Metadata: [Central Council of the All-Union Society for Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (OZET)]
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Russian Museum of Ethnography
- Holding institution (official language):
- Российский этнографический музей
- Postal address:
- Inzhenernaya St, 4/1, Sankt-Peterburg, Russia, 191011
- Phone number:
- (812) 313-45-74
- Web address:
- http://www.ethnomuseum.ru/
- Email:
- info@ethnomuseum.ru
- Reference number:
- Collection 13302
- Title:
- [Central Council of the All-Union Society for Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (OZET)]
- Title (official language):
- [Центральный совет Всесоюзного общества по земельному устройству трудящихся евреев в СССР]
- Creator/accumulator:
- [Central Council of the All-Union Society for Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (OZET)]
- Date(s):
- late 1920s/1930s
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 76 storage units
- Type of material:
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
-
[See also the description of Central State Archive of St. Petersburg (TsGA SPb) f. R-6962, “The Leningrad Regional Board of the Society for Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (OZET)”] [This description is based on a single catalogue entry that describes in general terms a group of seven institutionally related fonds, which are listed individually in the Yerusha database.] The collection includes photographs and plate Negatives reflecting the activities of the OZET in the USSR, and in particular, group and representative photographs of meetings and sessions of the central council, the lottery committee, and other entities and units of the OZET, including in Moscow and Odessa (1929-31); photographs of campaign posters, brochures, and magazines published by the OZET; etc. The collection also includes photographs and plate Negatives made primarily by P. Ganin, A. Shterenberg, and others pertaining to Jewish agricultural colonisation in the environs of the city of Odessa, in the Jewish national districts of Kalinindorf, Novozlatopol’, and Stalindorf (Ukrainian SSR), Freidorf and Larindorf (Crimean ASSR), as well as in the Belorussian SSR, which include representative photographs and views of the “Sholom Aleichem” Jewish settlement commune and a poultry farm of the Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews (ORT) in Odessa; the Stalindorf hospital; a department store in Novozlatopol’; a poultry farm at the Iu. Larin kolkhoz (Stalindorf district); the construction of a cobblestone road to the Pavlopol’ railway station; an Ingulets river crossing; the ORT artel’ [cooperative] of the Polotsk area (Belorussian SSR); agricultural work at Jewish collective farms, including photographs recorded in the inventory thus: “Before being sent out into the field. Village of Berkutovka”; “A tractor in the steppe”; “Kolkhoz plowing”; “Collective farmers planting grapes”; “Airplane preparing for takeoff”; etc.; portrait and group photographs of Jewish collective farmers, Stakhanovites, and peredoviki (model workers) of the “Third and Decisive” kolkhoz (town of Khaschevato); the Ia. Fabritsius kolkhoz; the G. I. Petrovskii kolkhoz; and the “Der veg tsum socialism” (“The Path to Socialism") kolkhoz; Jewish and Tatar collective farmers in the field (Crimean ASSR); etc .; group photos of high school honour-roll students of the Novozlatopol’ ten-grade school; pioneers; etc. (1926-1932); students of Jewish technical and vocational schools, including from the Ratmanskii school in Kiev, a vocational school in Odessa, etc.
Photo-documents in the collection include a set of photographic materials (taken by the photographers Kh. Grinberg, L. Gershkovich, Ia. Smertenko, A. Savchenko, S. Fridliand, and others) reflecting various stages of the economic and cultural construction of the Jewish Autonomous Region: collective photographs of the first Jewish settlers to come to Birobidzhan from the cities of Poltava, Romny, Kharkov, the Vinnitsa area (Ukrainian SSR), and Lithuania (1928-30s); representative photographs showing groups of Jewish settlers from Palestine arriving in Odessa and Moscow (1930-32); photographs of views of cities and towns of the Jewish Autonomous Region, including photos showing the development of the streets in the city of Birobidzhan and the bridge over a tributary of the river Bira leading to the city’s main park, a sanatorium in the settlement of Kul’dur (1936), etc.; representative photographs and views of industrial and agricultural enterprises, as well as cultural institutions of the Jewish Autonomous Region, and in particular, carpentry and crate-making courses at the Tikhon’kaia station; the “Wheel of the Revolution” artel’ [cooperative]; the hauling of Bira coal from the tunnel shaft at the Bira railway station; a parts factory; the G. Dimitrova furniture factory in the city of Birobidzhan; the depot at the Obluch’e station; a marble works near the settlement of Birokan; the Sutara gold fields; a lumberyard on the river Bira; the Valdheym kolkhoz; the kolkhoz of the Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia (ICOR); the Birobidzhan State Yiddish Theater (GOSET); etc. (1928-36).
