An Unlikely Triangle: Philanthropists, Commissars, and American Statesmanship Meet in Soviet Crimea, 1922-37

In: Diplomatic history, Band 27, Heft 3, S. 353-376

Abstract

Relations between the US & the USSR in the period between the Russian Civil War & the outbreak of WWII are analyzed in terms of the role of philanthropy, most notably that of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) & its counterparts in Europe. Focus is on the financial & diplomatic role of the JDC in the colonization of agricultural settlements in the southern Ukraine & Crimea, to which many Jews had begun relocation beginning in 1923. The major role of the JDC in the agrotechnical development of the Soviet state & in securing the civil rights of Russian Jews is described. Analysis of archival data also prompts a reconsideration of traditional historiographies of American-Jewish politics & the Zionist movement during this period. 1 Table. K. Hyatt Stewart