A project to convert the Kalinindorf Jewish autonomous region into a Ukrainian one, is provoking a great deal of resentment among the Jewish Communist leaders in Moscow.
Five years ago, when Kalinindorf was proclaimed the first Jewish autonomous region in the Soviet Union, about 2,000 Jewish families were to be found there. Later this number increased to about 3,000.
The rise in the number of Jewish colonists would have no doubt continued in Kalinindorf, if not for the collectivization. The forced collectivization, which compelled the Jewish settlers to give up their personal properties and their entire livestock, was the first signal for the Jewish colonists to leave the land and en masse to return to the towns.
The strict administrative measures imposed upon the colonists by the Jewish Communist administration contributed another factor to which the desertion from the Jewish colonies may be ascribed. Strange as it may seem, soon after Kalinindorf was proclaimed Jewish, the Jewish colonists there came to the conclusion that they would prefer to have their region not autonomous and to be under a general administration. The administration of Jewish Communists in Kalinindorf has inflicted upon the Jewish settlers more restrictions than a non-Jewish Communist administration would.
This desertion later developed even on a larger scale wdhen , due to the Five-Year Industrialization Plan, many colonists found it easier to work in the cities than to labor on the land.
The series of long and effective persecutions which the Jewish Communists instituted against a great number of Jewish colonists immediately after Kalinindorf was proclaimed autonomous and after they took charge of the administration, has made it difficult for old settlers to remain and for new settlers to come. The Jewish Communist administration wanted to display its zeal and show to Moscow that it is first with the collectivization. Having this ambition, it proclaimed that “Kalinindorf must be collectivized fully 100 percent.” The measures applied to collectivize Kalinindorf “fully 100 percent” have, however, brought the result that only those who had no hope of finding work in the cities—only the weak and the old—remained on the soil. The others left the collectives. They left their property, their houses, and proceeded to neighboring and even to distant cities, displaying no desire ever to return.
With the fields deserted and with no
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
