Jewish Colonisation Movement in Russia: Agrojoint Cuts Down Its Programme and Hands over Its Tractor

The reconstituted Comzet (Government Commission for Jewish Settlement) considered and approved in principle at its first meeting held here the plan of work for 1932 submitted to it by the Agrojoint, the instrument of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee of America in its colonisation work in Russia, the effect of which is to reduce and change considerably the scope of the work hither to carried on by the Agrojoint in the Crimea.

Beginning this year the Agrojoint will take no further part in field work in the Crimea, leaving this entirely to the State machine tractor stations which serve the non-Jewish collective farms. The Agrojoint is in this connection transferring 70 tractors, 25 combines with ploughs, and other agricultural machinery, as well as its repairing workshops in the Crimea, to the machine tractor stations in the Crimea.

The Agrojoint will also withdraw from building work. It will, however, first complete the building of 350 houses which it started erecting last year in the Jewish settlements of the Crimea.

The Agrojoint will henceforth concentrate on the development of more intensive cultivation, and of the higher branches of agriculture, such as irrigated orchard growing, vine growing, poultry farming, sheep breeding etc. More than 900,000 roubles will be spent this year by the Agrojoint on gardening, 400,000 roubles on vine growing, over 400,000 roubles on poultry farming, 160,000 roubles on sheep rearing, and in addition a considerable sum will be allocated for the development of artisan crafts in the Jewish collective farms of the Crimea, in which the O.R.T. Federation is also participating.

The Agrojoint is winding up its work in the Crimea because in the first place, with collectivsation in the Jewish land settlements of the Crimea effected almost 100 per cent., there is no longer any need of a special organisation to serve the Jewish migrant and in the second place, the funds which are now being assigned by the State for Jewish transmigration are so considerable that the funds of the Agrojoint no longer play so important a part as they once did, and the Agrojoint feels that it is better for it to use its funds where the Government aid is not yet adequate and where its own help is therefore more essential.

Apart from the work in which the Agrojoint has been engaged with its own funds, it has in the past several years also been carrying on an extensive activity on funds allocated to it by the Government. The Agrojont has now found it necessary, however, to restrict itself to working only with its own funds and has refused a sum of six million roubles which was offered it by the Government for the purpose of its work in the Crimea this year.

The Agrojoint is also anxious to reduce its commitments in the Crimea because it wishes to make gradual provision for the liquidation of its work in the Soviet Union, probably in the next two years, and it is therefore transferring important branches of its previous work to the respective Soviet organisations.