This is the first history of the

FARMING THE RED LAND
JEWISH AGRICULTURAL COLONIZATION AND LOCAL SOVIET POWER, 1924–1941
Jonathan L. Dekel-Chen
Yale University Press

New Haven, CT:

March 2005
384 p. , 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth 030010331X $45.00

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Drawing on extensive and largely untouched archives and a wealth of previously unpublished oral histories, the book revises what has been understood about these agricultural settlements.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.

Jonathan L. Dekel-Chen is a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Reviews

“Dekel-Chen draws upon a massive source base to reconstruct the history of Jewish agricultural colonization in the Crimea--the sheer breadth of his research is staggering. This is a first-rate piece of scholarship and writing, with important implications for Russian, Jewish, and American historiography.”--Gregory Freeze, Brandeis University