The final chapter
Agro‐Joint workers – victims of the Great Terror in the USSR, 1937–40
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12523787 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mikhail Mitsel (a Joint Distribution Committee Archives , New York, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 79-99 |
| Publication date | 2009-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | East European Jewish Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1350-1674 • E-ISSN: 1743-971X |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13501670902750303 |
| OpenAlex | W2136405552 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 3 |
This article deals with the final chapter in the history of the Agro‐Joint, an organisation created by the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and operating in the USSR between 1924 and 1938. Among a large number of “counter‐revolutionaries” – a term used in the USSR during the time of the Great Purge of 1937–8 – one of the lesser‐known repressed groups consisted of the workers of the Agro‐Joint. With the opening of ex‐KGB archives in the former Soviet Union additional aspects of the Agro‐Joint venture have emerged in chilling detail. By virtue of their organisational status and their association with foreigners, many Agro‐Joint workers became direct subjects of the “operational orders” of the NKVD and were persecuted in three areas; Moscow, Ukraine and Crimea. There was an extraordinary brutality to the sentences; around 30 Agro‐Joint employees (from directors to members of collective farms) were arrested and a majority of them were sentenced to death. Employees of the three Agro‐Joint offices, refugee doctors whom Agro‐Joint brought into the USSR from Germany, Jewish religious activists and the staff of the Soviet organizations KOMZET and OZET were all caught in the same web, and accused of “collaboration with a counterrevolutionary organization, founded by the director of Agro‐Joint Dr. Rosen.” Accompanied by two sample documents from interrogation files as well as a list of Agro‐Joint workers who fell in the line of duty, the article presents a new outlook on this important era in the history of the JDC and Soviet Jewry
Archaeology · Duty · Joint (building · Judaism · Political science · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Engineering · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Soviet and Russian History
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2018 - 2018 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |