Jewish Autonomous Oblast

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO; Russian: Евре́йская автоно́мная о́бласть (ЕАО), romanized: Yevreyskaya avtonomnaya oblast; Yiddish: ייִדישע אװטאָנאָמע געגנט‎, romanized: yidishe avtonome gegnt, IPA: [jɪdɪʃə avtɔnɔmə ɡɛɡnt])^{[note 1]} is a federal subject of Russia in the far east of the country, bordering Khabarovsk Krai and Amur Oblast in Russia and Heilongjiang province in China.^[13] Its administrative center is the town of Birobidzhan.

Jewish Autonomous Oblast

ייִדישע אװטאָנאָמע געגנט‎‎

Legislative Assembly^[4]

Rostislav Goldstein^[5]

36,271 km² (14,004 sq mi)

61st

150,453

162,014

80th

4.1/km² (11/sq mi)

70.8%

29.2%

UTC+10 (MSK+7 ^[10])

RU-YEV

99000000

Russian^[11]

www.eao.ru

The JAO was designated by a Soviet official decree in 1928, and officially established in 1934. At its height, in the late 1940s, the Jewish population in the region peaked around 46,000–50,000, approximately 25% of its population.^[14] 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 only 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), while ethnic Russians made up 93% of its population.^[15] 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, the other being Israel.^[16]

Culture[edit]

JAO and its history have been portrayed in the documentary film L'Chayim, Comrade Stalin!.^[52] The film tells the story of Stalin's creation of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and its partial settlement by thousands of Russian and Yiddish speaking Jews and was released in 2002. As well as relating the history of the creation of the proposed Jewish homeland, the film features scenes of life in contemporary Birobidzhan and interviews with Jewish residents.

Births: 1,430 (9.3 per 1,000)

Deaths: 2,272 (14.8 per 1,000)

Antisemitism in the Soviet Union

synagogue

Beit T'shuva

East Asian Jews

, 2005 documentary

In Search of Happiness

Boris Kaufman (rabbi)

Proposals for a Jewish state

№40-ОЗ 8 октября 1997 г. «Устав Еврейской автономной области», в ред. Закона №819-ОЗ от 25 ноября 2015 г. «О внесении изменений в статью 19 Устава Еврейской автономной области». Вступил в силу со дня официального опубликования. Опубликован: "Биробиджанская звезда", №125 (15577), 4 ноября 1997 г. (#40-OZ October 8, 1997 Charter of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, as amended by the Law #819-OZ of November 25, 2015 On Amending Article 19 of the Charter of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Effective as of the official publication date.).

Doder, Dusko; Branson, Louise (1990). . London: Futura. ISBN 978-0708849408.

Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin

Birobidjan: The Jewish Autonomous Territory in the USSR. New York: American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan, 1936.

American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan

Melech Epstein, The Jew and Communism: The Story of Early Communist Victories and Ultimate Defeats in the Jewish Community, USA, 1919–1941. New York: Trade Union Sponsoring Committee, 1959.

Henry Frankel, The Jews in the Soviet Union and Birobidjan. New York: American Birobidjan Committee, 1946.

Masha Gessen, Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region, 2016.

Ber Boris Kotlerman and Shmuel Yavin, Bauhaus in Birobidzhan. Tel Aviv: Bauhaus Center, 2009.

Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917: Paradox of Survival: Volume 1. New York: New York University Press, 1988.

James N. Rosenberg, How the Back-to-the-Soil Movement Began: Two Years of Blazing the New Jewish "Covered Wagon" Trail Across the Russian Prairies. Philadelphia: United Jewish Campaign, 1925.

Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Henry Felix Srebrnik, Dreams of Nationhood: American Jewish Communists and the Soviet Birobidzhan Project, 1924–1951. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010.

Robert Weinberg, Stalin's Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland: An Illustrated History, 1928–1996. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.

Archived January 14, 2017, at the Wayback Machine

Jewish Autonomous Oblast