ORT, or rather the Provisional Committee for the establishment of ORT, was founded in St. Petersburg in April 1880 on the initiative of the well-known industrialist, banker and railway magnate S. Poliakov. Many well-known financiers, philanthropists and public figures took an active part in its foundation, among them Baron H. Gunzburg, L. Rosental, N. Bakst, Y. Galpern, M. Fridland, I. Zak. The popular Russian Jewish weekly Rassvet (The Dawn) devoted a leading article to this event; its closing paragraph, in the typical high-flown and rhetorical journalistic style of those years, ran: ‘At this present time … there is being formed a charitable foundation for the organisation and development of agricultural and artisan work among Russian Jews, called into being by the inescapable need, the awful predicament, of the great mass of our co-religionists. We have spoken of this need, this predicament before, as have those now striving to apply some remedy to the root of this ever-increasing evil. It will require considerable, very considerable funds. We must bear in mind that it is not a matter of raising a paltry sum for folk who have lost everything in a fire, or of temporary help for those who have suffered a bad harvest in this or that locality. The help now being organised is general and radical, and intended for the whole mass of Russian Jewry — help which will be of lasting historical significance!’

‘In the spreading of artisan and agricultural work among Jews,’ answered another popular journal, Russkii Yevrei (Russian Jew), ‘the whole thinking portion of Russian Jewry’ will see a unique remedy, with whose help it will be possible to ‘raise the level of material well-being among our co-religionsts’. Both these publications marked the successful conclusion of the discussions, which had been carried on for some years in the pages of the Russian Jewish press. At their centre stood the question of how to overcome the most desperate crisis — political, economic, social, cultural — with which Russian Jewry had ever been faced. An original manifesto setting out a series of concrete measures for relieving the situation had been offered in M. Morgulis’s article ‘What is to be done with the Russian Jews?’, which appeared in numbers 3–6 of Rassvet in 1879. As G. Aronson, the well-known historian, publicist and activist of ORT, wrote in 1930: ‘If ORT were to bring out this article now, it would need very few words of introduction and explanation. What do the mass of the Jewish people in Russia need?’ asks Morgulis. Answering his own question, he says: ‘What they need is the possibility of occupying themselves with productive work … We need to obtain permission from the Government to start a society in Petersburg with the aim of establishing craft and agricultural schools for Jews, and work for the resettlement of Jews in other provinces within the Empire [i.e. outside the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement — A. I.].’

It was these goals that became the priorities of the new Petersburg charitable society in the first years of its operation. Despite its very modest budget — up to 1889 it amounted to hardly more than 18,000 roubles a year — the Provisional Committee of ORT gave vital material support to a number of vocational colleges and provided equipment for Jewish craft workshops. A significant part of the funds went to assist Jewish craftsmen who had resettled outside the Pale of Settlement, in Russia’s big cities, where it was considerably easier to find work than it had been in the shtetls, suffering as they were from a prolonged economic crisis. In order to do this, by the laws of the Russian empire a craftsman had to have a document drawn up, stating that he had undergone recognised training, and confirming his qualification. The evening professional-technical courses organised by ORT were of great help in obtaining the necessary documents and certificates.

Together with other Jewish charitable organisations, ORT gave financial help to the Jewish agricultural colonies that were founded before the end of the nineteenth century in Ukraine and Novorossiya. Special attention was paid by the leaders of ORT to the financing and equipping of the Jewish Agricultural Training School in the Novopoltava agricultural colony, which took as students the children of Jewish peasants from the Kherson and Ekaterinoslav provinces.

According to an appendix to the accounts of the Provisional Committee of ORT for 1907, the total amount of financial assistance given to the Jewish population of Russia from November 1880 to December 1906 came to 700,000 roubles.

At the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, ORT’s activity underwent important changes. In 1906 the Provisional Committee became a ‘Society with established statutes and periodic general meetings providing for constant renewal of its governing body’. Among the Society’s members an ‘opposition party’ formed around the young advocate and public figure L. Bramson, which lobbied consistently against the ‘archaic working methods’ of the older generation of leaders, confined for the most part to helping individuals. The young reformers demanded a programme of general measures for the economic assistance of the people as a whole under the slogan ‘From philanthropy to productive work for the Jews’. As J. Frumkin, an employee of ORT and a participant in these events, wrote in his memoirs: ‘… I cannot forget how it happened, this struggle of the young “opposition” on behalf of their new ideas, their demand for new approaches and new methods of social work. They were implacable critics of the prevailing routine of earlier days.’

