The Jewish Autonomous Region is located in the Far East. In the west
it borders with the Amur region, in the north and east with the
Khabarovsk Territory. In the south, the state border with China runs
along the Amur River.
The Jewish Autonomous Region is one of the
strangest Russian regions, as can be seen from its name. In Russia there
are national republics, there are autonomous okrugs, there are
territories, there are simply regions, but the autonomous region is the
only one, and its autonomy is very conditional and comes down to its own
national language, which no one speaks today, and even representatives
of the titular nation in There is almost no republic left. Perhaps these
facts are enough to captivate an inquisitive traveler, because you will
not find anything like this either in Russia or abroad. Others may be
interested in natural attractions: in a small region by Far Eastern
standards, there are mountains, swamps, and beautiful rivers, although,
frankly, from the point of view of nature, the Jewish Autonomous Okrug
is not the most interesting part of the Far East.
Russian, Yiddish possible.
At railway stations and on
administrative buildings, the traveler will see signs in two languages.
By plane
There are no operating passenger airports in the region.
The nearest major airport is in Khabarovsk. An alternative may be
Blagoveshchensk, but getting from there is less convenient.
By
train
The Trans-Siberian Railway runs through the region with very
long-distance trains such as Moscow-Vladivostok and shorter ones, such
as Vladivostok-Blagoveshchensk. Only 5-6 trains per day in each
direction. With their help, go to the west, to Chita, Irkutsk and
further throughout Siberia, as well as towards the BAM - to Tynda,
Neryungri, Chegdomyn. To the east, trains go to Khabarovsk or
Vladivostok.
By bus
The night bus Khabarovsk-Blagoveshchensk
passes through Birobidzhan and Obluchye, there are also several buses to
Birobidzhan from Khabarovsk. There is no international bus service. If
you are coming from China, you will first have to cross the border
somehow, and then use local transport.
By car
The M58 Amur
federal highway runs through the region, connecting the region with the
Khabarovsk Territory in the east and the Amur Region in the west.
The border with China runs along the Amur River, where there are
three border crossings. All of them have international status, but are
not equipped with bridges, and therefore operate in a seasonal mode:
ferries in summer, ice crossings in winter, the border is closed in the
off-season.
Pashkovo (Obluchye) - Jiayin
Amurzet - Lobey
Nizhneleninskoe (Leninskoe) – Tongjiang
The operating mode of the
crossings is tied to the schedule of ferries and crossings. They seem to
operate in a fairly relaxed manner, with only a few flights a day. There
are also weekends when there is no transport across the border at all.
On the ship
With the exception of ferry crossings, there is no
passenger service within the borders of the Jewish Autonomous Region
along the Amur River. A “water bus” runs from Khabarovsk to the village
of Vladimirovka, Jewish Autonomous Region, but only summer residents go
there.
By train
Passenger traffic is entirely dependent on the
Trans-Siberian Railway. On the side line to Leninskoe there is only
freight traffic.
Electric trains: 3 times a day on the
Khabarovsk-Birobidzhan section and twice a day from Birobidzhan to
Obluchye.
Long-distance trains: always stop in Birobidzhan and
Obluchye, other stations can pass without stopping. In any case, only
trains with shared carriages are justified for short distance travel. In
the Far East, these are slow, most often mail and luggage trains, making
stops wherever possible: No. 325 Khabarovsk-Neryungri, No. 385
Vladivostok-Blagoveshchensk and No. 663 Khabarovsk-Chegdomyn.
By
bus
From Birobidzhan buses go to all districts of the region; there
are practically no other routes.
From the point of view of food, the Jewish Autonomous Okrug is almost
no different from other regions of the Far East: the only difference is
that the standard of living here is not very high, so you can’t count on
expensive and beautiful restaurants - but inexpensive canteens are
ubiquitous, and many of them are not so bad as it seems at first glance.
In addition to the obvious Russian/Russian cuisine, there are Chinese
and, less often, Korean restaurants, but there are few of them in
Birobidzhan compared to Vladivostok and even Khabarovsk.
