Jewish Soviet Papers Attacked by “pravda” for Uprooting Jews from Towns and Sending Them on Land in

The “Pravda” has come out to-day with a strongly – worded criticism against the three principal Jewish newspapers in the Soviet Union, the “Emess” of Moscow, the “Stern” of Charkoff, the capital of the Ukraine, and the “Oktiabr” of Minsk, the capital of White Russia, complaining that they have been conducting a wrong policy in the recent emigration campaign from the Jewish townships to the land settlement areas in the Crimea and Bureya. The “Emess” is sharply criticised for its policy of encouraging Jewish families who were already settled in their home towns in organised collectives to leave their collectives and emigrate. This was a grave mistake, the “Pravda” says. Only declassed Jews not yet attached to any sort of collective should have been sent out to the Crimea, while those who were half-established in their own home-towns should have been allowed to remain there.

The “Stern” likewise conducted a veritable crusade against the local collectives, the “Pravda” complains, ordering them to be broken up, and the members sent to the Crimea and the Bureya. This, it declares, is a direct perversion of the Leninist Nationalist policy which guarantees every man the opportunity and the right to fuse with the economic life of the Soviet Union in his home Republic. The Minsk “Oktiabr” avoided this mistake of breaking up the local collectives in order to obtain candidates to emigrate to the Crimea or Bureya, the “Pravda” says, but it started the emigration campaign late and did not conduct it with sufficient energy.

Altogether, the “Pravda” blames the Jewish press for the unpreparedness of the Comzet and the Ozet in receiving the emigrants, which resulted in hundreds of them having to go back to their old homes in the towns. It was the business of these newspapers to foresee such a catastrophe, the “Pravda” claims, and to urge that the proper preventive measures should be taken.