Project "Crimea - New California" - myth or reality? What is the "new California" project?

After the return of Crimea to its home port - Russia, according to the apt words of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin, the government is taking a number of steps to integrate the economy of Crimea into the Russian economy. But these steps are rather one-sided, and are carried out within the framework of the liberal economic program “Strategy 2020”, which the whole country lives by. I would like to remind you that the goals of this strategy, developed within the framework of the Higher School of Economics, in fact an agent of US influence, do not diverge from the goals of the Washington Consensus and are aimed at the further development of oligarchic capitalism in Russia. However, the United States recently recognized that over the last thirty years the United States itself has been developing as an oligarchy, so there is nothing strange in the recommendations for Russia. But for Crimea, such a development vector may mean suppression of large private businesses and the simultaneous creation of conditions for the transfer of agricultural production to monopoly conditions. It is impossible to approach Crimea with all-Russian categories, otherwise Russian policy may be rejected and civil protest may arise against the short-sighted (cosmopolitan) business of Russian oligarchs. There is another hidden danger - an attempt to transform Crimea into a new California for the elite.

This term “Crimean California” requires detailed explanation. Back in 1922, the idea of ​​a Crimean Autonomous Jewish Republic, put forward by A. Bragin, began to take shape, which grew the following year, 1923, into the Soviet Socialist Jewish Republic of Crimea. The project was financed by the American organization "Joint", which since 1929 has officially represented the United States in the RSFSR (in the absence of diplomatic relations), with a budget of about 1.5 million dollars a year. “Joint” was created with the money of the German Ashkenazis F. Warburg and D. Schiff, an active participant in the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II. To organize the residence of Jews in Crimea, 375 thousand hectares of land were allocated, mainly in the steppe regions, and land shares were issued, the owners of which were prominent American figures Roosevelt, Hoover, Rockefeller, Marshall, MacArthur and others. However, the 30 million dollars spent by the American side on the development of Jewish autonomy did not go to waste and did not solve national question in Crimea, but created another problem on the territory of the USSR. And already in 1934, after the creation of a Jewish autonomous region with a center in Birobidzhan, the Crimean settlements turned out to be irrelevant and in 1938 the Joint ceased its activities in the USSR. Thus was completed the first attempt to organize Crimean California for Jews.

It must be said that the reasons for the emergence of nationalist tensions in Crimea were due to the too active intervention of Chabad-Lubavitch in the creation of Jewish settlements. By this period of 1920 - 1930, Chabad, as one of the directions of Hasidism in Russia, gained a dominant position in our country. It should be noted that Hasidism, implicated in Kabbalah, inattention to the Torah, but reverence for the Talmud, the creation of the institution of tzaddikim and adherence to the idea of ​​​​moshiach, was in circulation in Poland, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Belarus, Ukraine and was especially widespread in Galicia, Lvov, Transcarpathian Russia, Vitebsk and, no matter how paradoxical it may seem, in Tver. Shocking antics during prayer, rampant rioting on Shabbat, worship of tzaddikim and Kabbalah, made the Hasidim a contrast to the Spanish Sephardim and German Ashkenazim, who rejected the culture of the Hasidim, which was largely copied from those peoples among whom the Hasidim existed. However, such assimilation greatly helped in preserving the inviolability of Jewish canons for the Hasidim and especially Chabad, which allowed its representatives to eventually occupy high positions in the leadership of the USSR.

This practice of resettlement worried J.V. Stalin no less than the ambivalent position of the United States in financing exclusively Jewish settlements, subject to an agreement on the equal distribution of incoming funds among all ethnic groups of Crimea. The second attempt to create a “Crimean California” was made by the United States at the Tehran Conference of 1943, where, according to Milovan Djilas, IB Tito’s assistant, F. Roosevelt attempted to link Lend-Lease supplies with the restoration of the Jewish republic in Crimea. It must be said that by the time J. Schneerson arrived in the USA, a fairly influential Hasidic community had already been created in New York, which had its representatives not only among bankers, but also among politicians. Therefore, raising the issue of “Crimean California” by the US President does not look like a conspiracy theory. The response to this virtual ultimatum from the Soviet side was the delegation of S.M. Mikhoels (Vovsi) and I.S. Fefer, both of whom were members of Chabad-Lubavitch. It is curious that it was the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which included Mikhoels, Fefer, Ehrenburg, Marshak, Eisenstein, Oistrakh, Gilels, Kapitsa and many others, that was entrusted with the honorable mission of harmonizing the Crimean Jewish Republic with prominent figures in politics, business and culture. By the way, interesting fact is that on the JAC building next to the six-pointed star of Magen David there is the Masonic symbolism of one of the Sons of Zion lodges.

Before the trip, instructions to S.M. Mikhoels were given personally by V.M. Molotov (Scriabin), and the invitation to the trip was issued by A. Einstein and R. Oppenheimer. The delegation of Russian Jews was received at the highest level in the USA, Canada, Mexico and Great Britain. Why were the Anglo-Saxon countries so interested in “Crimean California”? The answer cannot be unambiguous due to the fact that too many questions Jewish life and mythologies converge in Crimea and Ukraine. This is the center of European Hasidism - the heirs of Khazaria, whose fragments have scattered throughout Europe, and the important geopolitical position of Crimea, which allows it to control the entire South of Russia and the Caucasus, as well as the Black Sea region. This is also an opportunity for comfortable living - waiting for resettlement to Israel, but after the moment when the King of Jerusalem begins to gather the “sons of the Covenant” to Jerusalem. By the way, the famous vineyards of Crimea were inherited from the first project of “Crimean California”. Precisely in view of the importance of Crimea for Jews around the world, there was no confrontation on this issue between Sephardim and Ashkenazim with the Hasidic communities, and even with Chabad-Lubavitch. The result of the trip was S.M. Mikhoels’ appeal to the leadership of the USSR in February 1944.

The main provisions of this appeal included the need for compact accommodation of over 1.5 million Jews who lost their property as a result of the Great Patriotic War. Birobidzhan, being particularly remote from the central regions of Russia, was not even considered a place of residence for Soviet Jews. Instead, it was planned to create a Jewish Soviet republic in Crimea to preserve a centuries-old cultural tradition or national cultural autonomy. Here the creators of the appeal, being euphoric from the American trip and the attention of top officials, missed a very important detail - I.V. Stalin was categorically against national and cultural autonomies and perfectly understood the danger of repeating “Crimean California” for the shaky national question in the USSR. But the authors did not want to pay attention to hints from the Kremlin, having become confident in the correctness of their choice after the lightning-fast decision to deport the Crimean Tatars in May 1944. Naive, the leadership of the GKO, the next month after the liberation of Crimea, understanding the danger of the fascist underground in Crimea, rid the country of collaborators and traitors who collaborated with the enemy and destroyed resistance to the fascists on the peninsula. In this context, the rehabilitation of the eviction of the Crimean Tatars by V.V. Putin looks strange, even taking into account the need to maintain the Kremlin’s neutrality towards the Mejlis. In fact, by his action, the head of state admitted the fallacy of the policy of I.V. Stalin, who committed not only an act of retaliation against traitors, but also protected the USSR from a possible fascist underground in the Crimea. From the point of view of Russian security, this is a short-sighted step by V.V. Putin, but from the point of view of the restoration of the Jewish Republic of Crimea, such actions fit into the overall picture of the third attempt to create a “Crimean California”.

Further events related to the conversion of S.M. Mikhoels take on a detective plot that continues in our time. Representatives of the United States begin to actively interfere in the behind-the-scenes negotiations on the Jewish Republic in Crimea; US Ambassador to the USSR W.A. Harriman puts forward various forms of existence of a “Crimean California” from complete independence, as a national Jewish state in Crimea, to the withdrawal of the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol to Odessa . It is characteristic that the JAC supports these ideas of annexing a peninsula vital for the USSR, which has a zone of influence not only in the Black Sea region, but also in the entire Middle East and Turkey. JV Stalin could not agree to such steps, even at the cost of losing 10 billion dollars in US aid and future tension in relations. But neither S.M. Mikhoels, nor I.S. Fefer, nor many others even suspected that they were at the forefront of what political game they found themselves, and therefore in 1944 - 1945 they made plans to move to Crimea and were busy distributing positions in the future government Jewish Republic.

The denouement came at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, where US President G. Truman decided to link the issue of the Jewish Republic in Crimea with the nuclear bombing of Japan, thereby demonstrating to J.V. Stalin the importance of the political potential of Crimea for the United States. The leader could not forgive the arrogant American for this, and relations between the USSR and the USA entered the Cold War phase, while J.V. Stalin made the only right move in this situation - he supported the creation of the state of Israel. On November 29, 1947, the USSR advocated dividing Palestine into two states, thereby finally closing “Crimean California.” Before his speech at the Polytechnic Museum on December 28, 1947, S. M. Mikhoels uttered the phrase: “This is the beginning of the end,” and on January 12, 1948, under unclear circumstances, he was killed in Minsk. The JAC is being dissolved and its members are being repressed. Typically, the autopsy and conclusion of the death of S.M. Mikhoels was carried out by his cousin M.S. Vovsi, who a few years later became the head of the well-known business of “wrecker doctors.” The murder of S.M. Mikhoels is in vain attributed to J.V. Stalin, who convened an emergency meeting of the Politburo on the evening of January 12; stood behind “Crimean California”. A few months after the murder of S.M. Mikhoels, on May 15, 1948, the creation of the State of Israel was officially proclaimed, and on May 18, the USSR established diplomatic relations with the young Jewish state, which would bring instability and local wars to the Middle East for many decades , which I.V. Stalin warned about.

Returning to our days, we can observe a rather contradictory picture: Crimea, thanks to the lightning-fast actions of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin, is again returning to its native shores, expelling Chabad-Lubavitch from its territory. Ukraine, having carried out a bourgeois revolution under the banners of Chabad and the intelligence services of Anglo-Saxon countries, is losing one region after another with amazing zeal, while not forgetting to create all the conditions for the entry of Russian troops into the territory of Ukraine. For what? The Jewish oligarch I. Kolomoisky, who built the Chabad community center “Menorah” in Dnepropetrovsk, is digging in in his region, intending to defend the Chabad enclave on the territory of Ukraine to the last bullet. For what? How can two contradictions be combined: 1. Creating conditions for the entry of Russian troops and 2. Ridiculous defense of Chabad values? The answer is simple, Rothschild’s B’nai B’rith and Rockefeller’s Sons of Zion no longer need the services of Chabad and its claims for the construction of the Third Temple, Finintern (in the apt expression of A. Devyatov) placed its bet on V.V. Putin and strong Russia, Israel's future ally in the fight against the Islamists of the Middle East, since there is no one else to rely on.

