The Jewish Farmers in Belarus During the 1920s

Revolution and civil war in Russia (1917-1921) precipitated far reaching changes in the life of Belarus Jewry. The shtetls (settlements) were extremely overpopulated and Jews eventually sought and found an escape. In 1923,18 percent of Soviet Jewry lived in Belarus. This essay describes the attitude of the authorities to the problem of Jewish land tenure regulation in the New Economic Policy, creation of individual farms, cooperatives and collective farms, and attitudes to that of the Belarussian peasantry