to these horrors. Further outrages were committed by the Polish troops which invaded Soviet territory in the spring of 1920 and by the soldiery under the antiSoviet Russian military leader Balakhovich, who operated chiefly in White Russia. Even after the preliminary peace treaty with Poland was signed (October 12, 1920), Balakhovich's troops continued to raid White Russia from their base across the Polish border, and attacks on Jewish communities lasted into 1921.

Wherever the civil war was fought, the Whites identified the Jews with the Bolsheviks and singled them out for attack. In the summer of 1919 the troops of Admiral Kolchak massacred the Jews, chiefly war refugees and émigrés from Soviet-controlled areas, in the towns of Western Siberia through which they passed as they fell back before the Red forces. Such undisciplined elements in the Ukrainian army units as shared the anti-Jewish animus of their enemy were severely punished, and the Commissariat of War maintained a department for propaganda against anti-Semitism.

From the first, anti-Semitism was severely condemned by the Bolsheviks. Since the Whites chose to use it as an anti-Soviet weapon, it became a symbol of counter-revolution. In Soviet-held territory the Jews were safe from looting and slaughter. Small wonder, then, that many Jewish youths enlisted in the Red Army. The total number of anti-Jewish outbreaks probably exceeded 2,000. Between 1917 and 1921 there were 1,520 pogroms in 911 localities in the Ukraine and White Russia alone. A Soviet writer recently stated that 90,000 to 100,000 persons lost their lives in the pogroms. Other estimates of the number of slaugh

Type of homes erected in the new Jewish farm colonies, on the Russian prairies, with loans furnished by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

(Left) The Russian colony named after Felix M. Warburg, American philanthropist. (Above) Felix M. Warburg photographed on a visit to the colony

tered range from 75,000 to 200,000; those of the number of orphaned children vary between 100,000 and 300,000. In the years of the civil war, mortality among the Jews increased sevenfold. It is said that 700,000 persons suffered property damages running into billions. Thus, of the 6,707 houses owned by Jews in twenty-one townlets in the province of Kiev before the pogroms, only 1,556 were habitable in 1923. The villages and smaller towns being the least safe, about 500,000 persons deserted them for the cities: fortyeight towns inhabited in 1897 by 87,777 Jews held only 17,089 in 1920; the Jewish population of a number of towns in the region of Kiev was reduced from 66,000 before the civil war to 21,000 in 1923. Because of the conditions which prevailed in Soviet Russia, about 200,000 Jews are believed to have escaped to neighboring countries in 1918 to 1921. In Bessarabia alone there were 73,000 such refugees.

That more Jews were not exterminated in those years was due mainly to the protection offered by the Red Army. In out-of-the-way places where only small guerrilla bands were active, Jewish communities were sometimes able to defend themselves by force of arms. In rare instances safety could be purchased for money. Occasionally peasants who attacked the Jews in distant villages scrupled to molest local Jews. Occasionally, too, in the cities, the Christian population, chiefly workingmen, shielded the Jews at the risk of their lives.

3. The NEP and Economic Rehabilitation. The recuperative process which set in with the end of the civil war was furthered by the New Economic Policy (NEP) adopted in the spring of 1921. Private commerce and small-scale private industry were again lawful occupations, and Jewish businessmen hastened to take advantage of the new opportunities. Here and there trade in the small towns was restored to its prewar level, and Jewish shopkeepers made their appearance in cities from which they had previously been debarred. By 1924 nearly one-third of all the stores in Moscow were owned by Jews. Artisans were slower in regaining lost ground.

The new policy had not been in existence for more than two years when the state, while nominally tolerating private enterprise, began to wage war on it. The business man, whether shopkeeper or small manufacturer, found himself faced with ruinous taxes and fighting a losing battle against government-fostered consumers' and producers' cooperatives. Under the circumstances the economic outlook of a considerable portion of the Jewish population was exceedingly dark. The occupational structure of the Jewish group five

The relatively small percentage of wage earners and the large proportion of white-collar workers are noteworthy. It should be noted that many members of the liberal professions were listed as employees. Many shopkeepers and artisans were half starving, and for the most part the traders were actually or potentially déclassé, together with the unemployed and the parasitic group of those without definite occupation.

The Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entziklopedia (1932), with supplementary data in the Malaia Sovetskaya Entziklopedia (1935), includes the following statistical table pertaining to the Jews in the Soviet Union:

CATEGORY

Wage Labor

Including

A grandfather from Vitebsk who was among the vanguard of Jewish pioneers in Soviet Russia

1932-33

830,000

380,000

450,000

200,000

Economically active (self-supporting)

As time went by, the situation tended to worsen. The shopkeepers were being squeezed out relentlessly and there was widespread unemployment among the artisans. By 1928 large sections of the Jewish population were on the verge of starvation. Some of the déclassé were finding a place for themselves in the economic system, and migration into the interior helped to relieve the misery in the former Pale of Settlement.

