Paul Novick's 1936 Visit to the Jewish Autonomous Region

Paul Novick’s 1936 Visit to the Jewish Autonomous Region APPENDIX: PAUL NOVICK’S 1936 VISIT TO THE JEWISH AUTONOMOUS REGION Paul Novick visited Birobidzhan between July 25 and September 25, 1936, and published a book describing his experiences. He traveled on trains, boats, and horse-drawn wagons, visiting cities and towns, collective farms, and endless miles of taiga and forest. Birobidzhan, he remarked in the very fi rst sentence of his book, was “a word . now on the lips of Jews the world over.” The region was the manifestation of the “complete solution of the Jewish question through workers’ power.” It provided hope to millions of Jews, particularly in Poland, “who are prepared to go, and wait impatiently for that joyful moment.” Perhaps unconsciously, the atheist and Communist Novick used Biblical imagery throughout the book: “Yes, she is beautiful and rich,” he wrote. “This is an outstanding land, containing everything required to sustain a great industry and a rich agriculture.” In its “tremendously fruitful soil,” crops “grow and ripen . if ever there was a land where honey fl owed it is—the Jewish Autonomous Region.” But this near- empty space had fewer than two people per square kilometer: “A land one and one half times the size of Belgium…contains about sixty thousand people. It needs many millions—of Jews.” Thousands of acres of productive land awaited the people who would till it, Novick wrote. He had travelled by boat along the Amur River and had not seen a single soul for many kilometers. The countryside cried out for people. There was much to do in Birobidzhan, which was becoming “the Jewish socialist autonomous republic, the national home for the Jewish people.” Novick spent 15 days in the city of Birobidzhan, which was growing so fast it would soon be a world center. Though it had a population of only 28,000, Novick reported that it felt like a much larger city, with its wide avenues and sidewalks, its parks, theaters and technical schools. Wherever one looked, one saw new buildings under construction; one heard the “music of saw and hammer.” Novick visited children’s schools and buildings housing the local Communist Party and Soviet. Birobidzhan was becoming home to many writers, teachers and cultural workers: It was “a new country, a new life” for the “old Jewish people,” who were now “becoming younger.” Novick next visited the Birofeld and Frayland collective farms. His guide, one of the earliest Jewish pioneers in Birobidzhan, said to him, as they ascended a hill and saw before them a green and sunny countryside, with fresh and soft colors: “Well, look at this promised (and delivered) land!” They inspected an apiary belonging to Birofeld, 249 A PPENDIX I with 1,500 beehives and fi elds of wheat and soy. There would be many human and natural obstacles still to overcome but, Novick felt, “things were moving forward.” His next outing took Novick south to Blucherovo on the Amur River across from Manchuria. Here, too, offi cials told Novick that settlers were needed, to cultivate 2,000 hectares of land. Novick boarded a boat upriver to Stalinsk and then Amurzet, marveling at the scenery en route, but also aware of the Japanese on the other side of the river.1 “I have seen the Mississippi, the Rhine, the Nile and the Thames,” he wrote, “and this river can certainly compare.” Wild fl owers grew along the banks of the river, and the forests spread out in every direction. “The air was fragrant and fresh.” He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the area. A fellow passenger, a Russian, told Novick he was impatient with the pace of Jewish settlement. “Take a look at what we own!…Gold and coal and iron! Endless forests! And did you see the empty tracts of level land? Everything is available here!” Novick recalled that in the northern part of Birobidzhan, in the resort of Kaldur, a spa famous for its mineral waters, “A feeling of joy overcame me, that the Jewish Autonomous Region possessed such a treasure.” He urged that Kaldur—“one of the most beautiful pearls in the Jewish Autonomous Region”—be developed quickly, “to bring health and life and joy for the masses of working people.” When Novick returned to the capital city of Birobidzhan, he was greeted by much activity: the paving of various streets; the demolition of old buildings to construct new hotels, restaurants, and a library; and the laying of a foundation for a new electricity station which would be able to supply power for a projected population of 120,000. The pace of construction and activity was amazing, and for this he credited the Communist activists. A plenum of the local