From the figures given above one can see that the greater part of the funds disbursed by ORT was used for the development of the industrial sector of the Soviet economy. Only about 20 percent (hardly more than 900,000 roubles) was invested in the development of the Jewish agricultural colonies. And although this help was not as substantial as the help given by, say, Agro-Joint, without it many Jewish agricultural colonies in Ukraine and Belorussia could not have existed. For example, at the beginning of 1929 three Jewish colonies in the Odessa region — Naiheim, Fraierd and the above-mentioned Kotovsk — specializing in the cultivation of vines, received from ORT, through a local office of the organisation, five new tractors for work in the vineyards. A great deal was also done to resolve the water supply question, one of the most difficult and important for the Jewish colonies of Ukraine and the Crimea. In the period 1926 to 1928, through the efforts of Agro-Joint, ORT and the EKO about 100 artesian wells and 800 shaft wells were sunk in the new Jewish settlements. However, towards the beginning of the 1930s ORT’s work for the Jewish agricultural colonies gradually diminished.

In February 1928 a general meeting of the founders of the All-Russian ORT took place, at which the composition of the executive was changed. The Soviet functionaries on the executive were now: the president of KOMZET A. Merezhin, Yu. Golde, A. Chemerissky, and the representatives of the World ORT Union, L. Ioffe and J. Tsegelnitski. The second item on the agenda was the draft of the organisation’s new regulations. The discussion was opened by Chemerissky, an official of OZET and one of the leaders of Evsektsia, who in his speech very clearly formulated ORT’s basic tasks in a present-day perspective. In his view, ORT should: ‘Develop professional-technical education, strengthen industrial co-operation among the Jews, help to equip and modernise co-operative enterprises as well as branches of craftsmanship and artisanship, and promote the economic well-being of the Jewish masses’.

One can see from these words that support for Jewish agriculture in the USSR did not seem to this orator to be worth mentioning. It is revealing to note that Chemerissky was a convinced opponent of Jewish autonomy, which is what brought him to adopt this position on behalf of the Soviet leadership. At this time a number of officials in the higher echelons of the Soviet state were disillusioned with the idea of Jewish agricultural colonisation. It is well known, for example, that Stalin’s close associate V. Molotov, who from 1930 was the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, once expressed the view that the Jews were an urban race and that it was not worth putting a Jew in the seat of a tractor.

At the end of 1929, in a resolution of the All-Soviet Plenum of ORT this position was formulated in unmistakable terms: ‘The basic task of ORT is the augmentation of the industrial proletariat among the Jewish population of the USSR. … With the aim of reinforcing the work of the society in the sphere of industrialisation, the plenum proposes that ORT be removed from work in the sphere of agriculture, in the fonds (new settlements) as well as in the towns’.

This resolution reflected an important change in the economic policy of the USSR. Stalin’s intensive industrialisation of the national economy could not but affect the country’s Jewish population, only 35 percent of which was integrated into the Soviet economic system. From 1931 ORT was obliged to reduce the level of its aid to the Jewish agricultural colonies, on the grounds that under present conditions agriculture did not play such an important role in the process of ‘productivizing’ the Jewish population. For example, in 1934 it helped only 39 kolkhozes, located in the Kalinindorf, Odessa and Pervomaisky regions of Ukraine. However, even this re-orientation of ORT’s activity did not seem to satisfy the Soviet leadership.

With the beginning of the new Five-Year Plan the Soviet government needed to acquire modern machinery and equipment for the factories and plants which were being built throughout the country; it also needed foreign investment to ensure the country’s industrial development. A substantial part of the finance  — and of the imported machinery — came, as before, from Jewish charitable organisations abroad, and was distributed by them across the Jewish population either by their own administrations or by Soviet Jewish public organisations. This was how the ORT Union operated, depending for support on sections of Soviet ORT, which at that time had offices in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov and Minsk. Such independence was annoying to the Soviet leadership. Looking for an opportunity to redistribute the World ORT Union’s charitable aid as it saw fit, in accordance with the Soviet style of administration, the Kremlin attempted at the beginning of the 1930s to make ORT unite with — or rather be swallowed up by — OZET.

In the 33rd issue of Tribuna in 1930, an article appeared by A. Strashun entitled ‘Merging of OZET with the ORT’ . The importance of this article was underlined by the fact that it took up the first pages of the journal. After some words of faint praise for ORT, the author of the article wrote as follows: ‘A campaign to attract Jewish workers, especially young workers, to factories and plants in large numbers was first mounted only in 1929–1930. The experience of this campaign has shown that the task of industrialisation is of such range and magnitude that a public organisation like ORT cannot cope with it; that the task has already outgrown the organisational capacity of ORT. Work of such scope requires an organisation with a broad base among the masses. The existence of two mass organisations is pointless and, if I may say so, inadmissible. Therefore the idea has naturally arisen of merging ORT and OZET into a single organisation. It is, however, necessary to stress categorically that this in no way means the liquidation of the work performed by ORT’s organisations up to this time.’

After this there follows a veiled hint to ‘errors which have occurred in the past’ and a call for an immediate conference of OZET to ‘devote the necessary attention to the question of industrialisation’, to ‘draw up a series of concrete measures’ and so on, fully in the spirit of the inflamed Soviet rhetoric of those years. It is impossible to understand from the article by whom the decision was taken to merge these two organisations, how the merger was to proceed, and whether this decision would have any influence on the long-term realisation of Soviet ORT’s programme of providing help for the thousands of Jewish craftsmen and peasant settlers. But Strashun would hardly have been able to give a favourable answer to this last question, and neither would other Soviet functionaries.

Although in the event the ‘merger’ of the Soviet ORT and OZET took place sluggishly and in a manner more formal than real, the Central Board of the World ORT Union began seriously to consider whether, in such a situation, it was worth continuing to co-operate with the Soviet Union. Leon Shapiro, the author of a monograph on the history of ORT, describes the dilemma faced by the leaders of the organisation: ‘The problem, a serious one, is, under different conditions and with other elements, still with us. The question was: Who would be the losers if the relief work was discontinued? Looking back, and knowing what was to follow, it would appear that the ORT leaders came to the right decision. They maintained the programs, feeling that it was incumbent upon them to continue to bring to Soviet Jews whatever assistance and technical knowledge they needed to help them to adjust to the conditions prevailing in their country. It was a difficult decision, but it was based on their understanding of Jewish efforts at self-help in Russia, and their reading of developing Soviet policy.’

In accordance with this decision, from 1930 to 1936 funds were allotted by the World ORT Union for assistance to a total of 73 Jewish agricultural settlements in the Crimea and Ukraine. It also succeeded in organising short-term professional courses in the cutting-out, sewing, knitting and making-up of soft toys, which were attended in 1936 alone by 2,560 women from 58 kolkhozes. Thanks to the skills gained on these courses they were able to earn a little extra money. Work also continued in the sphere of industrialisation. From 1931 to 1937 the World ORT Union supported about 390 various artisans’ enterprises, in which about 35,000 declassed Jews were employed and attracted into productive industrial labour and into the founding of networks of co-operative and cultural undertakings of great value to the economic life of the country.