For some years authorities had been giving thought to the plight of the Jewish masses, and plans were

An early village Soviet of the Jews at Rottendorf

being formulated for their economic rehabilitation. A place was to be made in the industries for the unemployed and they were also to be drawn into agriculture. The latter method of solving the Jewish problem early found enthusiastic supporters both in and out of the ranks of the Communist Party, at home as well as abroad. A trend toward farming arose quite spontaneously in the early years of the revolution in the semi-agrarian townlets of the Ukraine and White Russia. Jewish families took up small parcels on the nationalized land situated near their homes and engaged in subsistence farming. Some families from thickly populated sections pulled up stakes and, acting on their own initiative, set out in search of land available for cultivation. Before the end of 1924, about 600 such families had migrated to northern Crimea, where they leased 50,000 acres. The old agricultural colonies established in the early years of the 19th cent., which had been wrecked during the civil war, were by that time again in working condition.

And then the government stepped into the picture. In July, 1924, the Central Executive Committee of the White Russian Republic ordered the proper agencies to satisfy the requests of the Jews equally with those of the agricultural population, in distributing the free

land, "regardless of whether the Jews had previously engaged in farming." This was a special privilege, since as a rule the law gave priority to the claims of the peasantry. A similar regulation was adopted by the government of the Ukraine. To promote the cause of Jewish agriculture, the central authorities in August of the same year created a Committee for the Settlement of Jews on the Land (Komzet). A year later an auxiliary body in the form of a voluntary association (Ozet) was set up. Financial and technical assistance was also offered by foreign relief organizations, notably the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation organized in July, 1924, by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

Land for the Jewish settlements was allocated in the Ukraine, in northern Crimea and, from 1928 on, in the Birobidjan district of the Far Eastern Region. The settlers were recruited from the artisan class, but also from among the ruined shopkeepers and other persons without an occupation. They obtained their allotments free and received financial assistance and technical aid from the government and from foreign organizations. At first colonization made rapid headway. In August, 1924, when Komzet was set up, over 17,000 Jewish families were engaged in farming, working some 400,000 acres. Within three years the agricultural population doubled, while its holdings increased threefold. It was estimated that by 1931 the number of Jews who lived off the land stood at over a quarter of a million. Thereafter some of the settlements went under, the population of others dwindled, and new settlers took up the land allotments in decreasing numbers. Alone the Birobidjan project was nursed along. In 1938 the foreign relief organizations and Komzet were liquidated. That year there were throughout the land over 600 Jewish collective farms embracing some 25,000 families. A year later some 500 collective farms were mentioned as the sum total. It is noteworthy that Jewish farming was almost wholly collectivized. That 25,000 Jewish families lived on collective farms on January 1, 1939, is a statement made by a Soviet economist (L. Zinger) in a study published in Moscow (1941). The original program of Komzet provided for the settling on the land of 100,000 families or half a million persons, and there was even talk of a million settlers. In 1932 to 1933 there were 190,000 Jews on collective farms.

The proletarization of the Jewish masses was, of course, a consummation devoutly hoped for by the Communists. Trade schools were thrown open to Jewish youths, and some of the déclassé elements were retrained for work in industry and transportation. As long as the country was in the grip of an economic depression, however, openings for the Jews were few and far between. The inauguration of the first Five Year Plan in 1928 altered the situation. Before long, many starving artisans found work in machine shops, refineries, iron works, mines, quarries and on railways -fields from which residential disabilities had formerly debarred them. At the same time the industries in which Jews had been habitually employed, such as the needle trades, were mechanized, small workshops giving way to large factories. At the beginning of 1939 some 700,000 Jews, about 40% of them women, are said to have been occupied in socialized large-scale industry and in the building trades. By that time about 80% of all the Jewish artisans without hired help had ceased to be private businessmen, having joined producers' artels (cooperatives). As a result, they were treated favorably, on a par with wage-earners.

There was yet another occupation which seems to

have played a larger role in the economic rehabilitation of the Jews than either farming or industrial work, and this in spite of the fact that they were not officially encouraged to enter it. It has been estimated, perhaps too hastily, that at the beginning of 1939 half of all the gainfully employed Jews were white-collar workers and members of the liberal professions. Fully twothirds of these persons were government employees. Jews began to enter government service in the early years of the revolution, when Soviet institutions were being boycotted by the civil servants of the old regime. The staffs were repeatedly cut and a tendency arose to man the government apparatus with local people proficient in the local language. The Jewish share in the liberal professions was particularly disproportionate, which may be seen from the fact that in 1935 the number of students of Jewish birth in the Soviet institutions of higher learning exceeded that of Russians, White Russians and Ukrainians respectively seven, eight, and ten times.