The United States, having bankrupted the Federal Reserve System and created the appearance of stability in the financial market, no longer represents a Hasidic empire, which was cleverly used in their geopolitical games by the Sephardim and Ashkenazim of Europe, who are ready to simply throw waste material into the dustbin of history. Having transferred its interests to Southeast Asia, Finintern became concerned about protecting Israel and they could not find a better ally and defender other than Russia. That is why in the last five years the army rearmament program began, that is why Chabad’s attempts to organize a “swamp revolution” were repulsed and the main figures of American liberalism were incapacitated. That is why “Operation Crimea” was carried out and today the final stage of the liquidation of Chabad-Lubavitch in Ukraine and Russia is being prepared. Of course, the Hasidim can still respond with their hatred, but without money they are powerless, and there is no money, and there is no money in sight, the American and English treasuries are empty, and no one will allow Europe to support the sectarians. That is why the third attempt to create a “Crimean California,” now under the leadership of V.V. Putin, began with the signing of the Crimean memorandum on March 18, 2014. At the same time, all the actors understand perfectly well that the life of Crimea without communication with the mainland - Ukraine is impossible, therefore Novorossia, and most likely the whole of Ukraine, will certainly fall under the onslaught, no, not of bayonets, but only of the possibility of using bayonets. And this must be done before May 25 of this year.

However, it must be understood that the third time “Crimean California” will most likely not come true, just like the two previous times, since it has no prospects for strengthening Russia’s military power and nationalizing its elite. The creation of a Jewish enclave in Crimea could turn against Russia itself, as national divisions will flare up with new, destructive force. It is clear that the Crimean Tatars are only a small part of the national instability of Crimea, which is very easy to either extinguish or use against Chabad, as was done in Chechnya. But a much greater danger is posed by the Chabad underground in Crimea and Russia, which today, through the creation of gambling zones and offshore companies in Crimea, are given the opportunity to participate in these profitable projects. How to separate Chabad members from Hasidim? Not unless they show themselves. Therefore, the attempt to create a third “Crimean California” poses a significant danger for the Russian aircraft carrier under the name Crimea. These attempts must be urgently stopped, as well as China’s construction of a deep-sea port in Crimea, the purpose of which is still not clear, since attempts to explain the “new Silk Road” look like baby talk, given that a new Khazaria has already been created in Hong Kong and repeat it no one is going to Crimea. Moreover, such duality may run counter to the plans of the Finintern and the Vatican associated with it, which poses a great danger to V.V. Putin. Crimea can be Russian and only Russian, there is no other way.

Ipatiev K.F. (GRU major, retired)

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In the December weekly supplement to Komsomolskaya Pravda, a certain Evgeniy Chernykh, under the catchy headline “Does Israel have 10 years left?” mentioned that at one time the Jews asked Stalin to give him Crimea.

This reminded me of one question that almost became a paragraph in my master’s thesis. For some reason, there are still people who take seriously a series of rumors about the alleged sale of Crimea. I was even asked to consider this issue in detail as part of the search for the reasons for the transfer of the Crimean region in 1954. As a result of my investigation, it turned out that this hypothesis has nothing to do with reality, but at the same time it was widely replicated in the “2000s,” often in the central media. Since many people still believe in this nonsense, I consider it my duty to explain some facts and show what this myth about the “sale of Crimea to the Jews” was cut from and where its legs grow from.

I would like to start this story with one strange event that happened to me in the summer of 2010. At that time I was sitting in the archive on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya Street. Once I ordered another batch of materials there. It seems that these were Gosplan documents on the power supply for the construction of the North Crimean Canal. Unexpectedly for me, I was informed that they could not deliver what I had ordered to the comfortable reading room, so I would have to go and study them in the storage room. Let me remind you that there was terrible heat in Russia that summer. Even cats who guarded state secrets from rodents suffered. As I walked past the public garden inside the archive town, I noticed that on the lawn, in the shade of the trees, about two dozen cats, fed by local employees, were escaping the heat.

The workers of the State Archive of the Russian Federation themselves also had a hard time. As I walked past the park with the cats, crossed the courtyard and climbed several floors up to the menacing blue sign informing me that I was approaching the holy of holies, I heard some noise. One of the researchers was indignant that he was given the wrong cases for study that he had ordered. To which he was categorically informed that it was more than 30 degrees inside the storage facility, and no one was going to search again. Warm, I would even say hot, such an atmosphere of nostalgic Soviet life, in the midst of a collection of documentation from the highest Soviet and party bodies.

They began to give out what I ordered, and then it was time for me to be indignant. Not at all what I wanted to read that day. It happens. Once, on Berezhkovskaya Embankment, they made a photocopy of me twice for the same order, completely different from the document that I requested. And only the third time I was lucky. That's why I'm not surprised by such incidents. Russia, it's time to get used to it.

I didn’t become particularly indignant, because I knew it was useless. The last name in the issue journal is my first name too. But instead of the State Planning Committee, they brought four completely different cases that had nothing to do with Crimea. Three volumes in a red cover with gold embossing and lead seals and some kind of gray nondescript folder. Since the day was already hopelessly lost and they wouldn’t give me anything in return, and if I ordered again, they would only give it another time, I decided to at least look through what they mistakenly brought to me in the “holy of holies” - in the repository of important state documents. Again, curiosity got the better of me - what’s there behind the lead seals?

It should be noted that this storage facility does not have a reading room as such. There is a small room where the tables of the supervising workers (usually two growling girls) are located opposite each other, and between them two or three researchers are lonely and crowded on stools with an edge along the wall on one and a half tables (they can’t fit anymore). I was incredibly lucky that day - one of the employees was not there that day, and I sat comfortably in her workplace - not only on a chair, but also at a separate table.

Each archive has its own atmosphere. The reading room of the RGANI on Ilyinka, in the former building of the Central Committee, where you now have to pass through the framework of the Federal Guard Service guarding the Presidential Administration, most of all from the inside resembles a Gothic castle with internal columns and a stucco frame. Only now, instead of portraits of feudal lords, Marx and Lenin still hang there. In RGASPI you feel like you’re on the deck of an ocean liner, from where you have a spacious view of Dmitrovka - a panorama with the Prosecutor General’s Office standing next to it and the Federation Council opposite. And although there is no air conditioning, the ventilation on the ceiling creates quite comfortable conditions in the summer (in winter, however, it is quite cool there). And in the reading room of GARF on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya it’s also quite cozy. It’s only in the storage facility itself that you most clearly feel that you are not welcome here. However, I got carried away.

These three beautifully designed red volumes with gold lettering and lead seals were a disappointment to me. It seems that there were some materials to supply the OGPU soldiers who were guarding some gold mines (Lenzoloto, it seems). Allowance standards, daily rations and the number of underpants issued per year. Nothing interesting for me, except maybe the autographs of Menzhinsky and Yagoda. I was about to leave, but to clear my conscience I finally decided to leaf through the remaining file - a gray, nondescript folder filled with some sheets of rough, colorless paper written on with a simple pencil.

So, quite by chance, the founding protocols of KomZet (Committee for the Land Administration of Working Jews) fell into my hands, chaired by Pyotr Smidovich and the secretary of Merezhin and OZET.

When reading them, for some reason I immediately remembered one author’s television program by Andrei Karaulov, dedicated to the activities of this committee. As I later clarified for myself, it was the “Moment of Truth” program, it seems on TVC, which aired on June 30, 2008. It was attended by journalist Mikhail Poltoranin, who in 1992 was the head of the Interdepartmental Commission for the declassification of documents of the CPSU with the rank of Deputy Prime Minister of the Government (this fact was emphasized in this program). According to them, the Crimean Peninsula in the 1920s was allegedly pledged against promissory notes to American financiers on behalf of the RSFSR, and therefore was transferred to Ukraine in 1954, in order to avoid either debt payments or the complete loss of the then-region (there is no clear answer The program does not answer this question). Literally: “I didn’t know until recently that Stalin pledged Crimea to America.” Shares or bills for the territory of Crimea, according to the authors of the program, belonged to influential American circles, among which, among other things, the names of future presidents were named (which was already alarming and allowed one to doubt the feasibility of these plans). According to this version, the final payment of the debt was supposed to take place on February 19, 1954. What would happen in the event of non-payment was not specified, but the viewer was led to believe that the transfer of the Crimean region from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR helped to avoid the loss of the peninsula to the Soviet Union. They say that the agreement on the sale of shares in the land was signed on behalf of the Russian Federation, which means that Ukraine had no obligations, and thus it was possible to deceive overseas moneybags.

In this program by Andrei Karaulov, the date of appearance of these plans for the sale of the Crimean Peninsula was even named. Allegedly, they first started talking about this in 1922, that is, before the unification of the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR within the Soviet Union.

At the same time, Mikhail Poltoranin recalled the project of creating a kind of Jewish republic on the territory of the peninsula, that is, on the lands allegedly pledged with bills of exchange. Mentions the creation within the framework of this project of the AgroJoint corporation, a joint organization of the Jewish organization Joint, which fed up to two million people, mostly children, at the peak of the famine of 1922 in Ukraine and the Volga region (for some reason this charitable activity was not reported in that program) and the Soviet government represented by the mentioned KomZet. At the same time, for some reason Poltoranin insists that AgroJoint was founded in 1922, and not in 1924. And he even claims that, despite his illness, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin showed great interest in these plans, who even visited an agricultural exhibition in 1923 organized by AgroJoint, which in turn was founded only in 1924. The Time Machine definitely exists.

Further, Mikhail Poltoranin spoke about plans to create a Jewish state on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula, Greater Sochi, Odessa and Kherson regions, that is, most of the Black Sea coast of the Soviet Union. Allegedly, Roosevelt, one of the note holders, insisted on this at the negotiations in Tehran. And even put it as necessary condition to open a second front. At the same time, the American president allegedly demanded to demilitarize Crimea, that is, to remove the military base from Sevastopol.

