Intermountain Jewish News

SOVIET PLANS FOR
JEWS EXPLAINED

Kalenin Gives Reasons for Pro-
motion of Jewish Land
Settlement

New York-(J. T. A.)-Fourteen reasons for the inauguration on the part of the Soviet government of the work of settling the Jews in Russia on the land were given by Michael Kalenin, president of the Union of Soviet Republics, in a statement quoted by Walter Duranty, the Moscow correspondent of the New York "Times."

In Mr. Duranty's despatch appearing in the "Times" of yesterday, we read:

"The settlement of the Jewish population on the land in Crimea has caused grumbling among the peasants locally, and a young Communist named Ovchinnikoff has written a letter to the president of the Soviet Union, Michael Kalenin, asking how he shall answer such complaints.

"M. Ovchinnikoff says the peasants declare:

"Ten thousand of our sons and brothers died to win the Crimea from Wrangel, but if we want land we are forced to go to Siberia because it is being given to the Jews."

"Mr. Kalenin replies in a four column article in the Isvestia.

"He declares the complaints are due to the general impression that the Crimea is a land of milk and honey and eternal blue sky, etc., while the facts are different. There are actually 2,360,000 dessiatines (a dessiatine is equal to 2.702 acres) of vacant land in the Crimea, of which the Jews received only 60,000 dessiatines--a less amount than the former property of the rich Jewish landlord, Baron Gunsberg, which was confiscated by the Soviet and distributed among the Russian peasants.

"M. Kalenin puts emphasis on the following points:

1. "Anti-Semitism is an evil of Czarist times deliberately fostered by the Imperial Government for political reasons.

2. "The position of the Jews in those days was so intolerable that with few exceptions they were practically without rights.

3. "This is contrary to the spirit and practice of the Soviet Government which gives equal rights and autonomy to all nationalities in Russia.

4. "Though their numbers justify an autonomous State for the Jews, like other nationalities, this is now impossible, because they live in different areas.

5. "Therefore the committee formed in their case was only to supplement this lack of autonomy by helping them to settle on the land.

6. "The Jewish population was never allowed to work the land before the revolution, for then it was almost wholly composed of artisans or small traders.

7. "It occupies areas that suffered particularly from imperial and civil wars and fell prey to the most hideous pogroms during that period. Having no land, the Jews suffered worse than the Russians during the "hungry years."

8. "The spread of cooperative and state business tends to take away the livelihood of the artisans and small traders.

9. "It is therefore necessary to settle the Jews on the land, to which they have a right no less than the other peoples of Russia.

10. "Although the Jews did good service in the Communist cause, because the larger proportion of them were driven into the revolution by the intolerable Czarist oppression, it is untrue--for the reasons given above--that the Soviet Government is 'favoring' them by granting Crimean land.

11. "The factories, buildings, money, etc., of rich Jews were confiscated by the revolution no less than such property of the rest of the bourgeois.

12. "Jewish Communists living among the Jewish population feel strongly that their people should be settled on the land in Russia rather than become 'the tools for capitalist exploitation' in Palestine.

13. "The Soviet Government shares this view.

14. "The reason why the Jews settled in South Russia rather than in Siberia, which is now being actively colonized by Russians, is that they were used to a warmer climate and were unfitted for the rigors of the Siberian cold."

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