And at the same time the Russians did much to preserve Yiddish (a Jewish language).
I took Yiddish in university for a while. During the soviet years they tried to neutralize any hebraic or biblical references. For example, in hebrew the word for friend is "Chaver". It's the same in yiddish. But the soviets insisted that it be changed to the more germanic "fraynd". Similiarly, they insisted even on the changing of spellings to make the language altogether less hebraic and jewish - and more neutralized and soviet.