Under the influence of the Russiannarodnik movement, Ansky became interested in ethnography, as well as socialism, and became a political activist. Between 1911 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he headed ethnographic expeditions to various Jewish towns of Volhynia and Podolia, composing a detailed ethnographic questionnaire of more than 2000 questions. Ansky's ethnographic collections were locked away in Soviet vaults for years, but some material has come to light since the 1990s. The State Ethnographic Museum at St. Petersburg holds a good deal of it. Some of his vast collection of cylinder recordings made on these expeditions have been transferred to CD as well. His ethnographic report of the deliberate destruction of Jewish communities by the Russian army in the First World War, The Enemy at His Pleasure: A Journey Through the Jewish Pale of Settlement During World War I, has become a major source in the historiography of the war's impact on civilian populations.
Literary career
Initially he wrote in Russian, but from 1904 he became known mainly as a Yiddish author. He is best known for his play The Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds, written in 1914. The play was first staged in the Elyseum Theatre in Warsaw, on December 9, 1920, one month after the author's death. It was subsequently translated into a dozen or more languages and performed thousands of times all over the world. It is still being produced, along with numerous adaptations, as well as operas, ballets, and symphonic suites. It is considered the jewel of the Jewish theatre. In the early years The Dybbuk was considered so significant that parodies of it were written and produced. Although The Dybbuk is Ansky’s best-known work, he published an impressive number of works of literature, politics and ethnography. His Collected Works, which do not include all his writings, comprise fifteen volumes. An-sky wrote a number of other plays, four of which are included in this collection, long out of print. One is, like The Dybbuk, a Hasidic Gothic story. The other three plays have revolutionary themes, and were originally written in Russian: Father and Son, In a Conspiratorial Apartment, and The Grandfather. All four have recently been republished in a bilingual Yiddish-English edition. Ansky was also the author of the song Di Shvue, which became the anthem of the Jewish SocialistBund party. He was the author of the poem "In Zaltsikn Yam", which was dedicated to the Bund as well.
