- Komzet
Komzet ( _ru. Комитет по земельному устройству еврейских трудящихся, КОМЗЕТ) was the "Committee for the Settlement of Toiling Jews on the Land" (some English sources use the word "working" instead of "toiling") in the
Soviet Union . The primary goal of the Komzet was to help impoverished and persecuted Jewish population of the formerPale of Settlement to adopt agricultural labor. Other goals were getting financial assistance from theJewish diaspora and providing the Soviet Jews an alternative toZionism .The Komzet was a government committee whose function was to contribute and distribute the land for new
kolkhozes . A complementary public society, theOZET was established in order to assist in moving settlers to a new location, housebuilding, irrigation, training, providing them with cattle and agricultural tools, education, medical and cultural services. The funds were to be provided by private donations, charities and lotteries.Established in 1921, Komzet was headed by
P. G. Smidovich .In 1924-1926, the Komzet helped to create several Jewish
kolkhoz es in various regions, most notably inCrimea ,Ukraine andStavropol region.In 1927, Birsko-Bidzhansky region in the
Russian Far East was identified as a territory suitable for compact living of the Soviet Jews. The region would become theJewish Autonomous Oblast but it did not attract the expected mass Jewish resettlement.See also
*
History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
*Jews and Judaism in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast
*American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
*Yevsektsiya Further reading
* Robert Weinberg. "Stalin's Forgotten Zion. Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland: An Illustrated History, 1928-1996" (University of California Press, 1998)) ISBN 0-520-20990-7
* Jonathan L. Dekel-Chen. "Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924-1941" (Yale University Press, 2005) ISBN 0-300-10331-XExternal links
* [http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/html/panel12.html OZET lottery posters and tickets] featured in
Swarthmore College 's online exhibition "Stalin's Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland."
* [http://shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Colonies_of_Ukraine/Jonathan%20Dekel-Chen.htm Up From the "Ash Heap"? A Lost Chapter of Interwar Jewish History] by Jonathan Dekel-Chen (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) from Colombia Journal of Historography
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