Editing Jewish Autonomous Oblast (section)

=== Early history ===

==== Establishment ====
Eventually, [[Birobidzhan]], in what is now the JAO, was chosen by the Soviet leadership as the site for the Jewish region.<ref name="rosen">{{Cite web |last=Arthur Rosen |date=February 2004 |title=Birobidzhan – the Almost Soviet Jewish Autonomous Region |url=https://www.jewishmag.com/75mag/birobidzhan/birobidzhan.htm}}</ref> The choice of this area was a surprise to Komzet; the area had been chosen for military and economic reasons.<ref name=siegel/> This area was often infiltrated by [[Republic of China (1912–49)|China]], while [[Empire of Japan|Japan]] also wanted Russia to lose the provinces of the [[Soviet Far East]]. At the time, there were only about 30,000 inhabitants in the area, mostly descendants of Trans-Baikal [[Cossacks]] resettled there by tsarist authorities, Koreans, Kazakhs, and the [[Tungusic peoples]].<ref name="Nora Levin 1990 283">{{Cite book |last=Nora Levin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1Nz0N5GBW6MC |title=The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917: Paradox of Survival, Volume 1 |publisher=New York University Press |year=1990 |isbn=9780814750513 |page=283}}</ref> The Soviet government wanted to increase settlement in the remote [[Russian Far East]], especially along the vulnerable border with China. General [[Pavel Sudoplatov]] writes about the government's rationale behind picking the area in the Far East: "The establishment of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Birobidzhan in 1928 was ordered by Stalin only as an effort to strengthen the Far Eastern border region with an outpost, not as a favour to the Jews. The area was constantly penetrated by Chinese and White Russian resistance groups, and the idea was to shield the territory by establishing a settlement whose inhabitants would be hostile to [[White émigré|white Russian émigrés]], especially the Cossacks. The status of this region was defined shrewdly as an autonomous district, not an autonomous republic, which meant that no local legislature, high court, or government post of ministerial rank was permitted. It was an autonomous area, but a bare frontier, not a political center."<ref>Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatolii Sudoplatov, with Jerrold L. Schecter and Leona P. Schecter, [[Special Tasks|Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness – A Soviet Spymaster]], Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1994, p. 289.</ref>

On 28 March 1928, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for Komzet of free territory near the Amur River in the Russian Far East for settlement of the working Jews."<ref name=behindcommunism/> The decree meant "a possibility of establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the territory of said region".<ref name=pereltsvaig/><ref name="behindcommunism">[https://books.google.com/books?id=7QLiAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA105 Behind Communism]</ref>

The new territory was initially called the [[Birobidzhan]] Jewish National Raion.<ref name=siegel/>

Birobidzhan had a harsh geography and climate: it was mountainous, covered with virgin forests of oak, pine and cedar, and also swamplands, and any new settlers would have to build their lives from scratch. To make colonization more enticing, the Soviet government allowed private land ownership. This led to many non-Jews settling in the oblast to get a free farm.<ref name="Richard Overy 2004 567">{{Cite book |last=Richard Overy |url=https://archive.org/details/dictators00rich |title=The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia |publisher=W.W. Norton Company, Inc |year=2004 |isbn=9780393020304 |page=[https://archive.org/details/dictators00rich/page/567 567] |url-access=registration}}</ref>

In the spring of 1928, 654 Jews arrived to settle in the area; however, by October 1928, 49.7% of them had left because of the severe conditions.<ref name=siegel/> In the summer of 1928, there were torrential rains that flooded the crops and an outbreak of [[anthrax]] that killed the cattle.<ref name="wherejews">{{Cite book |last=Gessen |first=Masha |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IfW4DAAAQBAJ |title=Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region |year=2016 |isbn=9780805242461 |author-link=Masha Gessen}}</ref>

On 7 May 1934, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee accepted the decree on its transformation into the Jewish Autonomous Region within the [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic]].<ref name=pereltsvaig/> In 1938, with the formation of the [[Khabarovsk Krai|Khabarovsk Territory]], the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) was included in its structure.<ref name=behindcommunism/>

==== Growth of Jewish communities in the early 1930s ====
{{Multiple image
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| image1            = Щедрые дары еврейской земли, рынок у пос. Николаевка ф2.JPG
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| image2            = Биробиджан, вокзал (cropped).jpg
| caption1          = Market near the village of Nikolaevka.
| caption2          = A menorah dominates the front of Birobidzhan's railway station.
| image3            = Село Владимировка ЕАО фото.JPG
| caption3          = Vladimirovka village.
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In the 1930s, a Soviet promotional campaign was created to entice more Jewish settlers to move there. The campaign partly incorporated the standard Soviet promotional tools of the era, including posters and Yiddish-language novels describing a socialist utopia there. In one instance, leaflets promoting Birobidzhan were dropped from an airplane over a Jewish neighborhood in Belarus. In another instance, a government-produced Yiddish film called ''[[Seekers of Happiness]]'' told the story of a Jewish family from overseas making a new life for itself in Birobidzhan.<ref name=pereltsvaig/>

