Important Changes in Soviet Government’s Commission for Jewish Settlement: Old Administration Remove

M. Abraham Mereszin, who has been the actual head of the Government Commission for Jewish Settlement (Comzet) for the past seven years, since the day of its formation in 1924, is resigning from his post, and with him are resigning M. Golde, the chief agronomist of the Comzet, and M. Tchemerisky, who was the Secretary of the now dissolved Yevsekzies (Jewish Sections of the Communist Party), and who conducted the political side of the Comzet work.

M. Mereszin’s retirement, according to reliable information, is the result of the complaints of incompetence made against the Comzet in respect of its conduct of the migration work and of the various forms of Jewish economic settlement, which are now to be carried on on a bigger scale demanding more rapid activity and bigger organisational scope than that of which M. Mereszin and his colleagues have shown themselves capable. During the past year, the Jewish Communist press has been constantly attacking the Comzet leaders, accusing them of failure to carry out their job. About a fortnight ago, on January 14th., the Yiddish Communist daily “Emess” published an editorial in which it made a violent attack on the leaders of the Comzet, declaring that they were endangering the whole of the migration campaign for the coming spring, and even the carrying out of the decision of the Government for the formation of a Jewish national autonomous unit in Bureya. The leaders of the Comzet were accused of bureaucracy, opportunism, incompetence, dilly-dallying and complete lack of system.

The editorial was aimed chiefly at M. Mereszin, and it was suggested at that time that big changes in the apparatus of the Central Comzet must follow. M. Mereszin has also met with powerful opposition of late inside the Comzet itself, from M. Dimantstein, M. Weinstein (Rachmiel) and other leaders, with the result that his position has become untenable and his resignation could not be avoided.

WILL BE SUCCEEDED BY M. BORIS TROTSKY

M. Mereszin’s place will be taken by M. Boris Trotsky, an agronomist, who is a member of the Communist Party and used to work in the dairy centre in Moscow, and has now been working in the sugar centre in the Ukraine.

The Comzet apparatus will be reorganised. The Comzet administration will be extended. The plenary body of the Comzet will be enlarged, including representatives of those Government Commissariats with which the Comzet is associated in its work, such as the Commissariats of Agriculture and of Finance, and representatives of the Collective Farm Centre. The plenary body will meet several times in the year, and will lay down the general lines of work. The executive work will be carried on by a board of seven members headed by M. Smidovitch, the Vice-President of the Soviet Union, who remains Chairman of the Comzet.