Kalinin Did Not Mention “jewish Republic” in His Moscow Address, Text Shows

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The interpretations of several American newspaper correspondents, particularly of the New York “Times,” the New York “Evening Post” and the New York “American,” corncerning the address of Michael Kalinin, president of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, before the Jewish land settlement conference in Moscow were inaccurate, the full report of Kalinin’s address in the Moscow newspapers which have arrived here shows.

The reports of the American newspaper correspondents gave the impression that the president of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics in his address definitely spoke of the sanction of the Soviet Government for the creation of a Jewish republic within the Union.

While it is true that Kalinin, in his address, spoke of the existence of “Jewish territorial units” and laid particular emphasis on the national tendency of the Jewish colonization movement in Soviet Russia, and while it is also true that the proposal, made by Dr. A. Bragin on behalf of the nonpartisan group at the Ozet conference, for the adoption of “a Jewish republic” as the slogan for the colonization movement was widely discussed at the conference, the fact remains that in all his address Kalinin did not mention the word “republic.”

The discussion of the proposal ended at the Ozet conference with the acceptance of a resolution in which the word “republic” is not mentioned. The resolution merely says that “the compact settlement of Jews on the land leads to the solution of the national question in Russia.”

The exact text of the reference of Kalinin to this phase of the problem was as follows:

“The Jewish people has faced the great task of preserving its nationality. For the accomplishment of this task it is necessary to transform a considerable part of the Jewish population into a compact peasant agricultural population number at least 100,000 people. At present small Jewish territorial units are being created. These units are very small, it is true, but some times the smallest contains in itself something of the great. We admit that the Jewish villages and settlement districts are very small in number, but for the Jewish nation, they are of the greatest importance. The Jews possess not much of their own country yet, but there already exists Jewish districts. There is already a Jewish territory. The foundation has already been laid. Before, the Jews had only a very few fortunate ones who owned land by the favor of the Czars. Today the Jewish masses are being transformed into land workers possessing their own territorial units.”