That is, from the words of Poltoranin in this program by Karaulov, the following picture is drawn on canvas in oil: Soviet Jews, with the support of their foreign fellow tribesmen, fraudulently pledged Crimean land plots for a small percentage (only 5% according to the authors of the program), so that later, taking advantage of the difficult situation of the USSR during the war, take over a strategically important region. The plot came out with a bang, you know. With subtext.

However, it is somehow awkward to accuse the authors of this program of anti-Semitism. Following the presentation of the myth (let’s call it that) about the sale of Crimea, they also launched some absolutely fantastic version in the “cranberry” genre about the alleged plans to exile 100 thousand Moscow Jews to Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen (the authors have not yet decided where). That is, they balanced the conspiracy theory about the sale that they had just thrown into the consciousness of the masses with a kind of “unrealized Holocaust.” This operation to genocide the Jewish population was allegedly planned for the summer of 1954 and was codenamed “Ptarmigan”.

In general, this program contains a lot of absurdities, contradictions, omissions and simply tricks and distortions of facts. They sold or mortgaged it either in the 20s or 40s. Either Lenin or Stalin - an inexperienced viewer probably still did not understand - why they showed a close-up of Ilyich speaking when they were talking about completely different people, in general. Some “archival documents” are mentioned, and they show a page marked with a yellow marker, as it seemed to me, from the book of the publicist Alexander Shirokorad, who adopted the theory of the Jews selling the peninsula to their fellow tribesmen, overseas businessmen. That is, as evidence, on the central channel, broadcast throughout Russia, a close-up of a certain text in Cyrillic was shown, allegedly a letter to the US Secretary of Commerce A. Harriman signed “J. Marshal." That is, something in the spirit of “I, an ancient Greek, created this amphora...”, rather than these same mythical “archival documents” being mentioned behind the scenes, which, most likely, simply do not exist in nature.

There are a lot of ambiguities. Either to Novaya Zemlya, or to Spitsbergen. Either they were planning to do it in the summer, or they had already managed to send 17 ships with prisoners there. No one knows anything about any of the passengers on these mythical ships. Looking ahead, I note that the Russian historian Gennady Kostyrchenko, checking this version, claims that according to archival data, no noticeable increase in railway traffic was found in Moscow during this period. I appreciate the work of this researcher, but I have to note that he acted completely irrationally - it is much easier to prove the absurdity of these plans, implemented or not.

The fact is that before Stalin’s death in 1953, these mythical “17 steamships” that Poltoranin mentions should have set sail in January-February 1954, that is, in winter. However, maritime navigation beyond the Arctic Circle outside of the summer is still a fantastic dream. But most importantly, I have great doubts about Mikhail Poltoranin’s knowledge of elementary geography. It is worth recalling that Spitsbergen, which he mentioned several times, as the place of deportation of the mythical “one hundred thousand Jews” on “17 ships,” was not Soviet territory, and was even marked as Norwegian on Soviet maps.

The archipelago was covered by the treaty of 1920, to which the USSR joined in 1935, and, while developing the natural resources of these islands along with Norway, pledged to respect their demilitarized status. That is, there could be no talk of any mass concentration camps in these foreign territories - in vain Poltoranin gesticulated so colorfully, describing the “bays with barbed wire” on board those ships.

In general, I have the impression that many television workers have similar knowledge of geography. For example, once on YouTube I came across a recording of a certain program - I think it was called “Weapons of Russia.” There, in all seriousness, it was said that after the war on Spitsbergen, Stalin secretly manufactured flying saucers. Sorry, but it is not possible for me to comment on this. I can only assume that the author of that program and Mikhail Poltoranin had the same geography teacher.

Well, in conclusion of the discussion of this “Soviet Holocaust” that never took place, it is worth noting the following detail: indeed, in 1947, Operation White Partridge was carried out in the Arctic. Only now, it was carried out by American aviators, and pursued completely different goals. It seems that Sergei Nekhamkin wrote about this in Izvestia. That is, our polar bird turns out to be a bit of a duck when tested.

It’s completely unclear to me why these same “17 steamships” were invented when real facts can be cited as Stalin’s reaction to the plans to create a Jewish republic in Crimea, for example the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee? The execution of 12 members of the JAC in 1952 is a fairly well-studied topic, and therefore I will not dwell on it, although I came across some quite interesting materials about it in the archives.

Inspired by the idea proposed by the security officers to create a Jewish republic on the Crimean Peninsula, Mikhoels decided to address it to the top leadership of the USSR. If you believe Sudoplatov, then on February 15, 1944, he sent a letter to Stalin, the contents of which are unknown. Presumably an exact copy of this letter was addressed to Molotov on February 21; its text was published in 1991 in the magazine Rodina. It seems that even Kaganovich initially spoke out against this project, calling it a utopia. However, these messages were left unanswered and even forgotten about for some time (however, subsequently, Molotov’s wife Polina Zhemchuzhina was arrested for mediation in this matter, and some members of the JAC were repressed and shot).

Why were the top leadership of the USSR pessimistic about the plans to create this republic in 1944? Personally, I believe that the point here is, first of all, the ethnic component of the population of Crimea at that time. Let me remind you that the mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars in February 1944 had not yet been carried out (perhaps not even planned), and the peninsula itself had not been liberated. In addition, even before the war, the Jewish population there was only 70 thousand people, that is, only 5.8% - this is more than the Germans (4.5%), but much less than the Tatars (19.4%). In addition, of these 70 thousand, the invaders destroyed 40 thousand (mostly those living on collective farms) - everyone who did not have time to evacuate, and on April 26, 1942, the peninsula was declared by the Nazis “Judenrhein”, that is, completely “cleared of Jews.” That is, there were simply no physical prerequisites for planning the creation of the Jewish Soviet Socialist Republic on the territory of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in February 1944.

However, Sudoplatov argued that to create such a republic (or even a separate state) in Crimea, the United States was ready to invest $10 billion, which in itself is approximately equal to Len-Lease supplies during the war. Moreover, he himself notes that this proposal was not accepted, and the USSR never received such a sum - this is supposedly the so-called “Marshal Plan”, which was never accepted by the Soviet leadership. That is, there was no “sale” in the forties (we will return to the question of the possibility of such a transaction in the twenties).

However, Gennady Kostyrchenko is confident that negotiations on financing for a similar amount for the creation of a Jewish republic in Crimea between the government of the USSR and the USA are nothing more than Sudoplatov’s invention. Having checked the protocols of the negotiations to which this general refers, he comes to the conclusion that this issue did not even arise at the conferences of the three heads of state mentioned by him. Moreover, according to him, the leaders of the Joint, who invested about 30 million dollars in the agricultural colonization of northern Crimea, after the failure of this agricultural project, were skeptical about the possibility of creating a Jewish republic there and the effectiveness of further financing of such projects.

As Kostyrchenko found out, the version about the alleged sale of the peninsula in 1944 is found only in fiction at V.V. Levashov, in his novel “The Murder of Mikhoels”.

However, having given what he deserved in exposing the “myth of the sale of Crimea” to the historian Gennady Vasilyevich Kostyrchenko, a little about what I was able to find in this direction.

Closing the discussion of the television “real sensation” - then simply a “duck” voiced on air by Mikhail Poltoranin and Andrei Karulov, we also note that in this program they attributed the authorship of the Crimea program to Stalin. They say how cleverly he deceived the American businessmen - instead of a republic in Crimea, he created in 1934 the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East. And in order not to pay bills, during his lifetime he planned to transfer the Crimean region to Ukraine. Literally, “Stalin’s preparation”, which was later carried out by Khrushchev.

I beg to differ with this statement.

In this version, everything is illogical and incomprehensible - why, for example, was this program scheduled for the very last day, that is, February 19, 1954, according to their version? What was the amount of the bail - several million dollars at five percent in the twenties, or 10 billion in the forties, which we never took? And why did the note holders never claim their rights? In a word, for testing we have a certain version for housewives, widely replicated, but not supported by anything at all.

In addition, the version of “Stalin’s preparation” contradicts the available evidence.

There is information that N.S. Khrushchev made an attempt to transfer Crimea during his leadership of the Ukrainian SSR during the war. The first mention of the possible transfer of the Crimean region dates back to October 1944. According to L.I. Podgrebny, who was at that time the Deputy Minister of Labor Reserves of the USSR, Khrushchev very reluctantly agreed to allocate settlers for the colonization of the half-empty Crimea. He mentioned that the day before he had raised the issue of transferring this region to the Ukrainian SSR: “I was in Moscow and said: “Ukraine is in ruins, and everyone is pulling out of it. But if Crimea is given to her, what’s the point?” So after that they called me everything and shook my soul in every possible way. They were ready to grind into powder! And nothing, as you can see, is alive.” Having signed the paper on the allocation of settlers, he told Podgrebny: “I will give people. And I will take Crimea. Doesn't matter".

That is, having turned to Stalin in the fall of 1944 with a request to transfer Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR, Khrushchev not only did not receive approval in his office, but he almost paid with his career for such plans. Stalin clearly did not want to transfer the peninsula to another republic. Neither in February nor in October 1944.

Thus, Podgrebny’s testimony fundamentally contradicts Poltoranin’s statement. Another question is which of them to believe? Personally, in my master’s thesis, I came to the conclusion that Khrushchev needed the transfer of the peninsula in order to enlist the support of his Ukrainian comrades in the Central Committee in the struggle for leadership against Malenkov. Well, the “sale” version turned out to be so crazy that I devoted no more than two paragraphs to it. Mainly focused on the fact that all the known editions of this myth (and there are several of them) contradict not only themselves, but also do not give clear answers - why it was necessary to transfer this peninsula, when it was founded, by whom, on behalf of whom, for how long, etc.

Moreover, I have the opinion that the clear and obvious injection of this disinformation into the mass consciousness clearly pursued certain political goals, and, perhaps, was sanctioned in Russia at the highest level. I will try to confirm this with facts.

To begin with, let us note that there are several editions of this version about the alleged sale of Crimea. Let us leave for a moment the sensational program of Andrei Karaulov, - Mikhail Poltoranin, who voiced this myth in it, contradicted himself and did not give a completely clear statement, although the viewer could have formed an opinion about the reality of the “real sensation”. Let's look at the versions that were published and under which the authors put their signature.

