Nadene Goldfoot
The Pale of Settlement was created by Catherine II of Russia to separate the Jews from the Russians. This was simply an area that Jews were ALLOWED to live in as they had been expelled from the main body of Russia. There were 2 Catherines. Catherine Ist ruled from 1725 to 1727 and in May 1727, expelled all Jews that were living in Little Russia. Up to the very end of the 19th century, Little Russia was the prevailing term for much of the modern territory of Ukraine controlled by the Russian Empire, as well as for its people and their language. This can be seen from its usage in numerous scholarly, literary and artistic works. This order was countermanded after her death. Catherine II, the Great, ruled from 1762 to 1796 and her Jewish policy was marked by a combination of liberalism and coercion. On the one hand, Jews were allowed to register in the merchant and urban classes in 1780 but permission was restricted to White Russia in 1796. Belarus, country of eastern Europe was White Russia. Until it became independent in 1991, Belarus, formerly known as Belorussia or White Russia, was the smallest of the three Slavic republics included in the Soviet Union (the larger two being Russia and Ukraine).
This marked the beginning of the Pale Of settlement. During her last years, which were marked by reaction in 1789 to 1796, she prevented the extension of Jewish settlement and in 1795, prohibited Jewish residence in rural areas. Russia came up with the oppressive STATUTE CONCERNING THE JEWS of 1835. The Pale amounted to 25 provinces of Czarist Russia: Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia and Crimea. To live outside this perimeter, one needed to belong to a certain group and have permission. One had to have high school diploma, be big businessmen, skilled artisans or Cantonists. The local governor decided what to do with those breaking this law. Sometimes borders were found to be restricted. They were never dependable.
In 1882, under Russia's "May Laws", Jews were excluded from rural areas inside the Pale. These May Laws was legislation enacted by the Russian government on May 3, 1882, prohibiting Jews from living or acquiring property except in towns in the Pale of Settlement. It took the Russian Revolution to revoke them. As a result of these restrictions, Jewish economic development was severely hampered. The Pale was abolished in effect in August 1915 and legally in March 1917, which was the end of World War I.
Then they created much later on March 28, 1928, that Birobidzhan be set aside for Jewish colonization, with the intent of "creating on this territory a Jewish national administrative-territorial unit". It just happened to be a Russian autonomous region in Eastern Siberia. it happened that the Soviet government, on the initiative of President Kalmin, allotted Birobidjan for Jewish settlement and Yiddish was recognized as an official language there. It was rather like an Indian Reservation in the USA.
This proclamation was followed by a barrage of publicity encouraging Jews to take advantage of this opportunity. official reports claimed that the 1st Jewish settlers arrived in Birobidzhan on the very day of the announcement. Evidently this announcement was to throw off support for the Crimean project. Debates went on until 1931, when the president of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union called for preparations for transforming Birbidzhan into the Jewish Autonomous Region of the USSR. 3 years later, the President of the Soviet Union formally declared Birobidzhan the Jewish Autonomous Region. That would have been in 1934.
Research turned up that between 1928 and 1938--43,200 Jews moved there with only 19,000 staying, disappointing to officials who hoped for massive immigration. It had failed to inspire the Jewish masses of the USSR. Of the almost 20,000 Jewish inhabitants who went there in the early days of the experiment, over 11,000 had left by 1934 and the government began to recruit new settlers. In 1939, at the height of Nazis going into Poland, the Jewish population amounted to 23,000.---20% of the total. In 1951 there were 40,000 Jews or 26.5%.
Yiddish was in the course of time largely supplanted by Russian and the small Yiddish theater was closed in the early 1950s. A Yiddish (now the Russian) newspaper, Birobidjaner Shtern (founded in 1930) continued to appear a few times a week.
The project did get enthusiastic support from the Jewish Communists and Yiddishists outside Russia, though and even from some Zionists who greeted the establishment of Birobidzhan as a positive, healthy step toward the improvement of the sorry state of Soviet Jews. Committees enlisting active aid for Birobidzhan were set up around the world, the most important were in the USA, Argentina, and Palestine.
However, the project to set up a Jewish autonomous region has been abandoned. Its Jewish population in 1991 was a surprising high of 6,500. I wonder if they knew that Israel was created in 1948 and if the Russians would have allowed them to migrate there.
Obviously Russian support for this experiment such as Stalin and the other true leaders of the country were far from sentiment about Jews at this point of their existence of the the great task of maintaining its nationality. they thought that they needed to change the population into a completely settled agricultural peasantry numbering in the hundred of thousands at least. Only this could the Jewish masses hope for the survival of their nationality. Orthodox Soviet ideology denied the nationality of the Jews. They were aetheists, In their Far Eastern foreign policy, the hope of winning support among Western Jewry, and the need to ameliorate the economic crisis of the Jews in the Soviet Union were Stalin's reasons for doing this. It's evident that the project idea did not come from the Jews of Russia.
