Jewish Settlement Industrialisation and Cultural Work in Soviet Countries: Largest Soviet Electrical

The largest electricity works in the Soviet Union, the Gosudarstvenny Electrichesky Trust, known popularly by its abbreviated form as the Get, has agreed to sponsor the plans of the Jewish Colonisation bodies, the Ozet and the Comzet in the Jewish settlement area of Bureya, in Siberia, in all matters affecting electrical installation and provision of power.

The Jewish Colonisation Society (Ozet) handed the J.T.A. representative here to-day its programme of cultural work to be undertaken on behalf of the Jewish colonists in the coming year on which a sum of half a million roubles is to be spent. The first item on the programme is the publication of a series of popular agronomic text books in Yiddish, which are expected to be a great help to the colonists. The Ozet will also establish libraries in the principal collectives which will be stocked with the latest literature. The colonists will be induced to take up musical activity and to organise orchestras from among themselves to give concerts in the collectives. Two cultural centres will be built, one in the Bureya and the other in the Crimea.

The Ozet is developing plans for increasing its membership from 300,000 to three-quarter of a million in the course of the coming year. Large numbers of non-Jews are reported to be taking up membership in the Ozet, as a means of demonstrating their goodwill to the Jews and their desire to fraternise with them.

The Comzet announces that arrangements have been completed for 3,000 Jewish boys between the ages of 15 and 18 to enter the special railroad schools, where they will be taught various branches of railroad work on which no Jews were previously given employment in Russia. 10,000 Jewish boys are also assigned to various trade schools where they will work under Government supervision. The students will be selected from the Jewish towns in the Ukraine and White Russia.