As a rule, this version of this myth about the sale was not presented by professional historians, but mainly by journalists in the media (often under pseudonyms), or in works of fiction. However, it was also mentioned in the monographs of at least one author - publicist A.B. Shirokorada.

Thus, in his opinion, which he outlined in several books, Khrushchev was forced to organize the transfer of the Crimean region from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR, due to the fact that back in the 20s the Soviet leadership agreed to the creation of a Jewish republic on the Crimean peninsula. Further, he mentions certain negotiations in the mid-40s between the Soviet Jewish intelligentsia represented by the JAC, the Soviet government and large US business circles on the creation of a new state on the territory of the Crimean peninsula. Alexander Shirokorad does not directly claim that the speech is in the twenties and forties years go by about the same project, but leads the inexperienced reader to precisely this conclusion. At the same time, the author does not indicate a single documentary source that would confirm this version, but only refers to two articles. This is “Crimean California” by S.P. Gorbachev (excerpt from his art project) and “Peninsula of Delayed Action” by a certain Boris Sibirsky.

The last author published under this name (which may be a pseudonym) in July 2005 in the newspaper “Duel” and simultaneously in the same month in the magazine “For Seven Seals”. In this article, he claimed that allegedly on February 19, 1929, an agreement was signed [I would like to see it, if one exists] between the American charitable organization "Joint" and the government of the Soviet Union on lending to the Jewish colonization of the Crimean Peninsula. At the same time, according to his version, financing was extremely moderate even by the standards of the 20s. That is, for ten years, 900 thousand dollars per year at 5%, plus an additional 0.5 million per year if colonization is successful.

Allegedly, a total of $20 million worth of bills were issued, the owners of which, according to the authors, were “Rockefeller, Marshall, Warburg and even future presidents H. Hoover and F. Roosevelt.”

The author, rather cautiously, did not link the demand for the creation of a Jewish republic with the loan agreement he mentioned dated “February 19, 1929.” According to his version, the demand to repay the debt was only accompanied by pressure of this kind. In addition, he vaguely hinted that none of the parties to the said agreement “wanted all the details to be made public.” That is, in this way, several birds were killed at once, - the question was removed - why the creditors did not show up in 1954, and whether the loan agreement was included in the loan agreement, even if there was a clause on the creation of a republic - let the reader speculate on this matter myself. At the same time, Boris Sibirsky quite elegantly combined versions of the sale in the 20s and 40s - supposedly the United States was ready to forgive a debt of 20 million dollars, and was even going to provide new loans of billions of dollars, but only under the condition of the creation of the Jewish Autonomous (but not a socialist) republic.

Another, no less elegant move by the author is an explanation of why the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine eliminates all problems. They say that the “decision on resettlement” was made by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR, which is not necessary for the Ukrainian SSR. That is, it is clear that it is nonsense, but an inexperienced reader can read and retell to a neighbor, for example, that “Russia sold it, but Ukraine owes nothing to anyone.” However, if you imagine for a moment how this text might be interpreted over a bottle of tea...

That is, nowhere does this same Boris Sibirsky directly state that Russia gave obligations to create a republic - we are talking about resettlement. And it is not at all clear what this “highly secret agreement” of “February 19, 1929” has to do with it, concluded, according to him, on behalf of the USSR, and not the RSFSR? The circumstances surrounding the disclosure of the details of this “highly secret agreement” are not clear. In what archive is it contained and why is it impossible for mere mortals, and not this author without a patronymic, that is, a pseudonym, to get acquainted with it?

And here it is worth paying attention to the fact that this “Boris Siberian” himself is a publicist who writes on a wide variety of topics. Trying to find his publications, I came across articles with topics ranging from Harry Potter and the beauty contest to the global confrontation in the Atlantic. If you believe the portal ruskline.ru, then he once published a text on a historical topic in the weekly magazine "Russia" in the same 2005. Later, I did not come across publications with this pseudonym.

As for his article “Peninsula in Delayed Action”, in the part devoted to the Jewish colonization of the Crimean peninsula, it is surprisingly similar to two other articles by two other authors published in two official publications, the founder of which is the Russian parliament. First of all, this is the Rossiya newspaper and the article “The Sold Peninsula” by a certain Boris Gusyachkin, indicated as a “retired lieutenant colonel.” And in the same 2004, an article by a certain Boris Nikolin “Crimea: from Ukranization to Turkification” in the newspaper “ Russian Federation Today", the founder of which is the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation.

All of these three above-mentioned articles, the authorship of which is attributed to certain three Boriss without a patronymic, are characterized by similar content, approximately the same structure, retelling and the same set of key individual sentences, repeated verbatim in these two articles, and repeated to the letter. There are also no links to any archival documents.

That is, most likely we are not talking about plagiarism, but about three different pseudonyms of the same author, who was published in 2004-2005 in publications owned by the Russian parliament.

I would venture to guess that I can name another author who published another clone of this article discussed above, but much earlier and under his own name.

Most likely, the original author of this theory in the version that reached Shirokorad was S.P. Gorbachev, naval officer (currently captain 1st rank), military journalist, deputy editor-in-chief of the official newspaper of the Black Sea Fleet “Flag of the Motherland.” It was from him, in the article “ Crimean California”, written back in 1999, and presented as part of his planned book “Revival as a Russian City”, this is the first time that exactly this sequence of facts and conclusions has been observed. Based on the fact that this article contains Stalin’s internal monologue, this work was originally conceived in the genre of fiction.

The artistic nature of this work explains the fact that the scientist S.P. Gorbachev (it seems that he defended his dissertation on the patriotic education of youth, majoring in political science, but I could be wrong) is confused with dates and does not provide links to sources. Moreover, even without resorting to content analysis, it is clear that his article “Crimean California” is a compilation of some scientific work, diluted with the author’s fiction.

Most of all, the set and sequence of facts and figures about Jewish colonization on the Crimean peninsula of the 20-30s is similar to the article by historian and specialist in the pre-war history of the Crimean peninsula Alexander Efimov “The Jewish Socialist Republic in Crimea. The story of one project." This article, written on the basis of local periodicals (including Nazi propaganda during the occupation) and some archival documents (in this case, it seems to me, there is no reason not to trust the author), tells the story of the colonization of the desert steppes of northern Crimea. It was held under the leadership of the already mentioned Committee on the Land Settlement of Jewish Workers (hereinafter KomZet) and the Public Committee on the Land Settlement of Jewish Workers (hereinafter OZET) with the financial assistance of the Agro-Joint charitable organization, led by James N. Rosenberg. In addition, he mentions a plan in 1923-1924 “to form an autonomous region of Jews on the territory of Northern Crimea, the southern steppe strip of Ukraine and the Black Sea coast up to the borders of Abkhazia.”

According to Efimov, the People's Commissar of Agriculture A.P. opposed the implementation of this plan in practice. Smirnov, seeing in him a threat of interethnic aggravation on the ground. As it turned out later, these fears were not groundless - the plans for land colonization received the most fierce resistance from the indigenous population, and most importantly, they contradicted the policies pursued locally by the authorities of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

One way or another, the project of agricultural colonization of the northern part of the Crimean peninsula by the Jewish population was not completed. Armed attacks by local landowners, crop failure, and the beginning of the collectivization process forced collective farmers, despite all the temporary benefits provided, to leave the countryside for the cities and return back - a similar process would take place in the 40s and 50s, already in the time of Slavic colonization. According to the data cited by Efimov, by 1941 about 70 thousand Jews already lived on the peninsula, but no more than 17 thousand people lived on collective farms. Thus, there was no longer talk of a separate Jewish territorial autonomy in northern Crimea.

We especially note that the scientist Alexander Efimov (it seems that he was a graduate student at the Russian Academy of Sciences, but I could be wrong), who at one time worked as a press secretary at the Moscow-Crimea Foundation, did not talk about any large loan, nor about any “highly secret agreement” dated “February 19, 1929”, and even more so there is no talk of any “bills”. A small scientific article within the framework of the topic he is researching, nothing more. The author mentions the Jewish Soviet Socialist Republic only in the title, and the article itself, in fact, is devoted only to the topic of colonization and financing of Jewish colonization only of the steppe territories of northern Crimea, and plans for autonomy, following the examples of existing plans for German autonomy in Crimea.

However, it seems that it was precisely on top of the real facts taken from it (or a common source with it, which is unlikely) that the fiction about bills and shares and this very “highly secret agreement” of “February 19, 1929” was superimposed.

That is, on the basis of the materials of this young scientist, the “myth of sale” we are considering was most likely woven in those editions, which was very carefully interpreted in quite reputable publications in 2004-2005 by certain three “Boris without a patronymic.”

Most likely, these three anonymous “Boris without a patronymic” drew their inspiration from the artistic works of Captain 1st Rank Sergei Pavlovich Gorbachev, winner of the International Literary Prize named after. V. Pikul, deputy editor-in-chief of Flag of the Motherland, the official newspaper of the Black Sea Fleet. It was he who first mentioned this most notorious agreement of “February 19, 1929.”

To understand my confidence, just put two texts in front of you - Efimov’s article “The Jewish Soviet Socialist Republic in Crimea,” which he published at one time on the website of the Moscow-Crimea Foundation, and the excerpt “Crimean California” by Sergei Gorbachev from his literary project . Comments will be unnecessary.

However, I do not rule out that there were earlier editions of the myth about the alleged sale of the peninsula to the Jews for some debts and under some kind of agreements. The same Alexander Efimov mentions such eloquent headlines in the Nazi occupation press as “Stalin received dictatorial power in Russia for selling Crimea to the Jews” (according to this researcher, this was published in the newspaper “Azat Crimea” on March 20, 1942, in No. 17). However, in 1942 they did not yet know that two years later, in February 1944, someone would take the initiative to create a new republic on the peninsula. And they could not know the date of transfer of the region, and not the republic, to neighboring Ukraine.

I personally have no doubt that the date of the mythical treaty of 1929 was artificially adjusted to February 19. For I saw documents testifying to the conditions in which chaos (no other word comes to mind) this very transfer took place. In GARF there is a file with silver embossing, which is studied almost every month by someone new - they ask for a photocopy, photo and video recording. It's like they're trying to find something new there. And no one goes further than this daddy. I came across cases that remained unclaimed for forty years, and I was the first to open the sheets for their use. I repeat, the fact that the date of the meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1954 was set precisely for February 19 was a coincidence of random circumstances. Moreover, the Decree itself was promulgated only a week later - all this time, the necessary documents were feverishly rewritten in the Presidiums of the Supreme Soviets of the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR, in which the body that allegedly came up with this initiative was not fully agreed upon - someone remembered the Constitution , and decided not to refer to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee.

