People in Birobidzhan, a Jewish region in Russia, are talking about the Israel-Hamas war. A local newspaper there supports the Palestinian side. This place, called an autonomous Jewish area, is not very independent in reality. Let’s learn how it became this way.
Last week in Birobidzhan, a place not many know about in Russia, the local newspaper Nabat put up a message online. It said, “Stop the Israeli soldiers from attacking Gaza! Let the people of Palestine be free!”
People reacted very quickly and angrily.
One person said, “Take down this message now, or else we, who grew up in Birobidzhan, will make you suffer.” Another person warned, “I’ll bring some former members of the Israeli special forces to show you what the Israeli army can do.”
‘The first home conceived for the Jewish people’
Vladimir Sakharovski, the editor of Nabat newspaper in Birobidzhan, was surprised that the messages were filled with hate and not helpful. He wants to clarify that neither he nor his paper supports Hamas, the group responsible for the attack on Israel. They don’t support terrorist actions. Instead, they’re echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stance of prioritizing people’s well-being.
As a Socialist publication, Sakharovski believes they should primarily support civilians. However, many thought that displaying a banner with a person wearing a traditional Palestinian headscarf and flag in one of Birobidzhan’s main newspapers was inappropriate.
For some, the autonomous region is a failure and a historical absurdity. It has even been characterised as a “Jewish Disneyland“, with only a small percentage of the world’s Jewish population living there. But for others it remains an important part of Jewish history.
Alessandro Vitale, who knows a lot about Russian history, says Birobidzhan was the first place made for Jewish people long before Israel was formed. In 1928, the leader of Russia, Joseph Stalin, set up this province. He was short and called “Little Father of the Peoples.” He wanted to fulfill Lenin’s idea of making separate regions for different ethnic groups in the Soviet Union. Jeff Hawn, who knows a lot about Russia, says that Stalin also had another plan. He wanted to make sure there were Russians in this faraway place because he worried that the Chinese, Koreans, or even Russians who didn’t like the Soviet government might try to take it over. Stephen Hall, who studies Russian politics, explains this.
This policy of settling Jews in Birobidzhan also helped address concerns of some Soviet leaders, including Stalin, who doubted the loyalty of Jews to the new Communist government, according to Hall.
Birobidzhan was viewed as a different option compared to the Zionist plan of moving Jews to Palestine. It seemed like a good solution for everyone, except the Jews themselves. Hawn explains that the goal was to make Birobidzhan an agricultural area, but many of the Jewish settlers didn’t know how to farm, and the land wasn’t ideal for growing crops.
Albert Einstein, honorary president
Some parts of the Jewish community were very excited about the “Siberian Zion” project. Groups in the US, like the American Birobidzhan Committee (led by Albert Einstein as an honorary president), gave a lot of money to help set up this area, as mentioned in Vitale’s writings about the province’s history.
Right after World War II, Birobidzhan looked like a safe place for European Jews. Hall says that in 1948, the number of Jewish people there was the highest, making up about 25% of the population, along with Orthodox Russians, Chinese, and Koreans.
When Stalin’s rule ended, there was a rise in strong anti-Jewish feelings. This was the start of fewer Jewish people living in Birobidzhan. In 1952, during a time of false accusations, many in the province, mainly Jewish, suffered from a purge known as the “White Coats” conspiracy. This was a made-up situation created by Stalin’s propaganda, claiming that doctors (most of them Jewish) were trying to harm Soviet leaders. Later, Stalin said that anyone supporting Zionism was linked to American spies.
It was a traumatic experience for Soviet Jews, many of whom decided to leave the USSR instead of settling in one of the country’s most remote regions.
And the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 only accelerated this movement. “Many Jews from the region made aliyah [emigrated to Israel] in the 1990s,” says Sakharovski.
An even smaller minority group
Some experts, like Hawn and Sakharovski, believe that only a very small percentage, around 0.5 to 0.7%, of the region’s 170,000 people are Jewish. Others, like Vitale, are more hopeful, estimating that up to 2% still have Jewish heritage. There’s just one synagogue in the area.
Everyone agrees that the region is called Jewish and autonomous, but in reality, it’s not very independent. What makes Birobidzhan special, according to Hawn, is that there are two official languages: Russian and Yiddish.
This is important. Vitale says, “The Jewish area in Russia is the world’s main place for keeping alive and sharing Yiddish culture.” They have Yiddish libraries, street names in Yiddish, and in school, kids, whether Jewish or not, learn about Yiddish history. One of the last Yiddish daily newspapers, the Birobidzhaner Shtern, started there in 1930.
Another special thing is that different ethnic groups and religions live together peacefully, especially Jews and Muslims. More Muslims have been moving there since 2008, according to Vitale.
This peaceful coexistence is now in danger of being undermined by the current upsurge in violence in the Middle East, he says.
Not all Jewish people in Birobidzhan unconditionally support Israel. The province has a complicated relationship with Israel as it is traditionally anti-Zionist, according to Sakharovski. Moreover, the Jewish state has always regarded the province with suspicion, as if it were a competitor, Vitale says.
The war between Israel and Hamas has stirred up old grudges. In its recent article about the conflict, Nabat suggests that those who disagreed with its position are the same people who “traded dreams of the Far East for those of the Middle East in their pursuit of a better life.”
Sakharovski mentions that most of the negative messages they receive come from Jews who now live in Israel but originally come from Birobidzhan. He believes that they forfeited their right to criticize Birobidzhan when they chose to leave.
SOURCE:FRANCE24