers. In 1940, he reestablished the now-distant Institute of Zionist Education, which he led until the early 1960s. In 1950, he became one of the founders of the League Against Religious Coercion in Israel, serving as its leader until 1960. In 1950, he resumed active collaboration with Ukrainian emigrant organizations and published in Ukrainian press. In 1961, his monograph "Assimilation and Denationalization of Jews in the Soviet Union" was published in Munich in Ukrainian. In 1963, the same work, expanded and revised, was republished in the United States in English as "Jewish Autonomy in Ukraine, 1917-1920." In the last years of his life and posthumously, several monographs on the history of Russian Jewry, particularly Jewish land ownership in southern Russia, were published in German. Solomon Goldelman passed away in Jerusalem in 1974.