Jewish autonomy in Crimea

Jewish autonomy in Crimea was a project in the Soviet Union to create an autonomous region for Jews in the Crimean peninsula carried out during the 1920s and 1930s.

[2] The first Jewish agricultural colonies in the Russian Empire began to appear during the early 19th century in the Bessarabia, Kherson, Podolia, Taurida, and Yekaterinoslav Governorates.

Additionally, many Jews living in these colonies chose to migrate to larger cities or other countries, such as the United States, altogether.

[3] The abolition of the Pale of Settlement by the Alexander Kerensky's Russian Provisional Government in 1917 allowed a large number of Jews to move throughout Russia.

[4] Zionist organisations began their activities in Crimea with the intention of creating centres of agricultural work for future Jewish migrants in 1919.

In December of that year, the similarly named Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land, or OZET was established under Yuri Larin.

However, officially, journalist Abram Bragin [ru] and Grigory Broydo, then-deputy People's Commissar for Nationalities, developed the plan.

Among the politicians who supported it were Nikolai Bukharin, Georgy Chicherin, Mikhail Kalinin, Lev Kamenev and Leon Trotsky.

Rosen promised 15 million United States dollars on the condition that the persecution of Zionism, Judaism, and Jewish culture in the Soviet Union was ended.

[11] Though the Southern Project had effectively died prior to World War II, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) had not forgotten it.

According to Kortyrchenko, in summer 1943, during a trip to the United States, Solomon Mikhoels and Itzik Feffer acquired permission from Vyacheslav Molotov to negotiate material support for Jewish resettlement in Crimea after the peninsula (then under the occupation of Nazi Germany) was retaken by the Soviet Union.