Soviet-Jewish Farmers, 1935–1941

Abstract

Up to the autumn of 1941, Soviet-Jewish farmers plowed the fields of northern Crimea, not only in practice but also in more abstract forms. Under Joseph Stalin, millions of Soviet citizens as well as Jews in the agricultural colonies lived in horror. This chapter explores how the Jewish colonists endure these turbulent times, with and without Joseph Rosen's American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). It looks at the impact of Stalin's political purges on Soviet-Jewish farmers and suggests that the purges ultimately had a less profound effect on the Jewish kolkhozes than the state's shift to industry over farming. The chapter also discusses the imposition of state authority in northern Crimea, Soviet propaganda for Jewish colonization for foreign consumption, the regime's relationship with the JDC's Joint Agricultural Corporation, Soviet Management of Jewish colonization, the departure of Agro-Joint, and the condition of the colonies in the aftermath of World War II.