The Kultur Lige was a secular socialistJewish organization associated with the Jewish Labour Bund, established in Kiev in 1918, whose aim was to promote Yiddish language literature, theater and culture. The league organized various activities, including theater performances, poetry recitals, and concerts in Yiddish with the aim of disseminating Jewish art in Eastern Europe and Russia. Among some notable members of the organization were the scenic designerBoris Aronson, the artist and architect El Lissitzky, the writer David Bergelson, the sculptorJoseph Chaikov, the writer Peretz Markish, the poet David Hofstein, and Isaac Ben Ryback. Bergelson, Markish and Hofstein were later executed on Joseph Stalin's orders during the Night of the Murdered Poets, in 1952. Artists like Ryback and Lissitzky who were members of the group tried to develop a distinctively Jewish form of modernism in which abstract forms would be used as a means of expressing and disseminating popular culture. The manifesto of the group, published in November 1919, stated: It also listed the "three pillars" of the Kultur Lige as Yiddish education for the people, Yiddish literature, and Jewish art. In 1919 members of the group, Victor Alter and Henryk Berlewi, organized a major exhibition of Polish-Jewish art in Białystok under the name "First Exhibition of Jewish Painting and Sculpture". The exhibition was targeted at the Yiddish speaking Jewish community, as well as the Polish workers of the city. During the same year, the organization helped to sponsor sixty three Yiddish schools, fifty four libraries and many other cultural and educational institutions. In 1920 the Kiev branch of the organization was taken over by the Bolsheviks and the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party, Yevsektsiya, and subjected to the bureaucracy of the Soviet state. Its printing presses were taken away, it was denied paper for publishing and its central committee was forcefully disbanded. As a result, the Warsaw branch became the main center for the organization. Afterward, the remains of the Kultur Lige in the Soviet Union continued under the auspices of the Yevsektsiya as a publishing house, mostly focusing on Yiddish textbooks for children. In Poland, the League established offices in other cities such as Wilno and Łódź. In 1924, it began to issue the Literarishe Bleter magazine which became the main forum for discussions by the Yiddish intelligentsia on subjects of art, literature and theater.
