leader Mikhail Kalinin considered creating a Jewish state in Crimea which had a large Karaite population who had been exempt from Tsarist persecution. (Karaites are Jews who reject the authority of the Talmud.) In 1924 Stalin became the ruler of the USSR. In 1928 a Jewish Autonomous Oblast was created in the Russian Far East with Yiddish as an official language and Hebrew was outlawed: The only language to be outlawed in the USSR. Few Jews were tempted by the Soviet Jewish Republic and as of 2002 Jews constitute only about 1.2% of its population. The Yevsektsiyas were disbanded in 1927 and many their leaders perished during the Great Purge. The Bund survived in independent Poland until the Second World War, when its membership was exterminated by the Nazis. The British Mandate and the struggle for Palestine 1918–1939 Weizmann becomes leader In late 1921, the 12th Zionist congress was held in Carlsbad, Czechoslovakia; it was the first congress to be held since 1913, because of World War I. Four hundred-fifty delegates attended, representing 780,000 fee paying Zionist members worldwide. Weizmann was elected its president in recognition of his role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration. The conference passed a proposal for an "Arab-Jewish Entente", which called on Zionist leadership to "forge a true understanding with the Arab nation". Weizmann led the movement until 1931. From 1931 to 1935 the WZO was presided by Nahum Sokolow (who had also spent the First World War in Britain). Weizmann resumed presidency of the WZO in 1935 and led it until 1946. Zionist Congresses: 1929 16th Congress, Zurich: 604,000 fee paying members. 1931 17th Congress, Basel: 670,000 fee paying members. 1933 18th Congress, Prague: 828,000 fee paying members. The League of Nations endorses Zionism After the defeat and dismantling of the Ottoman Empire by European colonial powers in 1918, the League of Nations endorsed the full text of the Balfour Declaration and established the British Mandate for Palestine (Full text:). In addition to accepting the Balfour Declaration policy statement, the League included that "[a]n appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine...." This inclusion paralleled a similar proposal made by the Zionist Organization during the Paris Peace Conference. The Zionist movement entered a new phase of activity. Its priorities were encouraging Jewish settlement in Palestine, building the institutional foundations of a