"It is completely natural that the Jewish population ... strives to find its place in the Soviet Union.... The Jewish people face the great task of preserving its own nationality, and to this end a large part of the Jewish population must be transformed into an economically stable, agriculturally compact group which should number at least hundreds of thousands." Mikhail Kalnin, president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, addressing a 1926 conference on Jewish agricultural settlement