Early Jewish settlements included [[Valdgeym]], dating from 1928, which included the first [[collective farm]] established in the oblast,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Stalin's forgotten Zion: the harsh realities of Birobidzhan |url=http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/html/panel13.html |publisher=Swarthmore}}</ref> [[Amurzet]], which was the center of Jewish settlement south of Birobidzhan from 1929 to 1939,<ref>{{Cite web |date=31 August 2004 |title=A Jew Receives State Award in Jewish Autonomous Republic |url=http://fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=170388&cid=84435&media=80392&NewsType=80052&origMedia=80392&scope=3806&start=30 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://archive.today/20140720041927/http://web.archive.org/web/20070927015959/http://fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=170388&cid=84435&media=80392&NewsType=80052&origMedia=80392&scope=3806&start=30 |archive-date=July 20, 2014 |access-date=2009-02-18 |publisher=The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS |location=Birobidjan, RU}}</ref> and [[Smidovich]].

The [[Organization for Jewish Colonisation in the Soviet Union]], a Jewish Communist organization in North America, successfully encouraged the immigration of some US residents, such as the family of the future spy [[George Koval]], which arrived in 1932.<ref name=pereltsvaig/><ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Michael Walsh |date=May 2009 |title=George Koval: Atomic Spy Unmasked |url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/george-koval-atomic-spy-unmasked-125046223/ |magazine=[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]]}}</ref> Some 1,200 non-Soviet Jews chose to settle in Birobidzhan.<ref name=pereltsvaig/><ref name=rosen/>

As the Jewish population grew, so did the impact of [[Yiddish culture]] on the region. The settlers established a Yiddish newspaper, the ''[[Birobidzhaner Shtern]]''; a theatre troupe was created; and streets being built in the new city were named after prominent Yiddish authors such as [[Sholom Aleichem]] and [[I. L. Peretz]].<ref name="jewishcurrents" />

==== Stalin era and World War II ====
The Jewish population of JAO reached a pre-war peak of 20,000 in 1937.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=nzhq85nPrdsC&pg=PA326 A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony 1581–1990]</ref> According to the 1939 population census, 17,695 Jews lived in the region (16% of the total population).<ref name=behindcommunism/><ref name="atlas">[https://books.google.com/books?id=-w9JCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA257 Russian Political Atlas – Political Situation, Elections, Foreign Policy]{{Dead link|date=May 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

After the war ended in 1945, there was renewed interest in the idea of Birobidzhan as a potential home for Jewish refugees. The Jewish population in the region peaked at around 46,000–50,000 Jews in 1948, around 25% of the entire population of the JAO.<ref name="David Holley" />

==== Cold War ====
The census of 1959 found that the Jewish population of the JAO had declined by approximately 50%, down to 14,269 persons.<ref name=atlas/>

A synagogue was opened at the end of World War II, but it closed in the mid-1960s after a fire left it severely damaged.<ref name="crownheights">{{Cite web |last=Ben G. Frank |date=April 15, 2012 |title=A Visit to the 'Soviet Jerusalem' |url=http://crownheights.info/something-jewish/43151/a-visit-to-the-soviet-jerusalem/ |publisher=CrownHeights.info}}</ref>

In 1980, a Yiddish school was opened in [[Valdgeym]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pinkus |first=Benjamin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=52Ew77pZsNUC |title=The Jews of the Soviet Union: the History of a national minority |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-521-38926-6 |page=272 |chapter=The Post-Stalin period, 1953–83 |access-date=2009-02-18 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=52Ew77pZsNUC&pg=PA272}}</ref>

In 1987, the reformist Soviet government led by [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] pardoned many political prisoners and told the American Jewish community that it would allow the emigration of 11,000 Jewish [[refusenik]]s.{{sfnm|1a1=Doder|1a2=Branson|1y=1990|1p=195}} According to the 1989 Soviet Census, there were 8,887 Jews living in the JAO, or 4% of the total JAO population of 214,085.<ref name="siegel">{{Cite web |title=Nation Making in Russia's Jewish Autonomous Oblast |url=https://www2.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%20archive/05-03_siegel.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160902184547/https://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%20archive/05-03_siegel.pdf |archive-date=September 2, 2016 |access-date=January 13, 2017}}</ref>