Source: M. J. Olgin: Leader and Teacher, compiled and edited by the staff of the Morning Freiheit. New York, Workers Library Publishers, 1939.
Transcribed: Mitch Abidor for the Marxists Internet Archive in 2005
HTML Markup: David Walters
Proofreader: Chris Clayton
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.
Two million Jews have been taken over by the Soviet Union. The territory of Western Ukraine and Western Byelo-Russia that will now join the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelo-Russian Soviet Socialist republic, is a little less than one-half of the former territory of the Polish state, which contained 3,500,000 Jews. It is now admitted that the number of Jews residing in the territories that have just passed under the Hammer and Sickle is about two million.
This is the Soviet contribution to the solution of the Jewish refugee problem. For years the Jewish reactionaries kept on baiting the Communists here on the role of the Soviet Union in caring for refugees. Because the Soviet government made no noise about the admittance of refugees into its land, the reactionaries concluded that the USSR cared little for the fate of those who ran away from the fascist hangmen. Even then, the number of refugees finding their way into the Soviet union was large. But now the Soviet Union has taken over two million Jews who only three months ago would have been happy to run away from the Polish pogrom-rule. The Soviet Union has become a grand asylum for two million of the most persecuted, most harassed, frequently murdered, at all times degraded Jewish people.
When one speaks of an asylum one pictures a place of refuge where the refugee is left to shift for himself. At best a refugee in the capitalist countries is given some aid from charitable institutions and, since he is allowed to live in the country, he is expected to ask no more.
The Jews of Western Ukraine and Western Byelo-Russia, with the incorporation of these territories into the USSR, become citizens of the Union and of the respective Republics. They are not “aliens.” They are not “guests.” They are not there on sufferance. They are full-fledged citizens of a mighty land, and they are granted all rights, privileges, and opportunities for a new life.
Yet the problem of establishing the new life of the two million Jews on a firm foundation economically will require a great amount of constructive work. The possibilities for solving the economic problem are there in great abundance. The Soviet Union needs the skill, the brains, the creativeness of millions and millions. Yet the skill and creativeness will — in many cases — first have to be developed.
The overwhelming majority of those two million are toilers: shop workers, artisans, petty traders, white collar workers and a host of those engaged in all kinds of non-descript occupations which breed among the Jewish people when they are cut off from the main economic basis of the country. Briefly, the composition of the Jewish people in Western Ukraine and Western Byelo-Russia is about the same as was the composition of the Jewish people under the tsar: few workers of large industrial establishments — since Jews were simply excluded from major factories and plants. Many workers employed in smaller factories and shops, some of them only three or four workers. Many “independent” artisans who, starving themselves, kept one or two journeymen and apprentices on a below-starvation level. A tremendous number of people engaged in midget trade, working day and night, and unable to eke out a meager living. A host of so-called “Luftmenschen” having no visible source of livelihood, reaching out for every chance occupation, actually starving, living partly on charity, partly on donations from abroad. An ungodly number of paupers, beggars, wanderers, homeless. . . . The Polish state made a conscious effort to shut the Jews off from the national economy. The Polish state officially declared that there were one million Jews “too many” in the country.
All the Jews not now engaged in productive work will have to be reconstructed. For this, too, there are precedents. The Soviet government reconstructed great masses of the Jews taken over from tsarism. The work was done along many lines. Jewish workers are admitted into all industrial establishments. Jewish workers are encouraged to improve their qualifications in order to be able to enter the best plants. Jewish artisans were encouraged to form cooperative producing organizations using raw materials supplied by the government and selling their products to state and cooperative organizations. Those who knew no trade at all were taught a trade. Cultural workers were given opportunity to improve their knowledge and to become useful in all kinds of Soviet institutions like schools, libraries, etc. white collar workers were given jobs. All of them were organized in trade unions and in other organizations and the level of their education raised. Those fit and willing to do agricultural work were given land and aided in settling as collective farmers.
All this will have to be done now among the two million Jews. Under these conditions the Jewish autonomous region, Bir-Bidjan, with its vast potentialities acquires greater significance. It is there where hundreds of thousands of new Jews can go in the very near future to start a new life in their own country.
The important thing is that the initial settling of the new virgin land has already been done. The work of the new settlers will be incomparably more easy.