And, I repeat, I saw the founding protocols of the mentioned KomZet and OZET.

I will immediately disappoint fans of “real sensations”. In these protocols, begun on September 4, 1924 and completed until the end of November, there is no mention of any republic or autonomy in Crimea. It was about the development of virgin territories by landless Jews. The emphasis was placed on the fact that representatives of this people for a couple of thousand years did not have the right to own land and cultivate it, and only the Soviet government gave them such an opportunity. What territories were meant for the settlers? Mainly Ukraine and Belarus. Crimea was mentioned only a couple of times: “First of all, free areas should be identified as settlement areas for working Jews. Located in the area of ​​Jewish colonies in the South of Ukraine, as well as Northern Crimea.”

It was assumed that in order to accommodate the landless and create conditions for them to conduct agriculture, the committee intends to further seek financial assistance from other organizations, not excluding assistance from abroad. Literally: “The travel item includes expenses for business trips of members of the Committee for the Land Administration of Working Jews to places of exit and settlement. And also trips abroad in order to raise funds, to raise funds, to carry out the tasks of the Committee.”

I would like to note right away that no foreign sources of funding are mentioned - neither names nor organizations. There is no mention of any “branch of the Agro-Joint Bank”, operating since 1922 according to Sergei Gorbachev (Alexander Efimov has no such information). And as noted above, Agro-Joint was formed only in 1924 with the assistance of KomZet and OZET created in the same year under the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (and not the RSFSR, as the myth-makers claim, in order to justify the transfer to the Ukrainian SSR) with one parties, and the charitable organization “Joint”, which has been operating since 1914.

And, of course, the seriously ill Vladimir Ilyich Lenin could not attend the exhibition held by this organization, created only a year later, in 1923, and therefore could not approve of plans to create some kind of separate republic or autonomy in Crimea. And even if the authors of this theory were mistaken in the year they visited that exhibition, then in the fall of 1924 Lenin lived for three months and already had a vague idea of ​​the reality around him.

The file contains several protocols - No. 1, the founding one, and a couple dedicated to the estimates and staff of the “Committee under the Presidium of the Council of Nationalities for the Land Management of Working Jews.” The founding one referred to the resolution of the USSR Central Executive Committee of August 29, 1924 on the creation of this committee. At the very beginning, program speeches by Klimenko, Ibragimov and Ignatovsky were given about work in Ukraine, Belarus and Crimea: “One of the most oppressed peoples under the old regime were the Jews. Under the tsarist regime, Jews were not allowed to engage in agriculture, despite their desire for agricultural work.” At the same time, OZET was created - the Society for the Land Settlement of Working Jews, which initially included 67 members.

In general, it seems that, despite the impressive composition of the founders, the committee was created with fairly moderate capabilities. Ultimately, for permanent functioning, he was allocated a room in the Kremlin and only two paid positions were approved - it seems that he was a typist and a stoker (I didn’t find it among my extracts), - other vacancies were not accepted by the Central Executive Committee. They even refused to hire a cleaning lady.

What surprised me most was that they refused the position of agronomist; they were worth their weight in gold. Most likely, this was the reason for the fatal consequences in the fate of the Jewish colonists. The fact is that the virgin lands in northern Crimea, where it was planned to place the colonists, were initially not suitable for arable farming due to the arid soil. Slavic migrants from the regions of the Ukrainian SSR and the RSFSR later faced a similar problem in the 40s and 50s, I read MGB reports on the mood among the local population. The key issue, the supply of fresh water for irrigation, was resolved only in 1972, when the North Crimean Canal finally began its work.

Thus, for me personally there is no doubt that all the stories about the alleged sale of Crimea to Jews to create some kind of separate republic are fakes. Yes, there was funding for agricultural colonization, including from abroad. Preferential taxation was created for new collective farms, which was periodically extended in the mid-30s - GARF has quite a lot of materials on this subject. Perhaps someone in the 20s had the idea of ​​some kind of local autonomy within the peninsula, similar to plans to create German autonomy. However, for the entire peninsula to be mortgaged for some ridiculous sum of 20 million dollars under the condition of creating a separate republic, this is complete nonsense.

And this is not the first fake that I came across when studying the history of the transfer of this peninsula. The second, no less common, is about the alleged lack of quorum of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which made the decision. There is a certain text floating around the Internet with absolutely fantastic figures that only 13 out of 27 members were present at that meeting - a fairly common misconception deliberately thrown into the masses by someone, despite the fact that in 1992 the journal “Historical Archive” published real data.

According to my calculations, at the meeting of the Presidium of the RSFSR Supreme Council on February 5, 1954, 15 out of 26 members were present (protocol No. 41), as for the fateful meeting of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council, which took place on February 19, there were 23 out of 33 (protocol No. 35) . Even 24, if you count the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Latvian SSR K.M. Ozolin, who for some reason wished to remain among the invitees and did not put his signature on this act.

In any case, after the unanimous approval of this Decree at the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on April 26, 1954, and also the unanimous approval of this decision on June 2 at the session of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, I personally consider any talk about the illegality of formalizing the transfer of the region to be provocative.

Russia had the opportunity to get the peninsula back during the divorce process in the 90s, but the legally elected Supreme Council of the RSFSR back in 1990 signed a 10-year agreement with the Ukrainian parliament on maintaining territorial integrity - for this reason, consideration of this issue was disrupted at the UN in 1992. Well, after the signing of a friendship treaty in 1997, which canceled the aforementioned 10-year agreement, and its ratification in 1998, Ukraine has complete peremptory right to this peninsula.

Perhaps it was after this, in 1999, that this very “myth of sale” was born, which has a simple subtext for the broad masses - they say, we lost Crimea, but we must come to terms with this, otherwise, if Ukraine loses it, then it it will not go to us, but to the Jews. Rely on reliable, time-tested feelings. Accordingly, the second edition of this myth in 2004-2005 is associated with the failure of pro-Russian forces in the elections in Ukraine, which caused another decline in revanchist sentiments, which urgently needed to be balanced with something. Find someone to blame for your own failures and unsatisfied imperial ambitions.

I’m just wondering what motivates people who invent such myths, and why do they so persistently, in their failures, invent some kind of enemy machinations emanating from people of a different nationality?

The history of Jewish agrarian colonization in Crimea and the events around it can be presented in completely different ways. For example, write about how many millions of people in Ukraine, Belarus and the Volga region were saved from hunger in 1922 by the activities of the charitable organization Joint, which subsequently contributed to agricultural colonization. Or you can write how the activities of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee contributed to the opening of a second front. How, under the influence of their activities, an ardent opponent of Soviet power, “President of the World Organization of Zionists,” Chaim Weizmann, began to call on Jews around the world to help the USSR in their struggle against Nazi Germany. As “the leader of the American Zionists, an avowed enemy of Soviet power,” Rabbi Stefan Weise welcomed the start of the work of the JAC and promised his assistance to the Red Army.

Or you can accuse AgroJoint of helping its fellow tribesmen not for free, but for some interest. Moreover, they would have to make up a fairy tale that they would have to pay for this help by going to the Black Sea. You can even broadcast the myth on the central channel that demands for territorial concessions were put forward as a condition for opening a second front.

The history of Jewish agar settlements is written in blood. I did not mention here either the repressions against members of KomZet in the late 30s, or the 14 Crimean Tatars executed in 1928 in the case of the Milli Firka party, or the 12 members of the JAC executed in 1952. All this is not comparable to those 40 thousand Jews, of which 17 thousand were collective farmers, who were exterminated by the Nazis during the years of occupation. Before this colonization, for several hundred and even thousands of years, these people were deprived of the right to own land and cultivate it. It just so happened that the place they got was initially unsuitable for farming until the opening of the North Crimean Canal in 1972.

One way or another, in the mid-40s, when it was necessary to improve the agriculture of the peninsula that had been depopulated after the war and deportations, a bet was made on the Slavicization of the territory of the former republic, which had already become a region. Colonists from rural areas of Ukrainian and Russian regions were attracted for settlement, that is, they had centuries-old skills in working on the land. A massive renaming of local Turkic toponyms to Slavic ones was carried out - I found a lot of documents on this issue. The last mention of Jewish agricultural migrants that I came across in the archives was Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for 1947 No. 3823 “On the resettlement of 250 families from the Crimean region and 704 families from the Kherson and Nikolaev regions to the Jewish Autonomous Region.”

The project of Jewish agrarian colonization in Crimea was completely curtailed.

Thus, if we try to figure out what is true and what is fiction in this story, we must admit that there were still some plans for Jewish autonomy in Crimea. Not as large-scale as Sergei Gorbachev is trying to present in his literary project, but nonetheless. If you believe Alexander Efimov, then a certain project appeared somewhere in 1923 (his chronological sequence is lame), but was abandoned due to its fantastic nature. If you believe Sudoplatov, then similar plans appeared again in 1944, but because of their outright utopianism, they were also not given a go.

There was also funding for agricultural colonization in the South of Ukraine and Northern Crimea. So, for example, the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated June 10, 1937 that caught my eye was supposed to resettle 500 Jewish families on collective farms and build 330 houses for them with the allocation of 3,894 thousand rubles in loans. Was foreign capital attracted? Gennady Kostyrchenko, who has no reason not to be trusted, mentions 30 million dollars invested before the war in this agrarian colonization by charitable organizations, but which ultimately did not justify themselves. The salt marshes of the Northern Crimea did not become “California”.

Now where did the fiction come from on these real facts? For the first time, such rumors were spread by the Nazi press during the years of occupation. Perhaps General Sudoplatov added something to the myth-making treasury - you and I know why generals and marshals write memoirs since the time of Geoffroy Villehardouin. At least, he mentioned somewhere that the contents of Mikhoels’ letter to Stalin gave rise to the most ridiculous rumors.

