An officially-inspired movement has been launched in the Jewish autonomous region of Biro-Bidjan in far eastern Siberia to keep the old settlers in the region. The movement is a result of the increasing apprehension among Jewish organizations regarding the tendency of Jewish settlers to leave and take up employment in industry and office work.
The Jewish press has frequently voiced anxiety regarding the insufficient number of prospective settlers and the partial exodus of present colonists.
The initiative for the “stay in Biro-bidjan” movement came from pioneers of Jewish colonization who arrived in 1928–the first year of Jewish settlement. A recent gathering of pioneers assembled to celebrate the tenth anniversary appealed to the settlers to remain in the region.
“Let us always remain in Biro-Bidjan, the far eastern region,” the colonists appealed. “Let us strengthen and develop our Jewish Soviet statehood. Let us create here a center of Soviet Jewish culture and fortify the defense of the Socialist outpost in the far east.”
The newspaper Birobidjaner Stern publishes a number of resolutions of Jewish workers in factories and collective farms who declare they will remain there their entire lives. “We are frontier guards who never relinquish our posts,” the Stern declares editorially.
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.