If you
are looking for traditional Jewish dishes in the Jewish Autonomous
Region, then most likely you are wasting your time: in Birobidzhan there
are two restaurants with conventionally Jewish cuisine, but in both
cases it only complements the main menu and is certainly not kosher, and
dishes like hummus and It is better to try falafel in Israel or
somewhere else in the Middle East.
In the Russian Empire, Jews were a national minority, forced to live
in the Pale of Settlement and deprived of a significant part of civil
rights. This led to a significant portion of Jews supporting the October
Revolution.
The Committee on the Land Organization of Jewish
Workers under the Presidium of the Council of Nationalities of the
Central Executive Committee of the USSR (KomZET) was formed by a
resolution of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of August
29, 1924 with the aim of transferring the Jewish population of Soviet
Russia to agricultural activities.
KomZET's goals also included
cooperation with international Jewish organizations (primarily the
Joint) and the creation of an alternative to Zionism. He was in charge
of Jewish agricultural settlements in Ukraine (southern regions and
Crimea). On a smaller scale, KOMZET operated in Belarus, as well as in
Uzbekistan, Georgia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus. On
March 28, 1928, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the
USSR adopted a resolution “On assigning to KomZET for the needs of the
complete settlement of free lands by working Jews in the Amur strip of
the Far Eastern Territory” - in Birobidzhan.
On August 20, 1930,
the Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR adopted a resolution “On
the formation of the Biro-Bidzhan national region as part of the Far
Eastern Territory.”
By a resolution of the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee of May 7, 1934, this national region received the
status of an Autonomous Jewish National Region. On December 18, 1934,
the First Regional Congress of Soviets completed the formalization of
the new national state formation, approved a plan for economic and
cultural development and elected the governing bodies of the region.
Three weeks later, Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee of the USSR M.I. Kalinin, at a meeting with Jewish workers in
Moscow, emphasized that the Soviet government sees autonomy as a
national Jewish state - the basis of the Jewish nation, but for this to
happen, at least 100 thousand people must be concentrated in this
territory.
In April 1931, the Amuro-Tungussky district was
annexed to the original area of 35 thousand square kilometers of the
then Birobidzhan region (thereby increasing the area to 72 thousand
square kilometers), but in 1934 the Jewish Autonomous Region returned
the Amuro-Tungussky region to the Khabarovsk Territory and in return
received in the west the village of Obluchye with its surroundings.
On July 20, 1934, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
decided to “form as part of the Autonomous Jewish National Region:
Birobidzhan district with its center in the working village of
Birobidzhan;
Birsky district with its center in the working village
of Bira;
Stalinsky district with its center in the village of
Stalinsk (formerly Stalinfeld);
Blyukherovo district with its center
in the village of Blyukherovo (formerly Mikhailovo-Semyonovskoye);
Smidovichsky district with its center in the working-class village of
Smidovich (formerly In).”
Resolutions of the Council of People's
Commissars of the USSR dated October 1, 1934 “On measures for the
economic and cultural development of the Jewish Autonomous Region” and
the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR dated
August 29, 1936 “On the Soviet, economic and cultural construction of
the Jewish Autonomous Region” laid down the development program for the
region. Party and economic workers and specialists came here on vouchers
from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of
Bolsheviks and the Dalkray Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of
Bolsheviks.
M. Khavkin (first secretary of the regional committee
of the CPSU(b)) and I. Liberberg (chairman of the regional executive
committee - previously director of the Institute of Jewish Proletarian
Culture at the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) were promoted to
leadership positions. A former senior official of the party apparatus of
the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the Byelorussian SSR, I.
Levin, was appointed first secretary of the Birobidzhan district party
committee.
Despite the fact that according to the 1939 census,
the Jewish population was 17,695 people (18.45%) out of a total
population of 108,400 people, Yiddish received the status of a state
language on an equal basis with the Russian language, it began to be
taught in all schools, newspapers were published and magazines in
Yiddish, in 1934 the Jewish State Theater and the regional library were
opened. Sholom Aleichem, which had a significant body of literature on
Jewish topics.