Next we have an inevitable point - the literary project of Sergei Pavlovich Gorbachev, who, as I understand it, superimposed the author’s fiction on top of real facts, surprisingly similar to the material from Alexander Efimov’s article. Then, this version from an excerpt from the received story or novel “Revival as a Russian City” was very carefully retold in 2004 by two Boriss - Gusyachkin and Nikolin (most likely pseudonyms). Moreover, in fairly reputable central publications. And a year later they were retold by a certain Boris Sibirsky, whose traces are lost after 2005, that is, most likely, also someone’s temporary pseudonym.

Sibirsky's ideas were picked up by Alexander Shirokorad and found a place in his monographs. And, most likely, some of his works after some time caught the eye of Andrei Karaulov, who, for the sake of show, even found authoritative witnesses - Mikhail Poltoranin and Tikhon Khrennikov (whose short monologue, by the way, was taken out of some context).

This is exactly how I see the genesis of this myth about the sale of Crimea.

Non-faction people's deputy Andrei Artemenko, on February 27, at a press conference, said that the USSR in 1954 should have transferred Crimea to the United States to repay a loan of 50 million dollars received in 1920, secured by the territory of the peninsula.

“In 1954, the deadline for repayment of the amounts came. And there was a project called “New California,” if anyone doesn’t know, this is the territory of Crimea. I am sure that this is why Crimea was transferred to Ukraine in order to retain this territory for the Soviet Union,” - said Artemenko.

What is "Crimean California"?

It was not possible to find documentary evidence of the agreement between the USA and the USSR. At the same time, the term “New California” or “Crimean California” really exists. It first appeared in the Russian press in the late 1990s and concerned the idea of ​​creating Jewish autonomy in Crimea with the financial support of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.

One of its first mentions is the article of the same name, which was published in 1999 in the almanac “Island of Crimea”. Its author is Sergei Gorbachev, a military journalist, deputy editor-in-chief of the official newspaper of the Russian Black Sea Fleet "Flag of the Motherland". The article was not of a scientific nature; for example, it contained “Stalin’s internal monologue”; the author did not provide any links to the sources of the information he published.

It follows from the article that in the 1920s the issue of creating Jewish autonomy was discussed in the USSR. The American Joint Distribution Committee (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) volunteered to help in its creation. In 1929, he entered into a loan agreement with the USSR government to provide a $1.5 million loan at 5% per annum with subsequent repayment in 1945-1954. As a guarantee, the USSR allegedly issued shares on 375 thousand hectares of Crimean land. More than 200 US citizens allegedly became their buyers, including President Theodore Roosevelt, John Hoover, who later headed the FBI, and billionaire John Rockefeller.

Further, in 1944, during negotiations on the opening of a second front in Europe, the topic of Crimea surfaced during negotiations between members of the Anti-Hitler Coalition, while the Americans allegedly promised the USSR, in exchange for the creation of Jewish autonomy, 10 billion dollars of investment. But Stalin refused such a proposal and began to support the idea of ​​​​creating a Jewish state in Palestine.

What does this have to do with US rights to Crimea?

In the 2000s, the topic of “Crimean California” acquired details in the Russian state and nationalist press. Media is active Mikhail Poltoranin was quoted as saying(in 1992 - head of the Interdepartmental Commission for the declassification of documents of the CPSU with the rank of Deputy Prime Minister).

He argued that from declassified archival documents it followed that Crimea in the 1920s was mortgaged by the US government through the issue of bonds, the maturity of which ended in 1954. In order to prevent the transfer of the peninsula to the US, Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR. This was done to preserve Crimea within the structure of the USSR. According to Poltoranin, the agreement with the United States was concluded on behalf of the RSFSR, and its transfer to the Ukrainian SSR made it impossible to implement the agreement.

It is noteworthy that the emergence of information that the Americans have allegedly been laying claim to Crimea for a long time coincided with the Kremlin’s active campaign to prevent Ukraine from receiving the “NATO Membership Action Plan.” This issue was discussed in 2008 at the NATO summit in Bucharest.

So is this true?

The fact that in the 1920s. the USSR actually considered the possibility of creating a Jewish autonomous republic in Crimea, historians confirm. Thus, in the monograph “Crimea through the centuries,” published in 2015 by the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, it is stated that for these purposes in 1923 a special commission was even created for the land management of working Jews (Komzet). But in 1928, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR adopted a resolution “On assigning to Komzet for the needs of the settlement of free lands in the Amur region of the Far Eastern Territory by Jewish workers.”

Historians also confirm the fact of financial assistance from the American Joint Foundation to the Soviet Union in the 1920s. But the fact of the existence of a certain agreement on the transfer of the United States as collateral for a loan of lands in Crimea appears to be a myth.

Why did Ukraine not want to take the peninsula for a long time?.. Nowadays, when Crimea is mentioned in Russia, it is customary to recall Artek’s childhood and scold Nikita Khrushchev for “giving the peninsula to the Ukrainians.”
But in vain: everything could have turned out much worse, and in the place of Crimea the 51st state of the United States or what is now called the State of Israel would have been located. Mikhail Poltoranin told AiF about this in 1990-1992. Minister of Press and Information. The data was obtained by him from various Soviet and foreign archives.

Peninsula for 20 “lemons”
What the Reds received at the end of the Civil War was only a shadow of Russia's past. Even Crimea - the pearl of the south - seemed something between a cemetery and a landfill. Money was needed to restore Tavrida, but where to get it? For better or for worse, foreign investors poured into Soviet Russia in those years. Among them, in 1922, representatives of the Jewish financial organization from the United States, the Joint, appeared and began to promote the idea of ​​​​creating a Jewish autonomous republic in Crimea.
A branch of the Agro-Joint bank was created in Simferopol, Jewish villages began to appear, the number of which reached 150. In November 1923, the head of the Jewish section of the RCP (b) Abram Bragin submitted to the Politburo a draft decision on the creation of not an autonomous, but already a full-fledged Soviet socialist Jewish republic.
Things moved forward: 132 thousand hectares of Crimean land were allocated for settlers. Having heard that the Bolsheviks had opened a branch of the Promised Land in Crimea, Jews from all over Russia began to arrive there. On February 19, 1929, an agreement was signed between the Joint, which at that time represented America in our country due to the lack of diplomatic relations with the United States, and the Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR.
The document, which bore the beautiful name “On Crimean California,” contained the responsibilities of the parties. The Joint, for example, allocated 1.5 million dollars a year to the USSR (until 1936, 20 million dollars were received), and for this amount the Central Executive Committee pledged 375 thousand hectares of Crimean land. They were issued in shares, which were bought by more than 200 Americans, including politicians Roosevelt and Hoover, financiers Rockefeller and Marshall, General MacArthur... All disputes under this agreement were to be resolved in the arbitration court of Heidelberg, Germany.
The money went to Jewish settlers directly through Agro-Joint, bypassing the Soviet budget. They used them to buy equipment, equipment and food. Such injustice fueled the protests of the Tatars, Bulgarians, Greeks, Germans, and the Ukrainian population living in Crimea. At one of the Politburo meetings, Stalin said that “Crimean California” does not give the country anything other than national strife. He proposed to close the project, and it was closed.

Jewish answer
The story of “Crimean California” resurfaced at the height of World War II. In 1943, at the Tehran Conference, Roosevelt, in a conversation with Stalin, said that his administration would soon have problems with supplies to the USSR under Lend-Lease if the “Crimean California” project was not revived. A very informed source, Milovan Djilas, the future vice-president of Yugoslavia, wrote about this. He and Josip Broz Tito secretly flew to the USSR and in a personal conversation asked Stalin why the Tatars were deported from Crimea in the spring of 1944. According to him, Stalin referred to the obligations given to Roosevelt to clear Crimea for Jewish settlers.
Stalin understood that the Americans were pushing through the Crimean project not in the interests of Soviet Jews, but for their own geopolitical purposes. However, difficult circumstances forced us to maneuver, and the bargaining around “Crimean California” continued. Stalin insisted that this state entity should be part of the USSR in the status of an autonomous republic (they were going to appoint Lazar Kaganovich as its leader), and wanted to receive a $10 billion loan to restore the country's economy. They seemed to promise money, but on the condition that Crimea secede from the USSR. The matter has once again stalled...
But this is not the end of the story. The year 1954 arrived, which was supposed to be the time of final repayment of old debts. The Americans believed that the balance of the twenty million loan still hung over the USSR, although in order to pay off these debts, a lot of captured German weapons were transferred to Israel through the Joint for the war with the Arabs. Washington could start a squabble and demand Crimean lands. And then the new collective leadership of the USSR - Khrushchev, Bulganin, Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich - decided to play it safe.
In the fall of 1953, Khrushchev visited Crimea. The peninsula made a depressing impression on him. Then he flew to Kyiv, where he spent a long time trying to persuade the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR to accept Crimea under their jurisdiction. The Ukrainian comrades did not want to take Crimea - after the war they had enough of their own problems. However, using old connections, Khrushchev persuaded the Ukrainian leaders. Now the Ukrainian SSR had to answer for the old Soviet debt. Having handed over the peninsula to it, Moscow retained the main base of the Black Sea Fleet - Sevastopol. In fact, Kyiv took it into its hands only with the collapse of the USSR. However, this is a completely different story.
Khrushchev apparently believed that he had found the perfect way, a kind of cunning, a legal hook to outwit both the United States and its Jewish lobby. Perhaps, in the terms of 1953, this was the case. Nikita Sergeevich could not have imagined in his nightmare that in less than 40 years the USSR would simply disappear from the world map!

JEWISH SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC IN CRIMEA
Jews arriving in Crimea were not adapted to agricultural work. According to the social composition of Jewish immigrants: traders - 50%, artisans - 20%, workers - 10%, unspecified occupations - 15%, intelligentsia - 5%.
In Crimea they found themselves in conditions that were unusual for them. Thus, one of the settlers, Girsh Berkov Livshits, wrote: “Arriving in Crimea... my funds disappeared so much that I somehow lived myself and was engaged in small trade in the villages. After sowing, I returned home and collected my coins and came with my family, which consists of 5 souls 2 men and 3 women, all adults. After all our suffering from February 15, 1927 until the stubble, that is, until August 1, which is the very first course of bread and water...".
From a letter from another settler, Vladimir Isakovich Grinband: “For four months now, the family on the site has been literally starving. Every day I dug stones with a crowbar in my hands and carried the family on my shoulders to the estate, worked from hand to mouth (the other settlers) did not get along with each other, squabbled and fled.”
<...>
The Joint branch in the USSR was liquidated by the Decree of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of May 4, 1938. D. Rosenberg spent $30 million on measures to create Jewish colonies in Crimea.
According to the 1926 census, out of 39,921 Jews, 4,083 people lived in rural areas. By 1930, up to 4,000 Jewish farms had moved to Crimea, which were allocated 344,269 hectares by 1932, of which 235,413 were arable land.
Moreover, on January 1, 1930, out of 49,100 Jews living in the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, only 10,140 lived in villages, the remaining 38,970 lived in cities. By 1937, 54,813 Jews lived in Crimea. By 1941, the number of Jews had increased, according to some sources, to 70 thousand, of which only 17 thousand people lived on 86 Jewish collective farms.

