"Soviet Zion": The Jewish Autonomous Oblast

The Soviet Alternative to The State of Israel.Show more

Summary:

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO; Russian: Евре́йская автоно́мная о́бласть (ЕАО) / Yiddish: ייִדישע אװטאָנאָמע געגנט, is a subset of the Russian Federation situated in the far east, bordering Khabarovsk Krai and Amur Oblast in Russia and Heilongjiang province in China. Its administrative center is the town of Birobidzhan. The JAO was proclaimed by an official Soviet government decree in 1928, and officially established in 1934. At its height, in the late 1940s, the Jewish population in the JAO peaked around 46,000–50,000, approximately 25% of its population. By 1959, its Jewish population had fallen by half, and by 1989, with emigration restrictions removed, Jews made up 4% of its population. By 2010, according to census data, there were approximately 1,600 people of Jewish descent remaining in the JAO (or just under 1% of the total population of the JAO and around 1% of Jews in the country). According to the 2021 census, there were only 837 ethnic Jews left in the JAO (0.6%). Article 65 of the Constitution of Russia provides that the JAO is Russia's only autonomous oblast. It is one of two officially Jewish jurisdictions in the world beside The State of Israel.

Prior to establishing the JAO; the Soviet government established Komzet, the committee for the agricultural settlement of Jews.The Soviet government considered the idea of resettling all Jews in the USSR in a designated territory where they would be able to live in a political-economy that was "socialist in content and national in form". The Crimean peninsula was initially considered as the geographical location for the JAO. In May 1928 the first group of Jewish settlers from the Ukraine, Belarus and European Russia arrived in the region that became the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. These migrants settled in many different areas of the autonomous oblast; some in the city of Birobidzhan, and most in various rural settlements in order to pursue cultural autonomy in a socialist framework. Soviet Jews living in the JAO were spared the horror of the Holocaust in Nazi occupied Belarus and Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945).

Yiddish and Russian are the two official languages of the JAO. Yiddish film theatres began opening in the 1970s, featuring films in the language. There was also a Yiddish newspaper, and public libraries held collections of Yiddish texts.

Economy: In the Soviet Era; most of the population of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast lived adjacent to the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the navigable river Amur. The timber industry and tin mining where the primary economic activities. Agriculture—chiefly the cultivation of wheat, rye, oats, soybeans, sunflowers, and vegetables—is concentrated in the Amur plain; fishing, especially for salmon, is important on the rivers.

Source of information for summary: Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia and New World Encyclopedia.

English Language Russian Website about JAO:

https://russiatrek.org/jewish-autonomous-oblast