The Problems of the Jews in Russia

The Jews of Russia are faced with three principal problems, antisemitism, colonisation, and the rehabilitation of the declassed, Mr. Elias Tobenkin, the American author and journalist, who has just arrived here from Moscow, where he has been acting for the past ten months as the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency said today.

With regard to antisemitism, he stated, it is taking the form which antisemitism has taken in Germany, and to a certain extent in the United States. The Jew is no longer despised in Russia as an inferior. He is hated for the position which he occupies. The ability of the Jew inevitably brings him to the front, and jealousy is inescapable. It makes life very unpleasant for Jewish workmen in factories, and for Jewish officials, but since the Government rules with an iron hand, and any race or national discrimination is a crime, antisemitism can never become more than an inconvenience. It has no political possibility, and the Jews will have to get used to it until such time as the Russian people outgrow it, as they will have to outgrow many other deficiences in training and culture.

Mr. Tobenkin thought that altogether too much was made of Jewish Colonisation in Russia. It is not changing the Jew, he said. Jewish colonisation was doing excellent work for the declassed Jew. It was a sort of last resort for him. The declassed Jew by going on the land rehabilitated himself politically. His own life was practically over, but his children gained in status by being on the land, and it subsequently would help them to obtain an education and to go into other employment. The colonisation movement had suffered a severe set-back since the collectivisation of farming had begun. The Jew was essentially an individualist. When he took the crop into his own barn, he had a feeling of security. Now, that he did not see his own crop, his interest in farming was gone. It was merely a means to an end, the end being to change his status from a declassed man to a citizen.

The conditions under which the Jews work in the Crimea are infinitely worse, he said, than the conditions under which pioneers on the land had ever worked in America, or in any other country, and the basic reason was that the man did not know what he is working for, nor for whom he is working. The Comzet, which is the organ of the Government directing Jewish colonisation, is interested in showing that the Jews are excellent material in the building of the Socialist state. But this left the people could, their aim being to establish themselves economically and politically. There was no water in many of the Jewish villages, and men had to go for miles to get water. Promises had been made by Soviet officials to improve these conditions, but things go on unchanged. The only ray of light in the situation is that thrown by the Joint Distribution Committee, which is functioning with un-Russian regularity. The Ort, too, is doing considerable personal service.

In recent months, Mr. Tobenkin said, the Soviet Government had tried to reinstate the Nep on a small scale, but it had not met with success. Thousands of Jews have been declassed for engaging in small trading, despite the fact that this had been declared legitimate. Thousands of others are serving prison sentences because they could not meet the high taxes which Government officials had often arbitrarily placed upon them. They had learned their lesson, and would henceforth engage only in such occupations as have unequivocal official sanction, even if they pay literally starvation wages. They would rather starve with security, than be prosperous and fear a sudden change of Government policy, and consequent imprisonment or exile to Siberia.