An appeal to Jews abroad to aid the Jews of Bukhara in agriculture and with machines as they are helping the declassed Jews elsewhere in Russia was made by leading Jews here to the Moscow correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency who is investigating the economic, social, political and religious status of the Bukharian Jews under the Soviets.
The largest part of the Bukharian Jews is now declassed for all of them are former traders. Although the Soviet government is giving them land and organizing artisans’ cooperatives they are uninstructed in agriculture and do not have the necessary machines for artisans.
The land which the Soviet government has allotted to the Bukharian Jews in Samarkand and other districts is fertile and suitable for cotton growing and corn but lacking the counsel of agronomists they soon get disappointed and think they are unsuited to work on the land. A representative of the Uzbekistan government told the investigator that over 30 Jewish agricultural cooperatives exist in Bukhara with a membership of more than 2,000, including 45 Jewish families who came to Bukhara from Ukrainia and White Russia after the Revolution.
There are also forty Jewish artisans’ cooperatives that employ 4,000 artisans. They have sufficient raw material such as linen and silk but they do not have machinery. The vice-premier of Uzbekistan assured the investigator that 5,000 more Jewish families would be settled on the land in the near future. He said too that Jewish women in large numbers are now employed in the Bukharian silk factories where they are learning to be weavers.
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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.
