Farming the Red Land

Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924-1941

Jonathan L. Dekel-Chen

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9780300133929
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This is the first history of the Jewish agricultural colonies that were established in Crimea and Southern Ukraine in 1924 and that, fewer than 20 years later, ended in tragedy. Jonathan Dekel-Chen opens an extraordinary window on Soviet rural life during these turbulent years, and he documents the remarkable relations that developed among the American-Jewish sponsors of the ambitious project, the Soviet authorities, and the colonists themselves.

Drawing on extensive and largely untouched archives and a wealth of previously unpublished oral histories, the book revises what has been understood about these agricultural settlements. Dekel-Chen offers new conclusions about integration and separation among Soviet Jews, the contours of international relations, and the balance of political forces within the Jewish world during this volatile period.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations, Transliterated Terms, and Translation Equivalents
• Note on Transliteration
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 From Shtetl to Colony, 1917–1924
• Chapter 2 Building a Colonization Movement: Theory to Practice
• Chapter 3 Colonization and Diaspora Politics
• Chapter 4 Soviet Power and Life in the Colonies, 1925–1929
• Chapter 5 Collectivization and Its Limits, 1929–1934
• Chapter 6 Soviet-Jewish Farmers, 1935–1941
• Conclusion
• Appendixes
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index