Kalinin President of Soviet Union Promises to Assist in Making Bureya a Jewish Autonomous Region

We shall do everything to promote the building of Bureya and the realisation of the decision of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets to establish a Jewish autonomous Republic in Bureya, M. Kalinin, the President of the Soviet Union, and M. Smidovitch, the Vice-President of the Soviet Union and President of the Government Commission for Jewish Settlement (Comzet), have declared to Mr. Levin, the Secretary of the Bureya Communist Party District Committee, who has had an interview with them on the steps to be taken for the further Jewish settlement and development of Bureya.

The question of transforming Bureya into a Jewish National territorial unit is now being considered in the proper party and State quarters, Mr. Levin states, the idea being to carry the decision into effect as part of the present five-year plan, that is to say, within the next two years.

Mr. Levin has been visiting the most important towns in the Ukraine and White Russia, reporting on the work in Bureya and negotiating with the Government of these Republics to obtain their collaboration in the further immigration and building up of the region. He states that he found a great deal of interest everywhere in the question of establishing a Jewish administrative unit in Bureya.

In the course of 1932, he said, we shall place in Bureya, according to present plans, 1,700 families on the collective farms; 1,700 families on the State farms; 1,000 in industry; 600 in lumber work; 300 on the railways; 1,300 in the artisan co-operatives; 2,000 in road-building and amelioration work, and 500 in the various educational institutions, adding 20,000 souls to the population of Bureya during the year. If this plan is carried into effect, the total population of Bureya at the end of the five-year plan will be 80,000, more than half of them Jews, and then the decision to proclaim a Jewish autonomous unit in Bureya will be realised.