Communist Party was in session, and “One could feel how quickly the road was being taken to reach the coming Jewish Soviet-republic!” The Communist plenum was making “grandiose plans” for 1937: there were to be 25 new collective farms, a new knitting mill, a wagon plant, electricity plants, a shoe factory, and a sock and rope factory. Plans called for 10,000 new settlers in 1937. As its socialist prosperity increased, the USSR would be even more eager to assist in developing Jewish statehood in Birobidzhan “with a generous, freely extended Soviet hand.” Novick was particularly impressed at how hard Russians and other non-Jews were working together to build the Jewish Autonomous Region: “Birobidzhan is making a new leap forward. Birobidzhan is racing forward towards true development.” Novick also reported on his meetings with the local Jewish commanders of the Red Army that protected Birobidzhan against the Japanese on the other side of the Amur. Speaking Yiddish, they asked him to inform 250 Paul Novick’s 1936 Visit to the Jewish Autonomous Region the Jews of America that in Birobidzhan, the Leninist-Stalinist national policy was being carried out: “All of us, Jews and non-Jews, we are building the Jewish region!” Birobidzhan was an example of the fraternal relations between nationality and nationality in the Soviet Union. Novick was reminded that on August 29, the Jewish Autonomous Region had been declared the center of Jewish national culture for the entire Jewish working people. Novick marveled at the fact that Russian children were attending Yiddish language schools and becoming familiar with Yiddish literature. This was indeed an example of the “new civilization, the Soviet one, and proof of how it had solved the national question.” Novick’s train trip back to Moscow took eight days. His thoughts remained with Birobidzhan as he travelled westwards, for the fi rst six hours, from one station to another within the Jewish Autonomous Region: “One becomes drawn in by the rapid pace of construction in this beautiful land…One feels at home as soon as one enters. You meet so many familiar people, even if meeting them for the fi rst time…So it hurt to leave. Hard to say one’s goodbyes. In one’s mind there were so many memories.” Novick admitted it would take very hard work to make Birobidzhan a success: “The road to the Jewish Soviet-republic is not through fl owers and music.” It was not easy to deal with “virgin earth.” People and materials had to be brought from far away. “But behind Birobidzhan stood the vigor of the great Soviet nation, of the great Communist Party.” Every nationality in the Soviet Union, including the Jews, was worthy of self-determination, of a healthy national culture, and a healthy economic life.2 Upon Novick’s return to Moscow, he was interviewed by the Moscow News. “Foreign Jews, carefully selected, are being invited to settle in Biro-Bidjan as rapidly as housing accommodations can be prepared for them,” he told the newspaper.3 Reading Novick’s book, one can sense the tremendous longing for a Jewish “place of our own,” a piece of the globe where Jews would be in the majority and run their own affairs, even if that place, rather than being totally sovereign, was merely a “national home.” His loving descriptions bring to mind the chronicles of Jewish travelers to the land of Israel. To Novick, Birobidzhan seemed a place where Jews were building a homeland, helped by socially progressive, non-Jewish but philosemitic friends. Novick’s account served almost as a fantasy counterpart to the real world his readers inhabited. In that real world, American Jews daily encountered animosity and anti-Semitism; European Jews suffered and died at the hands of fascists; while in Palestine, Jews struggled to achieve statehood in opposition both to the British imperial authorities and the indigenous Arabs. Little wonder, then, that reportage such as Novick’s was used by Ambijan and the ICOR to attract enthusiastic new members.4 251 A PPENDIX I ENDNOTES 1 Blucherovo later became known as Leninskoye. Stalinsk was previously called Stalinfeld, and later Oktyabrskoye; it no longer exists. 2 Paul Novick, Yidn in biro-bidzhan, 9-12, 15-22, 27-32, 36-37, 46-60, 73, 81-91. 3 The article was reprinted by the ICOR. See Julia Older, “Biro-Bidjan as it Grows,” Nailebn-New Life 10, 12 (December 1936): 9-11 [English section]. 4 The fantasy of Birobidzhan as a Soviet “promised land” for Jews extended to outright falsehoods. The September 1936 issue of Nailebn-New Life, on p. 12 [English section] ran a photo entitled “A Spot in Biro-Bidjan” showing a grove of palm trees! 252.

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