Demand More Government Funds for Jews in Bira-bidjan and Small Towns in Russia

More government funds for the Jews in the small towns and for the Jewish colonization work in Bira Bidjan, Far Eastern Republic, was demanded at yesterday’s session of the Zik (Soviet Parliament) in speeches by Diamenstein, Beilin and Kotel, three leading Jewish Communists.

Picturing the situation of the Jews to 400 members of the Zik. Diamenstein said that, although their political status was now better, economically the Jews were still badly off because private, small trading was dying out and the proportion of Jews among the unemployed was large. He said that “although the Soviet is adopting measures to improve the conditions of the Jews, one of which is the Bira Bidjan project, the funds given for Bidjan are too small in comparison with the needs of the Jews. Relief for them is part of the general national minority policy of the Soviet, and therefore the government must become more serious in dealing with it.”

Speaking on behalf of the Jewish minority in White Russia, Beilin told of the terrible misery in the small towns there and said, “although the government is doing much to have the impoverished Jews enter factories and cooperative societies, the work is still small in comparison with the great poverty and with what the government will have to do.” He emphasized that Bidjan is the way of relief for the Jews of the small towns and that migration to the Far Eastern Republic is inevitable under present circumstances.

In a similar speech, Kotel, speaking for the Jewish minority in the Ukraine, complained that the Ukrainian authorities ignore relief for the Jews of the small towns, and he termed the situation there as “extremely difficult,” declaring that it was unjust to assign for Jewish reconstruction in both the Ukraine and White Russia the sum of only 6,000,000 roubles when, according to the government’s plan and figures, 15,000,000 roubles are needed for the Ukraine Jews alone.