OZET

OZET (Russian: ОЗЕТ, Общество землеустройства еврейских трудящихся) was public Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land in the Soviet Union in the period from 1925 to 1938. Some English sources use the word "Working" instead of "Toiling". The principal sources of livelihood of the Jews in the Russian Empire were trade and small crafts. After the October Revolution, the Russian Civil War and instability and devastation that followed, these tr... more

OZET (Russian: ОЗЕТ, Общество землеустройства еврейских трудящихся) was public Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land in the Soviet Union in the period from 1925 to 1938. Some English sources use the word "Working" instead of "Toiling". The principal sources of livelihood of the Jews in the Russian Empire were trade and small crafts. After the October Revolution, the Russian Civil War and instability and devastation that followed, these traditional occupations withered. Dictatorship of proletariat, War Communism and command economy were accompanied by persecution of those deemed class enemies or exploiters. As a result, in the early 1920s more than a third of the Jewish population of the USSR were officially counted as lishenets. Significant part of the population of schtetls in former Pale of Settlement moved to big cities. In order to resolve socio-economic difficulties of the Russian Jews and promote agricultural labor among them, on January 17, 1925 the CPSU formally... less