Jewish Crimea
Jewish communes in the early USSR


On the picture:
1 - director of AgroJoint Rosen, 2 - secretary of AgroJoint Hyman - at a meeting with Jewish communards in Crimea, 1928
About the book “In Search of Paradise: About Jewish Land Management in Crimea”, written by the Israeli Dekkel-Hen and the German Hillig (Hesed Shimon, Simferopol, 2004, 300 copies) read under the cut and in the entry at hasid .
Very briefly, the structure of Jewish agricultural communes in the USSR in the 1920s and 30s looked like this:
1) This project of the American Joint was officially anti-Zionist. The Warburg banking family, which financed the Joint, specifically emphasized this - in defiance of the “Palestinian-Zionist project of the British.” The Warburgs believed that Zion needed to be built in the USSR, and not only from Soviet Jews, but also from the Jews of Eastern Europe and even Germany. This idea was also supported by the non-Jewish Rockefeller (who also took part in the financing of the Joint).
2) In the mid-1930s, the Joint even developed a project to transfer hundreds of thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany to Birobidzhan, but this project failed due to the opposition of 3 parties: Germany, the USSR and the Zionists.
3) Until the early 30s, the government of the USSR was also interested in the Joint - it was the main legal channel of communication with the US government and companies of this country, but most importantly, the Joint became the main supplier for the USSR (and free of charge) of agricultural machinery. In total, he spent about 35 million dollars (by today's standards, this is about 0.5 billion dollars): with this money, tractors and other agricultural machinery, pumps, power plants and other equipment were purchased.
4) The Joint, at the insistence of the US government, created an intelligence network throughout the USSR, taking advantage of its legal status and the ability to access almost anywhere in the USSR. By 1938 - the end of his work in the USSR - the Joint had about 300 agents; during the years of the Great Terror, almost all of them were exposed (starting in the early 30s).
5) Representatives of the Joint themselves explained the curtailment of its work in the USSR by the reorientation of the Soviet government towards Germany in the early 30s (starting around 1931).
6) The Joint also carried out the re-emigration of Jews from Palestine to the USSR, for which it was necessary to fight the “reactionary colonial British”. The most famous commune of such re-emigrants is "Voyo Nova" in Crimea (" new way"in Esperanto), about 100 families, arrived in 1928-29. All of them came from the left wing of Gduda. In fact, it was a kibbutz - in the agricultural commune they did not pay money for work, people lived as a huge family in barracks, children were sent to nurseries and an orphanage under the commune, the communards did not have any personal property.Practically communism was established in the commune.
7) Such kibbutzim were supposed to be distributed throughout the entire territory of the USSR, incl. they were to consist of peasants of all nationalities. However, at the end of 1929, the “right wing” won in the Soviet government, and it was decided that the only correct form was the collective farm. Communes like Voyo Nova, on the contrary, were declared “leftist excesses”.
“Industrial kibbutzim” were also planned, the prototype of which was the “Artel named after the American proletarian Society for Assistance to Jewish Colonization in Soviet Russia “Ikor”.
8) Initially, the Joint intended to spread Esperanto among Jews (later among other nationalities of the USSR as a language of interethnic communication, in particular, “Prime Minister” Rykov advocated this). However, later the USSR abandoned this idea.
9) The idea of ​​the Jewish Republic in Birobidzhan was not invented by Stalin, but by the Joint - back in 1926-28.
10) Rabbit breeding as an industry in the USSR appeared thanks to the first chairman of the Voyo Nova commune, Mendel Elkind. He was able to prove to the Council of People's Commissars that "thanks to these animals, it is possible to save the population from hunger" (the plan for creating the industry was finally adopted on August 16, 1929 in the Central Committee). Voyo Nova specialists began training Soviet people to become rabbit breeders in 1930.
11) Anti-Zionists from the “Joint” were also at the origins of the creation of pig farming in the USSR

Project "Crimea - New California" - myth or reality?

06/30/2008 - Andrey Karaulov - Moment of Truth - TVC channel
Project "Crimean California". Why was Stalin killed?
To judge those and current times objectively, you should at least take an interest in the “Crimean California” project or the case of the Chairman of the Crimean Central Executive Committee, Veli Ibraimov. In fact, the question is much deeper. The deportation of 1944 should be considered an act of tragedy that is not completed to this day. The “New California” project, which initially, in addition to Crimea, was supposed to include the lands of the Kherson and Odessa regions, as well as the Krasnodar Territory to the border with Abkhazia, was carried out by the “Joint” (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) since 1923 ) .

Year of manufacture: 1927
Genre: history
Issued: USSR
Director: Abram Room
Duration: 00:17:54

Back in November 1923, the head of the Jewish section of the RCP (b), Abram Bragin, submitted to the Politburo a draft decision on the creation of a Soviet socialist Jewish republic. In 1927, Yuri Larin (Lurie) proposed a set of new measures for the settlement of Jewish settlers in Crimea. Since 1929 The Joint issued targeted loans for “Crimean California” on the security of Crimean lands. The debts became due in 1945. In case of non-repayment of debt before 1954. the mortgaged lands were to be transferred to the shareholders. And they became more than 200 Americans, including future presidents Roosevelt and Hoover, financiers Rockefeller and Marshall, General MacArthur. The resettlement began, but was met with opposition from local authorities. The opposition to the Center was led by the Chairman of the Crimean Central Election Commission Veli Ibraimov. He had a plan to resettle landless Crimean Tatars and repatriate up to 200 thousand people from Turkey and Romania. According to Crimean Tatar sources, Ibraimov acted sharply and irreconcilably, he even personally turned back the arriving trains with Jewish settlers. Stalin summoned him to Moscow, the conversation, as Ibraimov was later able to tell, was cool, and upon his return he was arrested. Among the thirteen charges, he was credited with the murder of the red partisan Ibrahim Choloka, harboring the Hayser Amet gang and others. At the trial, Ibraimov named the true reason for the reprisal carried out against him. But Veli Agha’s suicide note also contained the following words: “Communo-Zionist unity is killing me because I defended the rights of the Crimean Tatars, planned to gather them in their homeland... and moved to action.” It is not said to what purpose, but this was by no means written for the court that had already passed a verdict. The tragic fate of this man, who sincerely considered himself a Bolshevik, can be explained by the fact that he was not familiar with Marxism. It clearly states that the proletariat has no fatherland, that it must establish its dictatorship under the banner of proletarian internationalism. Ibraimov sincerely believed that being a Bolshevik, he could remain a Crimean Tatar, have a homeland, and even take care of his people. Before him, Jews were sent to Crimea: Rosalia Zemlyachka (Zalkind), Bela Kun (Kogan), Yuri Gaven (Dauman). They internationalized to their heart's content, shooting more than 200 thousand officers, representatives of the clergy, and intelligentsia and artificially creating the famine of 1921-22, in which at least 60 thousand more died. And Veli aga gave the land, declared an amnesty and the fight stopped. (Subsequently, the Leninist guard was exterminated by Stalin, which even the Crimean Tatars give him credit for).

A few days after Ibraimov’s confession and the arrest of his group (in total, about 3.5 thousand were repressed), Larin made a proposal to create a Jewish Republic. The Committee for the Land System of Jewish Workers and the Public Committee for the Land System of Jewish Workers were created. KomZET was headed by Smidovich, and OZET by Larin. Discontent began on the part of the local population, especially the Crimean Tatars, which definitely subsequently influenced their relations with the Soviet authorities. Published in the period 1942-44. the Crimean Tatar newspaper Azat Krym (Free Crimea) called it “Chufut-Bolshevik”. It's impossible to argue with anything.

But already in the 30s, Karl Radek uttered the famous phrase: “Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, and Stalin - from the Politburo.” Then in the Khabarovsk Territory. The Jewish Autonomous Region was formed, the Joint employees were accused of espionage and expelled, and its branch in the USSR was liquidated by the Decree of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on May 4, 1938. But in Crimea there are two autonomous Jewish districts (Freidorf in 1930 and Larindorf in 1935) was nevertheless created. Some sources mention another one - Telmansky). The first two included 29 local Jewish councils and occupied 4.5 thousand square meters. km with a population of about 80 thousand people. Yiddish was the language of office work, teaching, and periodicals here. According to Jewish sources, the radio newspaper Emes (Truth) was published in October 1930. There was a mobile Jewish theater. The newspaper Lenin Veg (Lenin's Way) was published. You can read about this in the book “Jewish Collective Farmers” by N. Gotovchikov and the President of the Association of Jewish Communities and Organizations of Crimea A. Gendin. In May of this year (2010) it was released in Simferopol. In addition, according to the chairman of the Yalta Jewish community, Vladlen Naftulevich Lyustin, his father was the director of an agricultural technical school, where teaching was conducted in Yiddish, and Hebrew was included in the curriculum.

At this time, great attention was paid to the construction of housing for displaced people. In 1928, 441 residential buildings were built, in 1931 - 3828. Compare this with the rate of “repatriation” of Crimean Tatars in free Ukraine. By the way, in the neighboring Crimea of ​​the Ukrainian SSR, on January 1, 1927, over 107 thousand Jews (seven percent of the Jewish population of the republic) worked in agricultural production, and in 1936 - already over 200 thousand. The largest Jewish district was Stalindorf in the Kherson region. He led the nation-state and cultural construction in the 1920s. Jewish subsection of the Department of National Minorities of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR. The NKVD is the NKVD, but it was financed directly by the same “Joint”, which spent $30 million on Crimean California alone, which at that time was a huge amount of money, which no one was going to forgive.

