M. Buzenko, the Chairman of the Far-Eastern Executive Committee of the Soviets, the supreme authority in the Far East, speaking at a meeting of the Bureya Party and Soviet workers, had a good deal of criticism to level at the inadequacy of the work carried on so far by the Bureya workers and institutions. It is essential to increase the extent of the work, he urged, so that it should be possible to keep the promise made by the Communist Party and the Soviet Government to the Jewish masses with regard to the establishment of a national autonomous unit in Bureya.
The work in the Bureya region is all behind, he complained. The Soviet farms and the collective farms are very much behind in the work of clearing the fields (about 10,000 hectares of crop have not been cleared), and they are behind in the threshing of the corn (only about 5 per cent has been threshed). The work of building houses and roads and the entire work of organising the State farms and the collective farms is all behind.
There must be an end to the constant complaints about difficulties and hindrances, he said. It is no use blaming everything on the difficult conditions in the region. It is necessary to carry on the work on entirely new lines.
Do not forget, he said, that your region has a very special significance. It is not an ordinary region. It will come under a special heading. It is specially set apart for development into a Jewish autonomous unit. That is the with of the Party and of the Soviet Government. The Jewish masses in the Soviet Union and abroad are looking with hope to Bureya. The crisis in America as hit hard thousands of Jewish workers, former emigrants from Russia. We must give them an opportunity of settling here. We must provide them with human living conditions. The migrants should have beds to sleep on, not hard boards.
Another thing, he urged, is that the Jewish migrants must be attended to in their mother tongue. It is no good, he said, that your work is being carried on only in Russian. It will not do. You must do your work in Yiddish. I demand categorically that this question should be settled once and for all. Circulars, letters, minutes, everything should be in Yiddish. First your business and administrative affairs. Then your schools must be Yiddish. That will wrest the weapons out of the hands of the chauvinists. We must do everything possible, he concluded, so that in the coming year we shall be able to settle 20,000 families in Bureya.
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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.