The Birobidzhan project aroused great interest among the Jewish
community, including abroad. This determined the uniqueness of the
region, created as a national-territorial entity for migrants who went
there already during the years of Soviet power, on a territory that had
never previously been a place of compact residence of this people. The
feature film “Seekers of Happiness” (1936) directed by V.V. Korsh-Sablin
is dedicated to the resettlement process. The Soviet government actively
sought sponsors for the new region among the Jewish community abroad.
The American-Birobidzhan Committee (Ambidzhan), created in the USA in
1935, was particularly active.
The settlement of Jews in
Birobidzhan coincided with increased anti-Semitism and repression in
Nazi Germany. Therefore, it is no coincidence that in the early 1930s,
about 1.4 thousand Jewish emigrants from Europe, the USA, Argentina, and
Eretz Israel arrived in Birobidzhan.
Plans for the creation of a
Jewish republic were disavowed by Stalin in November 1936 in his speech
“On the Draft Constitution of the USSR.”
In 1945–1948 alone, the
region received food worth 6 million rubles from the United States. The
post-war period was marked for a short time by support for the Jewish
national movement - in 1947, a synagogue was opened in Birobidzhan, the
teaching of the Jewish language was expanded, and since 1948, workers of
the Birobidzhan garment factory were allowed not to work on Yom Kippur.
After the transformation of all other autonomous regions of Russia
into republics in the early 1990s, the Jewish Autonomous Region remained
the only autonomous region in Russia. After the adoption of the new
Constitution of the Russian Federation in 1993, the Jewish Autonomous
Region was separated from the Khabarovsk Territory and became an equal
subject of the Russian Federation.
Due to the low HDI (in Russia
it is lower only in Tyva and Chechnya (see the list of Russian subjects
by HDI level), the Jewish Autonomous Region ranks first in Russia in the
number of people who left for Israel relative to the total number of the
local Jewish population (for example, in the period from 1994 to In
1998, 59.6% of the expanded Jewish population of the Jewish Autonomous
Region of the 1994 population left for Israel. At the same time, in the
Jewish Autonomous Region in 1994, only 1.9% of the total Jewish
population of Russia lived and the region in 1996-1998 took first place
among subjects of Russia in terms of the number of migrants to Israel or
13 - 14% of the total migration from Russia to Israel during this
period. Nowadays, more than 15 thousand repatriates from the Jewish
Autonomous Region live in Israel (which is smaller in area than the
Jewish Autonomous Region), of which about five thousand live in city of
Ma'alot, accounting for almost a quarter of the city's population.An
all-Israeli meeting of repatriates from the Jewish Autonomous Region is
regularly held in Israel.
Due to its natural and climatic conditions, the autonomous region
belongs to one of the favorable corners of the Russian Far East. Its
territory is represented by two types of relief - mountainous and flat.
Mountain regions are the southern part of the vast Khingan-Bureya
mountain system, occupying approximately half of the entire area of the
region in the north and west. The highest point is Mount Studencheskaya
(1421 m). The flat part, stretching in the south and east, represents
the western edge of the Middle Amur Lowland, above the surface of which
three remnant-type ridges rise: the Daur ridge (674), the Bolshiye
Churki ridge (831) and the Uldur ridge (630). The territory is
approximately comparable to Moldova, Guinea-Bissau and Bhutan.
From the southwest, south and southeast, for 584 km, the territory of
the region is washed by the waters of one of the greatest rivers in
Eurasia - the Amur. The width of the channel at the western borders of
the region (near the village of Pashkovo) is 1.5 km, at the eastern
borders - 2.5 km. The Amur is covered with ice for 5 months - from the
end of November to the twentieth of April. In winter, the ice thickness
reaches 2 m, which allows freight and passenger transportation along the
river. Navigation lasts on average 180 days. The Amur basin includes a
number of large (more than 10 km long) and 1146 small (less than 10 km
long) rivers - these are the Bira, Bijan, Birakan, In, Urmi, Ikura and
others. The total length of the river network is 8231 km. The upper
reaches of the Bira and Bidzhan rivers serve as spawning grounds for Far
Eastern chum salmon.
The Jewish Autonomous Region is located in
the MSK+7 time zone. The applied time offset relative to UTC is +10:00.