The attempt to Change small businessmen into farmers after thousands of years; being kept from owning land and farming on it did not enthuse the farming experience in the Jews. They really did need a Houdini in order to do that. Besides, they had no dog in the race; no reason to leave their shtetls and go to an even colder climate of Siberia when they originally were a Mediterranean people. I'm just shocked that 6,500 Jews had remained by 1991 when Israel had been created in 1948. They've had 43 years to prepare for Aliyah.
Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen discusses the Soviet effort, in 1929, to create an autonomous Jewish state in the country's far eastern region. Gessen is the author of Where The Jews Aren't. Masha Gessen, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So just give us the basic outline of - what was Birobidzhan?
"MASHA GESSEN: So Birobidzhan was and actually still is nominally one of the two Jewish states in the world, the other one obviously being Israel. But Birobidzhan was formed earlier. It was part of a Soviet experiment. The Soviet Union initially conceived itself as a sort of anti-imperial empire in which every nation had the right to self-determination and to some sort of autonomy. And the Jews, who had before the revolution lived in the Pale of Settlement and had very limited civil rights, were supposed to be emancipated to be like other nations and therefore had to get an autonomy of their own. And so from the Soviet point of view, it was an attempt to make Jews like other ethnic groups living in the Soviet Union."
Purges took place with anyone connected to the project. Stalin ruled that for any autonomous region to become a Republic, it must have a population of more than one million. Not even the most optimistic believer could hope that Birobidzhan one day would be a Jewish state.
In 2017, Jewish Autonomous Region in Russia’s far east is now barely 1% Jewish but officials hope to woo back people who left after Soviet collapse.
In front of Birobidzhan’s railway station, loudspeakers blast out Yiddish-language ballads while hundreds of schoolchildren in ersatz folk costumes dance circles around the menorah monument that dominates the square.
Across town, labourers are building a kosher restaurant, the city’s first. A two-storey building under construction next door will house a mikvah, the ritual pool in which religious Jews must bathe.
The Jewish renaissance in Birobidzhan is the latest chapter in the surreal tale of this would-be Siberian Zion, founded nearly a century ago.
Nestled on the border with China, seven timezones east of Moscow and a six-day journey away on the Trans-Siberian railway, the region was first settled en masse during the early 1930s as part of a plan to create a Soviet homeland for Jews during the rule of Joseph Stalin.
Its story since then has reflected the vicissitudes of Soviet and then modern Russian history. The population of the area, still officially called the Jewish Autonomous Region, is barely 1% Jewish, but the authorities are trying to cultivate the memory of Jewish customs and history among the residents and even hope to attract new Jewish migrants.
Eli Riss, Birobidzhan’s 27-year-old rabbi, said the local Jewish community currently numbered 3,000 at most, and only 30 were regulars at the synagogue. His parents emigrated to Israel when he was young but after religious schooling he returned to his birthplace as a rabbi.
“We are a long way from Israel here and a long way even from Moscow, where there are big Jewish communities,” he said. “My task is for people to understand what it means to be Jewish.”
When the area was officially established as the Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934, 14 years before the foundation of Israel, it was the first explicitly Jewish territory in modern times. By 1939, 18% of the population was Jewish and Birobidzhan had a Yiddish theatre and Yiddish newspaper. The work of the police department, courts and city administration was carried out at least partially in Yiddish.
How fickle the Russians have been toward the rights of Jews. How fickle all countries have been towards us. That's why we need Israel. Living under the umbrella of another country such as Russia didn't pan out. They've all had their anti-Semitic history that bubbles up when you least expect it. Creating Israel was the bravest thing we have done since trying to defend Jerusalem in 70 CE against the Romans. Our handful of representatives went up against the world in their appeal to logic and reason to regain our ancient country after they had all seen the aftermath of the worst war the world had ever seen, won their rights only to see the world turn again by taking away 80% of our land-but they left us what crumbs we have; and look what a handful of Jews have done with it and with us! A people, only 0.02% of the world, and we've done well, well enough indeed.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Israel Emiot in THE BIROBIDZHAN AFFAIR-A Yiddish Writer in Siberia
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/27/revival-of-a-soviet-zion-birobidzhan-celebrates-its-jewish-heritage
https://www.npr.org/2016/09/07/492962278/sad-and-absurd-the-u-s-s-r-s-disastrous-effort-to-create-a-jewish-homeland
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