The collection of archival documents from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) contains unique material on Jewish avant-garde art, Stalin's repressions, and the history of Soviet culture and theater. This material, which is in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, English, French, and other European languages, allows us not only to further our knowledge of Yiddish theater and Jewish culture in the Soviet Union, but also to deepen and revise our understanding of the Kremlin's policy toward Jewish society and culture, and of the realia of the everyday life of Jews in the 1920s-40s.