Der shtern was a Soviet Yiddish newspaper, first published in Smolensk on November 7, 1918. Der shtern became one of the main Yiddish publications in the early Soviet period. Before the end of the year, as Minsk came under the control of the Soviets, the publication was shifted there. Zalman Khaykin was the founding editor of the paper, but was killed in battle in Vilna in the beginning of 1919.
The paper shifted to Vilna, then back to Minsk and then to Vitebsk, and back to Minsk yet again in the period from March 1919 to July 1920. In April 1921 Der veker, a former bundist newspaper in Minsk and later a Jewish communist organ, merged into Der shtern. In 1924 the newspaper changed name to Oktyabr. Publishing was discontinued in June 1941.
Veker/Oktyabr was the only Soviet Yiddish newspaper published continuously throughout the 1920s and 1930s.