The ‘opposition’ presented their programme at conferences and in the press in 1907, enumerating a series of important measures fundamental to ORT’s future activity. Most importantly, they called for an increase in the quality of Jewish workers’ activity, both of artisans and of agricultural workers, the improvement of the technical level of their work and their productivity, and also the promotion of new professions among the Jews. They also insisted on the provision of cheap credit for Jewish artisans, which would enable them to acquire more modern equipment, thus increasing their productivity and helping them cope with economic difficulties.

Following this, at a general meeting of ORT in April 1909 the members supported the opposition’s proposal to exclude from the Society’s programme any form of charitable activity directed towards individuals; the time had come for the concrete embodiment of the new ideas. This period saw a general expansion of ORT’s activity. ORT committees were organised in Moscow, Gomel, Kovno, Ekaterinoslav, Odessa, Samara, Kherson, Kiev, Ekaterinburg, Riga, Minsk, Belostok, Lida, Dvinsk, Berdichev, Krivoy Rog and Uman. There was a significant increase in the amounts of money earmarked for ORT’s prescribed activities: 44,574 roubles in 1909, 75,778 roubles in 1914. The number of members grew: from 285 in 1906 to 1,951 in 1913. The network of vocational schools and evening courses became more extensive: by the end of 1913 they were operating in twenty cities of the Russian empire.

It is interesting to note that the courses organised by ORT were the first in Russia in such subjects as automobile and electrical engineering. As the well-known publicist Yu. Brutskus noted, Bramson, from the time when he became ORT’s executive director in 1911, and his comrades from among the former opposition party, succeeded in ‘breathing new life into ORT and gradually turning it into a glorious institution, first of Russian, then of world Jewry.’

The First World War put new challenges before ORT, demanding urgent action. It was necessary to provide urgent assistance to refugees driven by the Russian army from the war zone, which took in a significant part of the Pale of Settlement. In Petrograd alone the number of refugees was about 25,000. Together with other charitable organisations such as the OZE (Obshchestvo okhrani zdorovia yevreiskovo naselenia — the Society for Preserving the Health of the Jewish Population) and the EKOPO (Yevreisky komitet pomoshchi zhertvam voini — the Jewish Committee for Aiding Victims of War), ORT took an active part in work for the refugees. The 25 industrial workshops, the 72 labour bureaus and the numerous apprenticeships organised by ORT provided help for the refugees, ‘the aim of which was their gradual transformation from objects of charity into people of material independence.’

In this difficult period ORT turned for help to international Jewish organisations. In 1916, contact between ORT and American Jewry was established on the basis of allotting to Jewish workers’ organisations the sum of 15,000 dollars.

As a result of the 1917 October Revolution ORT found itself facing financial ruin. The society lost not only its deposits in Russian banks, but all its private donations were stopped as well. ORT’s leaders proved miraculously inventive in preserving their organisation’s structure and continuing its work. It is well known that in Petrograd, on the initiative of one of ORT’s leaders, the agronomist J. Tsegelnitski, market-gardeners’ co-operatives were organised on two hectares of land which he was able to obtain on the outskirts of the city. But despite all the society’s efforts, all that remained under its control by 1918 were twenty labour bureaus and ten co-operative workers’ canteens. To remedy the situation somehow, ORT’s Central Committee created the Foreign Delegation. Its main task was to supplement ORT’s budget by means of a fund-raising campaign in western Europe, above all in England and France, as well as in the USA. Among the delegation’s members were L. Bramson and D. Lvovich. The latter had returned to Russia after two years in the USA, during which he was able to make useful contacts among influential officials of American Jewish charitable organisations. In addition, as he later remembered, ‘In Kiev, which I visited, I became interested in Jewish agriculture, and in particular in the migration of Jews from the towns to the countryside. This activity concentrated my interest on Zionism and later on Territorialism2. As Russian ORT was involved in similar work, I joined in its activities.’

At the beginning of 1919 Bramson, under arrest and sentenced by the Bolsheviks to ‘public censure’, went to Kiev to consult with Lvovich, and from there went on via Odessa to Paris. Lvovich was able to leave Kiev only in April of that year. His long journey across Ukraine and Belorussia, which were suffering from the ravages of the Civil War, ended only in March of 1920, when he finally arrived in Paris and met Bramson once more. Remembering what he had seen in the course of his long journey, Lvovich wrote: ‘The Foreign Delegation of Russian ORT was faced with the problem of bringing help to the Jewish masses in Russia, who had suffered so deeply from the upheavals of the Civil War and the terrible pogroms which had raged like a tornado throughout Ukraine. … Our task was to take stronger measures in relation to Russia and Ukraine in response to news of the famine which had struck both town and country. … But around the end of 1919 Russian ORT was fully “communisticised” and its contact with our delegation was broken off.’