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[SOVIET JEWS] Zemel’noe ustroistvo trudiashchikhsia evreev [i.e. Settlement of Toiling Jews]

Gol’de, Iu.

Moscow: Tsentral’noe Izdatel’stvo Narodov SSSR, 1925. Item #1418

99 pp. 22х15,5 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Spine restored, otherwise very good and clean copy.

First and only edition. One of 5,000 copies.
Cover design by Alexander Bykhovsky, one of the most insular figures in the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s. His style ranged from Constructivism to Cubism with a certain affinity to the Kazan school of Vsadnik.
Published in the early USSR, this is one of Iulii Golde’s (1882-?) books about the settlement of Soviet Jews. Agricultural engineer Gol’de was known primarily as a Crimean member of the Committee of the Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land (OZET).
The 1920s and the 1930s saw the heyday of Jewish culture (not national culture, but international one) on the territory of the former Russian Empire. The USSR’s policy towards Jews rested on Communism and tended to promote socialist ideology among Jewish people through printed materials in Yiddish. At the same time, the idea of consolidating the Jewish population on the territory of the Soviet Union and creating its national statehood was being developed.
The public organization OZET supplemented the official Committee (KOMZET) from 1925, seeking to encourage Jews to take up agricultural work. Headquartered in Moscow, OZET had a number of departments all over the country, including UkrOZET (Kharkov), BelOZET (Minsk), TatOZET (Kazan), GruzOZET (Tbilisi), etc. Allied organizations in America, France, Germany, Australia, etc., contributed to the Soviet settlement of Jews by raising money.
At different times, OZET focused on forming Jewish agricultural colonies in Crimea, Ukraine, and Birobidzhan. In 1922-1936, many Jews moved to Crimea where five special areas were formed. In Belarusian towns and shtetls, OZET activists looked for claimants for migration to Crimea and Birobidzhan, as well as for groups of young people to send to Birobidzhan tractor courses. In 1928, the first trains with Jews arrived in Birobidzhan - this was the first appearance of Jewish people on this territory. The city population began to increase despite the fact that many migrants returned to their initial locations in the early stage of resettlement. This was largely caused by the unpreparedness to receive migrants, interruptions in the supply of consumer goods, and climatic conditions. Yet, resettled Jews united into cooperatives and communes, setting up industrial and agricultural enterprises.
The first tasks of the OZET organization were to draw public attention to the plans for settlement in the Soviet Union and abroad, to supply Jewish collective farms with machinery, and to raise funds for the implementation of these plans by organizing lotteries. OZET’s members were mostly non-Jews who promoted the settlement campaign and opposed anti-Semitism. Later, representatives of OZET actively participated in the dekulakization and collectivization campaigns in Jewish colonies. In 1926, Jewish politician Shimen Dimanstein (1886-1937) was appointed the director of OZET, and the propaganda activity of the society was straightened. This was soon followed by the publication of numerous books in Yiddish and Russian.
The book includes statistical data on Jewish demography on the territory of the USSR, an approximate plan for resettlement in the colonization fund of the Ukrainian SSR in 1925, legal issues about immigrants, tasks of KOMZET, etc.
A folded map of the Jewish settlements in Crimea (in Yiddish) and a cut-off leaf with a description of several Jewish colonies in Belarus and Ukraine, illustrated with miniature maps (in Russian), are loosely inserted. It is highly likely that the first map was taken from the Yiddish edition of Gol’de’s Jewish Peasants in Crimea (1931).

Worldcat shows paper copies located in LoC, Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, Texas, Indiana Washington Universities, Yivo Institute, Hebrew Union College.

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