They recalled Crimean California in 1943. During the Tehran Conference, in a conversation with Stalin, Roosevelt said that his administration would soon have problems with supplies to the USSR under Lend-Lease if the “Crimean California” project was not revived. Milovan Djilas, the future vice-president of Yugoslavia, wrote about this. He and Josip Broz Tito secretly flew to the USSR and in a personal conversation asked Stalin why the Tatars were deported from Crimea in the spring of 1944. According to him, Stalin referred to the obligations given to Roosevelt to clear Crimea for Jewish settlers. Note that in the text of the Resolution of the State Defense Committee on May 11, 1944, there is not a word about the nature of the deportation as retribution for cooperation with the occupation authorities. At the same time, Field Marshal Manstein wrote in the book “Lost Victories”: “We even managed to form armed self-defense companies from the Tatars, whose task was to protect their villages from attacks by partisans hiding in the Yayla mountains. The reason is that a powerful partisan movement developed in Crimea from the very beginning, which caused us a lot of trouble...” You can’t erase a word from a song, but why insert a whole black legend into it? It is certain that the myth of the “traitorous people” was invented and exaggerated later, and this is worth understanding. A year before the liberation of Crimea, a delegation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee of the USSR was sent to the USA, and then to Mexico, Canada and England. Before the trip, its leader Solomon Mikhoels was instructed by Beria himself. There is no information about his recruitment, but this is not what happens in intelligence work. The head of department “C” of the USSR MGB, Lieutenant General Pavel Sudoplatov, recalls: “... Mikhoels and Fefer, our trusted agent (who was personally in touch with State Security Commissioner Raikhman - author), were instructed to probe the reaction of influential foreign Zionist organizations to the creation of a Jewish republics in Crimea. This task of a special reconnaissance probe - establishing, under the leadership of our residency in the United States, contacts with the American Zionist movement in 1943-1944 - was successfully completed.” In the USA, the “Crimean problem” was discussed everywhere. Thus, Julius Rosenberg, the head of the Soviet intelligence network in the United States, is credited with the words: “Crimea interests us not only as Jews, but also as Americans, since Crimea is the Black Sea, the Balkans and Turkey.” The hands of his former leaders did not have time to reach Rosenberg. In 1953, the Americans put him in the electric chair. Sudoplatov further writes that besides Molotov, Lozovsky and several senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mikhoels was the only person who knew about the existence of Stalin’s plan to create a Jewish state in Crimea. “In this way, Stalin hoped to receive 10 billion dollars from the West to restore the economy destroyed by the war.” And this after a trip to the USA?! Indeed: on the page below the author refutes himself: “... the idea of ​​a Jewish republic in Crimea was openly discussed in Moscow not only among the Jewish population, but also in the highest echelons of power” and claims that the intentions of the leader of the peoples were not sincere, but his true goal there was a “divorce” of American Jews. However, on February 15, 1944, a letter signed by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee of the USSR S. Mikhoels, Executive Secretary Sh. Epstein and Deputy Chairman of the Presidium I. Fefer landed on Vyacheslav Molotov’s desk:

"...The creation of a Jewish Soviet Republic would once and for all resolve, in a Bolshevik manner, in the spirit of Lenin-Stalinist national policy, the problem of the state-legal status of the Jewish people and the further development of their age-old culture. No one was able to resolve this problem for many years centuries, and it can only be resolved in our great socialist country. ...
Based on the above, we propose:
1. Create a Jewish Soviet socialist republic on the territory of Crimea.
2. In advance, before the liberation of Crimea, appoint a government commission to develop this issue.”

In June of the same year, the President of the American Chamber of Commerce, Eric Johnston, and the US Secretary of Commerce, Averell Harriman, arrived in Moscow; They were already dividing up portfolios: the Americans proposed Michaels as the head of Crimea, Stalin insisted on Lazar Kaganovich. Johnston and Harriman offered a loan against a self-sufficient Jewish state; Stalin bargained and wanted the Jewish state to remain part of the USSR. And then it turned out that American Jews were demanding the withdrawal of the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol.

“Completely confidential.

To the US Secretary of Commerce A. Harriman
Dear Averell! The President approves of your plans. He added the following to them. The coexistence of a Soviet Black Sea Fleet base and a Jewish republic on the territory of Crimea, open to the free entry of Jews from all over the world, appears to be an incongruity fraught with unpredictable consequences. This from the very beginning raised his doubts about the reality of the “Crimean project”. Crimea should become a demilitarized zone. Let Stalin know that he must be prepared to relocate the fleet from Sevastopol to Odessa and the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. Then we will believe that the Crimean Jewish Republic is a reality and not a propaganda myth.
J.Marshall"

To prove this reality, the Crimean Tatars were evicted from Crimea, followed by the Bulgarians, Greeks and others, whose involvement in cooperation with the occupiers was not discussed at all. This is definitely not where the dog was buried. The Allies made sure of the cleanup during the Crimean (Yalta) Conference. Taking into account Roosevelt’s Tehran “request,” it, in this sense, became a kind of inspection trip.
"Crimean California"

Since the mid-1920s, Jews, primarily residents of Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia, began to actively move to Crimea.

The long-term plan for the land management of the KEA, approved in 1926, was designed for the period from 1927 to 1936. During this time, about 96 thousand families were subject to resettlement - according to rough estimates, 250-300 thousand people.

On February 19, 1929, a document called “Crimean California” was signed between the Soviet government and the American Jewish charitable organization Joint.
According to the representative of the Department of Nationalities of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee I.M. Rashkes, in the new Jewish autonomy it was planned to create a continuous land area “in the future, not for the concentration of world Jewry, but for the purpose of establishing three million Jews of the USSR on the land.”
Certain achievements in this endeavor were evident: some Jewish communes successfully developed livestock farming, harvested high yields and introduced new technology.

However, there were also problems. The money transferred by the Joint for the improvement of Jews in Crimea did not go through the USSR budget, but directly to the settlers.

This caused a whole wave of indignation among the local population - Tatars, Greeks, Germans, Bulgarians, who often staged pogroms against Jews. The unrest forced Stalin to declare that “Crimean California” gave the country nothing but national strife.

In 1934, he implemented an alternative Jewish project - “Birobidzhan”.
Modern historians note other reasons that have nothing to do with the solution of Jewish problems. In their opinion, Jewry turned out to be a hostage of geopolitical games between the USSR and the West, which is confirmed by further plans for the implementation of the Crimean-Jewish program.

Propaganda tool

Former intelligence officer Pavel Sudoplatov is confident that the idea of ​​​​creating the KEA was launched by Stalin himself to promote the USSR in the world community.

Writer Pyotr Efimov writes that “in the story of the “Jewish Crimea,” Stalin appears not only as a skilled master of intrigue and backroom deals, but also as an author, director, conductor, and most importantly actor this hypocrisy."

Efimov claims that Stalin, in addition to providing the USSR with loans and benefits under Lend-Lease, also expected to gain a few years of head start in the nuclear confrontation with the United States.

According to other researchers, “Crimean California” is a settlement of issues with Soviet Jewry. Stalin, anticipating a massive outflow of Jews to the newly formed Israel, gives them Crimea.
However, could the leader in this way settle scores with the Jewry he disliked?
During the capture of Crimea, German troops resettled a large number of Kuban Cossacks to the peninsula.
And, despite the desire of the Kuban residents to return home, Soviet authorities prevented them. Considering the anti-Semitic sentiments among the Cossacks, a conflict with the newly arrived Jewish settlers was ensured.
Moreover, according to researchers, in the “Crimean issue” Stalin was preparing a platform for future trials against the Zionists.

Thus, shifting responsibility for the creation of the Crimean Jewish Autonomy to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC), he declared it “the nationalist center of international Zionism,” accusing it of an impending coup d’état and an attempt to surrender Crimea to the Americans.

This gave rise to dealing with the members of the JAC, including Solomon Mikhoels, who was tipped for the post of head of the “Jewish republic.”

The process of liquidating the JAC turned out to be inevitable because, according to Sudoplatov, Mikhoels was the only person who knew about the existence of Stalin’s plan to create a Jewish state in Crimea.

What happened
Very soon relations between the USSR and the West become colder, and contradictions arise with Israel. Against this background, an anti-Semitic campaign is gaining momentum in the country: the “doctors’ cause,” the fight against “rootless cosmopolitanism,” the execution of members of the JAC.

After the death of Mikhoels, Stalin finds a new culprit in the “Crimean issue.” “What is Molotov’s proposal to hand over Crimea to the Jews worth? - says Stalin. - This is a gross political mistake<…>Comrade Molotov should not be a lawyer for illegal Jewish claims to our Soviet Crimea.”

Molotov was indeed a supporter of Jewish autonomy, but not in Crimea, but in the Volga region.

Paying attention to the socio-economic aspect of the KEA, it should be noted that Jews were mostly resettled in disadvantaged semi-desert areas of Crimea, unsuitable for the development of agriculture.

In addition, the main mass of settlers was not adapted to agricultural work. Famine became common in Jewish communities.

The process of resettlement of Jews painfully affected the original inhabitants of these places, which gave rise to interethnic conflicts.

The program to create the KEA had the greatest impact on the Crimean Tatars, whose autonomy was liquidated by order of Stalin in 1946.

In fact, by 1939, the resettlement of Jews to Crimea was suspended: according to the census, their number did not exceed 65 thousand people. But the resumption of this process never took place.

During the Great Patriotic War, the peoples of the USSR acquired a new super-ethnic community that generalized them - the Russian people. And soon Stalin came to the conclusion that proletarian internationalism turned out to be rootless cosmopolitanism. Solomon Mikhoels, according to Pavel Sudoplatov, was killed, and his comrades in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were accused of plotting to secede Crimea from the USSR and were shot. Then there was the purge of Jews from the apparatus of the Central Committee and the MGB (even Kheifitz, who obtained for the USSR the secret of the atomic bomb and the organizer of the murder of Trotsky Eitington, was not spared for the USSR), the “doctors’ affair,” and more broadly, the “Zionist conspiracy” to seize power.”
Note: The construction of the naval base in Odessa really began in those years, but at the time of the collapse of the USSR, only a cadre division of submarines of “German” (post-war) projects remained in Odessa.
The “clearing” of Crimea in 1944 was a nightmare - according to various estimates, 75-80% of the population was forcibly displaced. Instead of demilitarization, Crimea was “stuffed” with troops as much as possible and in this state it survived the collapse of the USSR.