The fact that the administrative authorities of the Jewish region of Kalinindorf in the Ukraine have been considering plans for depriving it of its specifically Jewish character and converting it back into a general region, because so large a number of the Jewish settlers there have left and gone back to their old homes in the townships, is revealed in an official decision of the Ukrainian Communist Party, and of the Central Comzet (Government Commission for Jewish Settlement) to carry out a radical re-organisation of the Kalinindorf Regional Soviet. Changes are also to be made in the All-Ukrainian Comzet staff, which is accused of failure to supervise properly the work in Kalinindorf, thus bringing about the state of affairs there which has resulted in a mass desertion of the Jewish colonies.
The All-Ukrainian Comzet, it has also been decided, will not be allowed henceforth to work independently, but will be placed under the strict control of the Central Comzet in Moscow.
Two high officials in the Kalinindorf Jewish Region have been dismissed on the charge that they were the instigators of the plan to abolish the Jewish character of Kalinindorf.
The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets is urged by the Central Comzet in Moscow to impeach the present Regional Soviet in Kalinindorf, and to appoint a new Soviet, and also to send down a special investigating commission to Kalinindorf to establish what steps can be taken to bring back to Kalinindorf those Jews who have left the land in this region.
Out of 1,916 Jewish families who were settled in the Kalinindorf region, only 350 have remained, the Comzet states officially, and even these, it says, may leave their fields if immediate relief is not provided.
At urgent sessions of the Ukrainian Communist Party and of the Central Comzet in Moscow, it has been decided to ask the Central Government to despatch immediately 500 horses and 15 tractors to Kalinindorf in order to save the spring sowing campaign.
The Kalinindorf Regional Communist Party has issued a statement denouncing the plan for converting the Jewish region into a non-Jewish region, and ordering a mobilisation of the Communist youth in the region to conduct intensive work in the fields to make up for the loss of sown area caused by the lack of field workers due to the desertion of the settlers.
The Yiddish Communist organ “Emess” here says that if Kalinindorf, which is the first Jewish region not only in the Ukraine but in the whole of the Soviet Union, ceases to be a Jewish region, it will be a blow at all the other Jewish autonomous regions. The “Emess” attacks the Central Comzet in Moscow for permitting such a situation to develop, which, it says, discredits the entire Jewish colonisation work. To bring the Kalinindorf Jewish region back to normal condition is a matter of importance, it declares, not only to Jews, but to the entire Soviet Republic.
The situation is also very serious in the Stalindorf Jewish region, the “Emess” reports. 40,000 hectares of land were to have been sown there, according to plans, but only 20,000 hectares have actually been sown.
In order to encourage fresh Jewish colonists to go out to the Jewish regions, the Commissariat of Railways has agreed to make drastic fare reductions in favour of Jews migrating to Kalinindorf, Stalindorf, Crimea, or Bureya.
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.