Also included are photographs showing the development of air transport to the Jewish Autonomous Region, including mail being loaded onto an airplane; an airplane donated by the V. R. Menzhinskii factory; etc. (late 1930s); portraits of Jewish Stakhanovite workers and managers of manufacturing and agricultural enterprises, recorded in the inventory thus: “City of Birobidzhan. Comrade Azimov, settler and postal worker”; “Comrade Zelenetskii, chair of the “Marble” artel’ [cooperative], ... measures a newly extracted block of marble”; “The In station. S. M. Golub – senior conductor, Stakhanovite, and settler from the Turbov station of the Vinnitsa region”; “A. G. Vologin, machinist of the In station, a candidate for the Council of Nationalities from the Smidovich electoral district”; “The Obluch’e station. Comrade Shneider, a settler from Zhmerinka, conductor of the Obluch’e station”; “The Valdheym kolkhoz. The collective farmer and Michurinist L. Reznik at work in the hothouses”; “The ICOR kolkhoz. The carpenter Kovel’”; “The Valdheym kolkhoz. The collective farmer Linets”; “The Kirov kolkhoz, Kalininsk, Stalin district. The Stakhanovite collective farmer Khaia Rubal’skaia”; “The Stakhanovite fisherman Israel Ginzburg. The ICOR kolkhoz”; etc. (1930-36); group and individual photographs of schoolchildren, pioneers, students, and young workers of the Jewish Autonomous Region, recorded in the inventory thus: “Pioneer camp. Valdheym”; “Young model aircraft constructors”; “Participants of the relay race organised by the newspaper Birobidzhanskaia zvezda [Birobidzhan Star]; “Young settler-transport workers at the Obluch’e station”; “Students of the Jewish Pedagogical School walking in the city of Birobidzhan”; “A group of Osoaviakhimists” [members of the Society to Promote Defense and the Aviation and Chemical Industry] at an October rally”; the Birokan junior high school. D. Gefter and Zh. Tolstiakova, honour-roll students of grade 1”; and “Valdheym. Grisha Gul’skii, a ward of the children’s shelter and honour-roll student and pioneer” (1933-36).
- Archival history:
- The photo and negative fonds of the State Museum of Ethnography was first formed in the 1890s, virtually from the moment the Russian Museum was established. At present the fonds of the Russian Museum of Ethnography’s photo archive (the photo collection) includes approximately 180,000 storage units. It consists of photographs taken by museum staff during expeditions, as well as photographs acquired from private individuals and various organisations. The main criterion for the formation of particular collections is that the photographs in question belong to a particular collection creator. This is why photos in a given collection may be devoted to different subjects and reflect different ethnic cultures, and may have been taken at different times. In cases in which photos were acquired from collection creators secondarily, a new collection is formed with corresponding numbering. At the same time, in cases in which a large quantity of photographs that can be grouped by ethnic provenance was received from a collection creator at once, standalone collections are organised. Within collections, photographs have consecutive numbering, the sequence of which relates to ethnicity and subject (if the photographs feature several ethnic groups, then for each of these, photos are grouped by subject), or subject only (if the collection’s materials pertain to only one ethnic group). A given photo collection’s sequence number depends on the overall number of exhibit items (and of collections thereof) received by the museum, including material items, as the Russian Museum of Ethnography considers photographs to have the same status as any other ethnographic item.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The All-Union Society for Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (OZET) was a public organisation tasked with recruiting Jews to agricultural labour. The OZET was established in 1925 in Moscow, and regional branches were subsequently organised: the Belorussian OZET (in Minsk), the Ukrainian OZET (in Kharkov), the Tatarstan OZET (in Kazan’), the Crimea OZET (in Simferopol’), the Georgia OZET (in Tbilisi), as well as representative offices in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. The OZET worked to gain public support in the USSR and abroad for plans for Jewish agricultural colonisation in Crimea, southern Ukraine, and Birobidzhan, and raised funds for the implementation of these plans via lotteries and fundraising campaigns abroad; it also worked to make arrangements regarding Jewish settlers’ general and professional education, cultural life, and healthcare; worked with international Jewish organisations toward these goals; etc. The OZET’s first chairman was Iu. Larin, who had been active in the Russian revolutionary movement and was a member of the presidium of the Supreme Economic Council and the State Planning Committee (Gosplan). In the late 1920s, he was succeeded in this post by S. M. Dimanshtein, a revolutionary and party figure and the first head of the Jewish Commissariat of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of National Minorities, and then of the Jewish Section of the All-Union Communist Party. The society’s presidium also included Vladimir Mayakovsky, Solomon Mikhoels, and other prominent public figures. The OZET’s (Russian-language) magazine The Tribune was published in Leningrad. The OZET was liquidated in 1938, and nearly all of its leaders were subjected to political repression. The liquidation committee of the OZET delivered the photographic materials of its collections, along with other archival documents and exhibit items, to I. M. Pul’ner, head of the Jewish section of the State Museum of Ethnography, in 1938.
- Access points: locations:
- Belorus
- Bira
- Bira railway station
- Birobidzhan
- Birokan
- Ingulets
- Jewish Autonomous Region
- Kharkov
- Khaschevato
- Kiev
- Koton
- Kul’dur
- Larindorf
- Lithuania
- Londoko
- Londoko station
- Moscow
- Novozlatopol’
- Odessa
- Pavlopol’ railway station
- Polotsk area
- Poltava
- Romny
- Russia
- Ukrainian SSR
- USSR
- Zhmerinka
- Subject terms:
- Agriculture
- Aid and relief
- Birobidzhan
- Children
- Education
- Education--Schools and universities
- Education--Students
- Education--Vocational training
- Jewish colonies
- Jewish kolkhoz
- Jewish languages
- Jewish languages--Yiddish
- Manufacturing
- Mining
- ORT (Organisation for Rehabilitation through training)
- Photographs
- Posters
- Professions
- Professions--Crafts
- Theatre
- System of arrangement:
- The collections include inventories systematised mainly according to the subject-thematic principle.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary