Career
Solomon Mikhoels, the chairman of JAC and Epshtein approached Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister and a Stalin henchman, with an idea to create a Jewish republic in the Crimea or in the Volga area (in place of the dismantled Volga Germans republic). Both ideas were rejected due to the growing state sponsored anti-semitism and Stalin"s distrust of Molotov. Epshtein died in 1945.