The climate is moderate. Winters are light and cold (the average January temperature is from −19 °C in the extreme southwest in Amurzet to −25 °C in the mountains), summers are warm and humid. The terrain has a significant influence on the climate. During the year, 600–700 mm of precipitation falls, with about 75 percent of precipitation occurring between May and September.
The region's territory is covered with dense forests. The flora of
the region includes 1,392 species of plants, including more than 200
honey-bearing plants, about 300 medicinal species. The forests are rich
in berries, mushrooms and nuts. Of the 1.7 million hectares of forest
land, 165 thousand hectares are occupied by cedar-broad-leaved forests,
250 thousand hectares by spruce-fir, 165 thousand hectares by larch, 347
thousand hectares by oak. The timber reserve is 202 million m³ (State
Forest Register, 2009).
Meadow vegetation in the south of the
Russian Far East is divided into two classes. The first includes steppe
dry meadows occupying above-floodplain river terraces, mountain slopes
and ridges (hills). The second class is represented by wet and swampy
meadows, which are found mainly in river floodplains. Noteworthy are the
ornamental grass species growing in the steppe meadows, for example:
lactiferous peony, xiphoid iris, Pennsylvania lily (Daurian), Siberian
speedwell and others. Langsdorf's reed grass and meadowsweet are common
in both dry and wet meadows.
The fauna is diverse: brown and
Himalayan bears, Amur tiger, Nepalese marten, fox, weasel, sable, wild
boar, elk, red deer, pheasant, and various breeds of ducks are found
here. The mammal fauna includes 59 species.
The reservoirs of the
region are home to 73 species of fish, including white and black carp,
silverfish, yellow-cheeked salmon, kaluga, chum salmon, lenok, Amur
bream, sturgeon, carp, burbot, taimen, silver carp, grayling, pike and
others. Seven species that require special protection are listed in the
Red Book of Russia. To reproduce the Far Eastern salmon stock, there are
two fish hatcheries in the region with a capacity of laying 64.5 million
eggs per year.
The Bastak State Nature Reserve was established by Decree of the
Government of the Russian Federation on January 28, 1997 No. 96
(Collected Legislation of the Russian Federation, 1997, No. 6, Art.
744). Located on the territory of Obluchensky, Birobidzhansky and
Smidovichsky districts of the Jewish Autonomous Region. The total area
of the reserve is 127,094.5 hectares, including in the Obluchensky
district 72,662 hectares, Smidovichsky - 35,323.5 hectares and
Birobidzhansky - 19,109 hectares.
Five state natural complex
reserves occupy 225 thousand hectares, which is 7% of the region’s
territory.
The dynamic development of trade relations with China
after the collapse of the USSR led to changes in the environmental
situation in the region. Based on ten years of observations, it was
concluded that the volume of felling is many times greater than
permitted and declared. This has caused concern to the World Wildlife
Fund. Chinese-owned sawmills and timber yards play a key role in the
spread of illegal logging (page 17). Moreover, representatives of
organized crime groups occupy not the last place in this business.
Poaching contributes to the decline of rare animal species; and the main
direction of smuggling was the export of parts and derivatives.
On the territory of the Jewish Autonomous Region, deposits of more
than 20 types of minerals have been identified and explored, including
large deposits of iron, manganese, tin, gold, graphite, brucite,
magnesites, zeolites, and there are sources of mineral waters.
In
terms of the saturation of deposits and ore occurrences, the
concentration of minerals, the region is one of the richest territories
in Russia.
However, the potential of its natural resources has
not been fully studied and explored. In addition, the overwhelming
majority of the products of the mineral raw materials complex are
exported; there are very few processing enterprises.
The most
promising manifestations of mineral resources can and should attract the
attention of domestic and foreign investors. This would make it possible
to more fully use the mineral resource base of the Jewish Autonomous
Region.
Since the end of July 2013, the south of the Russian Far East and northeast China have been subject to catastrophic floods caused by intense, prolonged rainfall, which has led to a consistent increase in water levels in the Amur River. At the peak of the flood, on September 3 and 4, the water flow in the Amur reached 46 thousand m³/s, with the norm being 18-20 thousand m³/s. A flood of such magnitude occurred for the first time in 115 years of observation, and, according to models, the probability of such an event occurring again is once every 200-300 years.