A Failed Mission
Ben Zion Goldberg-Waife
The Jewish settlement area, which existed until the revolutionary year of 1917, was established at the end of the 18th century in the course of the three partitions of Poland-Lithuania (1772-1795). It was later expanded to include further Russian conquests with a high proportion of Jews in the southwest. It encompassed the territories of the present-day states of Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova and a large part of Ukraine and Poland, as well as smaller parts of Latvia and the Russian Federation at times. As before the capture of these territories, Jews were prohibited from settling in the (old) Russian Empire, with a few exceptions. The formal basis for the settlement district was created in 1791-1804, but the name itself was not introduced until 1835.

The Russian Empire (or Empire of Russia) was a state that existed from 1721 to 1917 in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and North America. The country was the largest contiguous empire in modern history in the mid-19th century. It was dissolved after the February Revolution in 1917. The state was regarded as autocratically ruled and was inhabited by about 181 million people.


Kiev is located on the Dnieper River and has been the capital of Ukraine since 1991. According to the oldest Russian chronicle, the Nestor Chronicle, Kiev was first mentioned in 862. It was the main settlement of Kievan Rus' until 1362, when it fell to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, becoming part of the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic in 1569. In 1667, after the uprising under Cossack leader Bogdan Chmel'nyc'kyj and the ensuing Polish-Russian War, Kiev became part of Russia. In 1917 Kiev became the capital of the Ukrainian People's Republic, in 1918 of the Ukrainian National Republic, and in 1934 of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Kiev was also called the "Mother of all Russian Cities", "Jerusalem of the East", "Capital of the Golden Domes" and "Heart of Ukraine".
Kiev is heavily contested in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Due to the war in Ukraine, it is possible that this information is no longer up to date.
Vakulvoe (population 2021: 885) is a village in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. It was founded in 1924 by Jewish settlers as Čemerinskoe. In 1931 it was renamed Stalindorf and became the capital of the Jewish National District of Stalindorf. After being renamed several times, the village has borne its current name since 2016.
The city on the Volga was called Tsaritsyn until 1925, then Stalingrad until 1961. It is internationally known because of the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, in which the Wehrmacht and its allies were devastatingly defeated by the Red Army in the winter of 1942/43, and which is considered a psychological turning point in the war. In the framework of de-Stalinization, the city was renamed Volgograd in 1961.
Birobidzhan is the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the far east of the Russian Federation and is located on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The city was first founded in 1915 as Tikhonkaya and today has more than 75,000 inhabitants. Contrary to the original intention of the Soviet Union from the end of the 1920s to establish a Jewish settlement area in Birobidzhan and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, today there are only a few Jewish inhabitants.
Reportages from the western Soviet republics
Saint Petersburg is a metropolis in the northeast of Russia. The city is home to 5.3 million people, which makes it the second largest in the country after Moscow. It is located at the mouth of the Neva River into the Baltic Sea in the Northwest Federal District of Russia. Saint Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and was the capital of Russia from 1712 to 1918. From 1914-1924 the city bore the name Petrograd, from 1924-1991 the name Leningrad.
The Baltic States is a region in the north-east of Europe and is composed of the three states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Baltic States are inhabited by almost 6 million people.
Belarus (population in 2024: 9,109,280) is a country in Eastern Europe that was part of the Soviet Union until 1991. Its capital and most populous city is Minsk. Belarus borders Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Russia.
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. Kiev is the capital and largest city of the country, which has been independent since 1991. Since 2022, the country has been defending itself against a comprehensive Russian invasion, which is directed in particular against the civilian population and the country's critical infrastructure and is part of a war against Ukraine that has been ongoing since 2014 and originated from the Russian Federation with the annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea in 2014.


Political concepts from the past


The persecution of Soviet Jews
Today, Minsk is the capital of the Republic of Belarus. Its history dates back to 1067.
Over the centuries, Minsk belonged to the Principality of Polock, the Grand Duchies of Kiev and Lithuania, the united Poland-Lithuania, the Russian Empire, the Belarusian Democratic Republic (briefly the Lithuanian-Belarusian SSR), the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, which belonged to the Soviet Union, and finally to Belarus. The multicultural city, which at all times was home to other minorities in addition to Jews, Poles, Russians and Belarusians, suffered repeatedly from passing armies and the consequences of war, for example in the Russo-Polish War (1654-1667), the Great Northern War (1700-1721), under Napoleon, and in the First and Second World Wars. Under German occupation, the largest ghetto in the occupied People's Republic was established in Minsk in 1941. The death camp Maly Trostinez was located near the city. At the same time, the surrounding forests were a center of resistance. After World War Two, the city was rebuilt in the socialist style, including housing for a population that was rapidly increasing due to industrialization and urbanization.
It was not until 1956, shortly after Nikita Khrushchev's reckoning with Stalin in his so-called secret speech, that the first information about the trial became public. These reports shook Goldberg's fundamental convictions and permanently changed his view of the Soviet state and Jewish life there.