Soviet Central Executive Committee Orders Reinstatement of Central Russian Jews’ Election Rights, Th

The Praesidium of the Soviet Union Central Executive Committee, the highest government body in Russia, today resolved to reinstate thousands of Jewish ex-traders in their election rights, thus giving them a new possibility of entering the collectives, joining the cooperatives and not being expelled from the artisans’ cooperatives or loan societies or dwellings.

This decision of the Zik, as the Central Executive Committee is known, is extremely important, for it means tremendous relief for the declassed Jews and on the other hand is a body-blow for the Jewish Communists’ policy of liquidating the Jewish ex-traders as was done with the kulaks, or wealthy peasants.

The official text of the Zik’s decision says that those to be reinstated in their election rights should be first those Jewish ex-traders who had trade permits of the first and second categories, meaning street peddlers and small storekeepers; second, Jews who participated in the civil war as partisans; third, members of the Red Army; fourth, those who had relatives in the Red Army as well as orphans of those killed or seriously injured during the anti-Jewish pogroms; fifth, all those of the so-called “lishentzy,” who never exploited or hired labor and were not connected with the Jewish religion as rabbis, teachers, mohels or ritual slaughterers.

The decision says “all these should be granted the full right to enter the collective farms, artisans’ cooperatives and loan cooperatives.” It also instructs the officials to pay more attention to the unemployed Jewish artisans to enable them to join productive labor. Individual Jewish artisans and also members of their families are to be accepted into the factories and industrial enterprises providing they never exploited or hired labor when they were artisans.

While this decision of the Zik affects only those Jews living in Central Russia, it will undoubtedly have the proper effect on the situation of the declassed Jews in the Ukraine and White Russia.