No Zion

The Central Executive Committee of Soviet Russia pointed last week to another remote spot on the map and invited Jews to move in to form an autonomous Jewish national province. The spot was Biro-Bidjan in farthest Siberia, a wild and fertile land of mountains and rivers, drained by the great Amur and separated only by that river from Manchukuo on the south and west.

Only 300 mi. north of Harbin, 400 mi. northwest of Vladivostok, the new Jewish state was precisely in the hypothetical line of march of the next Russo-Japanese War. Six years ago Soviet Russia marked it as Jewish, moved in several thousand Jews from Western Russia, Lithuania, the U. S., Argentina and Palestine. Many of them moved right out again. The soil was rich; the crops of wheat and oats were heavy; iron, coal, graphite, marble and gold lay in the hills; the rivers ran with salmon and the forests with game. The neighbors, Russians and a few Koreans, were friendly. The Government ran a cannery, was building a Jewish theatre and new schools. But the Japanese were near, the winters were long and old Jews remembered it as Russia's Devil's Island whither the Tsars sent Jews and terrorists before the Revolution. Soon European Jews heard the rumor that on the day Biro-Bidjan was declared a Jewish territory a Siberian tiger ate the only policeman in the region.

But Biro-Bidjan is an enormously valuable property. Japan would like it. The Russian high command is determined to hold, colonize and develop it, possibly as a great metallurgical centre. Russia moved rapidly to survey the whole vast, 9,920,000-acre territory, forced the population up from 35,000 in 1928 to 50,000, founded two newspapers, one of them in Yiddish, made Yiddish the official language, organized collectives, state farms, village reading rooms and an agricultural college.

Last week the Central Executive Committee promoted Biro-Bidjan from a territory to a Jewish Autonomous Region with one representative in the Soviet Council of Nationalities. It further promised that when the Jewish population (now about 8,000) reaches 30.000, Biro-Bidjan will become an autonomous republic with five representatives in the Council of Nationalities. Said Boris I. Trotsky, vice-chairman of the Government's committee for putting Jews on the land: "This has nothing in common with Zionism. We do not propose to create a state for all the Jews in the world."

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