A clear view of the participation of the Jews in the liberal professions may be derived from the following table compiled by a Soviet economist in 1941 (the figures relate to the beginning of 1939):

Engineers, Architects, Agronomists and other
less highly trained technicians
Doctors and Nurses

School Teachers

Scientists and Scholars

(including university instructors)

Journalists, Librarians, Club leaders, and

the like

Artists (and writers)

87,000

52,000

46,000

7,000

30,000 17,000

Women were well represented in these occupational

groups.

Individual scientists such as Abraham Joffe, the physicist, Alexander Frumkin, the physical chemist (both members of the Academy of Sciences), and Lina Stern, the physiologist, achieved high distinction in their respective fields.

By the middle of the 1930's unemployment among the Jews was practically wiped out. The Jewish question in its economic aspect was solved. Yet the balance between manual and intellectual occupations characteristic of an economically healthy group was apparently not achieved. The social structure of the Jewish people, as revealed by the 1939 census, was set forth by a Soviet economist in the following table (the figures are approximate):

The invasion of the government bureaus by the Jews was cited by President Kalinin in 1926 as the cause of the spread of anti-Semitism among the intellectuals. Anti-Jewish feeling had survived the civil war and made itself felt in various ways during the NEP. The appearance of Jewish workmen in industries, where they had hitherto been unknown, unhappily resulted in the further spread of the ancient prejudice. Sporadic manifestations of it were most virulent toward the end of the 1920's. From the outset, antiSemitism was vigorously combatted by the government. It is noteworthy that, according to Article 59 (Paragraph 7) of the Penal Code of the RSFSR, adopted

in 1926, a two-year prison term (under certain circumstances, capital punishment) is the penalty for the propaganda of national or religious enmity or discord, and for the preparation, circulation or storing of literature with these tendencies. The principle underlying this law was incorporated into the Constitution of the Union, adopted in 1936, which declares that "the preaching of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred or contempt is punishable by law" (Article 123).

4. The Political Situation. As previously shown, the Bolshevik regime confirmed the emancipation of the Russian Jews brought about by the Provisional Government. The Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia announced "the abolition of all national and national-religious privileges and restrictions" (Article 3). This principle was incorporated into the Soviet constitutions, including the one named after Stalin, adopted in 1936, and was respected. The Stalin Constitution introduced universal suffrage for all elections. Prior to its adoption, however, suffrage had been denied to employers of labor and private traders as well as to persons living on unearned income and to professional clergy, and with disfranchisement went other disabilities. The proportion of persons engaged in private business was unusually large in the Jewish group. This discrimination, however, was directed against a social, not a racial, or religious group. When a Jew who was a chastnik (private businessman) joined a collective farm or an artisans' cooperative, when he became a wage-earner or a salaried man, he automatically acquired the status of a full-fledged citizen.

The above-mentioned Declaration of the Rights of

Airplane which delivers daily mail to Stalindorf, center of the Jewish National District in Soviet Ukraine

the Peoples of Russia pledged the government to ensure "the free development of national minorities and ethnic groups inhabiting the territory of Russia" (Article 4). The minorities were granted political autonomy within the Soviet Union, organized as a federation of states each representing a nationality bound up with a definite territory. In this scheme there was no room for an extra-territorial organization which would embrace a group like the Jews, who were scattered over the entire country and did not form a majority in any considerable part of it. The fact that they were a separate cultural group and indeed a quasi-national entity could not, however, be overlooked. On January 20, 1918, a Jewish department (Yevkom) was set up under the short-lived Commissariat of Nationalities, and a Jewish bureau was formed in the Commissariat of Education, while the Communist Party established a network of Jewish sections with a central bureau. The chief purpose of these agencies was to spread Bolshevism among the Jewish masses, to promote the class struggle within the group and otherwise to mold its life nearer to the Communist pattern. In 1922 there were said to be less than 20,000 Jewish members of the Communist Party (5.2% of the total membership); in 1927 and 1930 the respective numbers were approximately 50,000 and 76,000 (4.3% and 3.8% of the total); in 1932 (the last year for which figures are available) there were 125,000 party members and candidates. After that the number probably grew larger. Only a fraction of them made up the Jewish sections. The sections were abolished in 1930.

As an ethnic group apart the Jews, like the other minorities, have the right to self-government, effected strictly in conformance with the Soviet laws and under the tutelage of the Communist Party. In localities where they form a majority they are permitted, indeed encouraged, to form their own village and town soviets. These are Jewish in the sense that the area under their jurisdiction has a predominantly Jewish population and that the administrative work is carried on in Yiddish. In 1927 there was one Jewish regional soviet in the Kherson district and there were 133 Jewish soviets of the lowest category in the Ukraine and White Russia. Within half a dozen years their number increased to 224 and the number of regional soviets to five (three in the Ukraine and two in the Crimea). On January 1, 1931, there were also sixty-seven courts of law where business was conducted in Yiddish.

Birobidjan is represented in the Soviet of Nationalities, which in 1939 had 15 Jews among 574 deputies. Certain Soviet leaders were not satisfied with the