Jewish Autonomous Region

Province within the Khabarovsk krai (territory) of the Russian Far East; area 36,000 sq km/13,900 sq mi; population (1996) 210,000 (67% urban; 83% Russian, 4% Jewish). The capital is Birobidzhan. The province is situated in the bend of the Amur River west of Khabarovsk and bordering on the Heilongjiang province of northern China. Other rivers are the Bira and Bidzhan. The province is mountainous in the northwest and partly forested, with rich mineral resources.

Industries include the mining of gold and tin, timber felling and processing, agricultural engineering, textiles, leather, metallurgy, light engineering; cultivation of grain and soya, and dairy farming.

History Russian colonization in the area began in the 1840s. The oblast arose out of the ‘Republic’ established here in 1928 by the Soviet government for the resettlement of Jews made destitute after the 1917 Revolution, when private commerce was made illegal. In 1930, the area was designated the ‘Birobidzhan National Region’, and renamed in 1934. Settlement was voluntary, and few Jews elected to live here; two-thirds of those who did arrive in this barren, inhospitable area left within one year. The result is that the region is far from predominantly Jewish in character.