Rabbi ordained, Bolshevik Jewish-commissar, and architect of Soviet nationalities policy
In 1930, Dimanshtein publicly opposed forced collectivization in Jewish national districts — the only time he broke with Stalin's line — and received a party reprimand.
A former yeshiva student and ordained rabbi who joined the Bolsheviks in 1904, Semyon Dimanshtein became the Soviet regime's principal architect of Jewish national policy in its first two decades. He headed the Jewish Commissariat under Narkomnats (1918), chaired the Evsektsiia, served as deputy head of Agitprop in the Party Central Committee, and directed the Institute of Nationalities of the USSR Central Executive Committee (1932–1936). As chairman of OZET from 1926, he promoted Jewish agricultural settlement and helped lay the groundwork for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, while editing the key nationalities-policy journals of the era. Arrested in February 1938 during the Great Terror and executed that August, he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.
Activities and affiliations
- 1918–1936 Ideology and propaganda · Soviet Union
Career Timeline
- 1904Joined RSDLP in Vilna, sided with Bolsheviks
- 1918Head of Jewish Commissariat, People's Commissariat of Nationalities
- 1918–1920Chair of Evsektsiia, Central Bureau
- 1920–1922People's Commissar of Education & Nationalities, Turkestan; RSFSR rep. in Bukhara
- 1922–1924Head of Agitprop & Orgburo member, CC CP(b)U
- 1924–1930Deputy Head of Agitprop, CC VKP(b)
- 1926–1938Chair, Central Board of OZET
- 1932–1936Director, Institute of Nationalities, CEC USSR
Related historical events
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationOpponent of collectivisation in Jewish districtsIn 1930, he publicly opposed forced collectivisation in Jewish national districts.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeNationalities official targetedA principal architect of Soviet Jewish nationalities policy, he was arrested and executed in 1938.
Jewish Agricultural Settlement and the Birobidzhan Project
In the late 1920s, Dimanshtein headed OZET, the society promoting Jewish agricultural settlement, and played an important part in establishing a Jewish settlement in the Birobidzhan area of the Far East. This links Soviet Jewish policy to efforts to settle Jews in agriculture. The available account does not establish that he alone designed or directed the Birobidzhan project. His editing of the 1935 anthology Jews in the USSR also illustrates his publishing role in contemporary discussion of Jewish life and policy.