Lambasting American propagandists who spread misleading information in this country concerning Biro-Bidjan and its “possibilities,” the Detroit News this week cast the light of truth on that region in Far Eastern Siberia, set up by the Soviet government as an autonomous Jewish territory.
These revelations on Biro-Bidjan were made in two cabled articles by Philip A. Adler, special correspondent of the Detroit News in Soviet Russia. Visiting the region in question, Adler made personal observations and interviewed two Soviet officials. These were Comrade Gregory Geller, head of the autonomous territory and the nearest thing to president of the republic, and Comrade G. C. Brill, representative of the Komzet, Soviet agency in charge of Jewish agricultural endeavors.
Adler termed as “poppycock” the reports often heard among Jewish “comrades” in the United States to the effect that Biro-Bidjan already has “overtaken and outstripped Palestine.”
BLASTS FALSE REPORTS
He added that to the realm of “humbug” must be relegated also the reports that every Jew in Biro-Bidjan is engaged in agriculture; that the Jewish farmers there are prosperous; that the Jewish masses from other countries are deserting their capitalistic countries and fleeing to Biro-Bidjan, and that the Jewish-American ICOR colony there has accomplished wonders in agriculture.
“A couple of hours in the offices of the Rayispolkom and you unlearn much of what you had learned about Biro-Bidjan,” Adler wrote. He stated that even semi-official publications cannot be relied on.
As an example he pointed out that in A. Kantorovich’s booklet, “Biro-Bidjan’s Perspectives,” the territory’s population is given as 80,065, at the end of 1933. Of these, 31,000 were said by the author to be Jews and the city of Biro-Bidjan was credited with a population of 15,000.
Adler refuted these figures, basing his statement on estimates given him by Geller and Brill, who he stated estimated the total population of the territory at 45,000, the total number of Jews at 11,000 and the population of Biro-Bidjan at 2,500.
Among other astounding statements made by Adler, he declared that, according to official figures, the number of Jews on land does not exceed 2,000; that the American “comrades,” perhaps the best Biro-Bidjan propagandists, turned out to be poor pioneers; and that Soviet officials are having difficulty in getting settlers to go to Biro-Bidjan.
The correspondent quoted a Jew prominent in Soviet affairs as describing the Jewish “back to the land” movement in the following words: “Orthodox Jews shouted about Palestine and did not go there when they had the opportunity, and now radical Jews shout Biro-Bidjan and do not go there.”
Despite all this, however, Adler wrote that Jewish achievements in Biro-Bidjan since 1928 were little short of marvelous. He said that men and women who had never handled pick or shovel in their lives had cleared some 25,000 acres of primeval taiga forest, had drained swamps, built roads, erected a half dozen towns and nine collective farms, built hundreds of houses, introduced a score of industries and had created a nucleus for the future Jewish state.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
