A Poster Announcing a Lottery in Aid of OZET.

OZET, the Russian acronym for the “Society for Settling Working Jews on the Land” was a Soviet body created in 1925 in order to establish Jewish agricultural settlements. OZET engaged in fundraising, advocacy and the development of educational programs. From 1928 to 1933 there were five OZET lotteries, by means of which the new settlements were supported - especially the area of Birobidzhan, when OZET refocused its activities from the European part of Russia to the creation of a Jewish Autonomous Region close to the border of China. However in 1938 Jewish national districts were eliminated and Stalin disbanded and purged the leadership of OZET. (Information extracted from the website of the Museum of Jewish History, Moscow, Russia. See also Swarthmore College’s online exhibition “Stalin’s Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland.”)