How did the Jewish Autonomous Region appear on the map of our country?
Establishment of the Jewish Autonomous Region was necessity for more than two millions of the Jews, living in the Soviet Union. They were considered by tsarism to be foreigners, limited in choice of domicile, possibility of housing accommodation possession. They could farm and be occupied by limited kinds of activity only. They continued to remain one of the most suffering people of the country with low living standard, limited possibilities for realization of intellectual and creative potential.
In 1921 the Committee on land settlement of the working Jews (KOMZET), which was headed by P.G.Smidovich, was headed. It searched for places for compact moving of the Jews, adaptation of the Jewish population to agricultural labor.
The first attempts of KOMZET to create in 1924-26 Jewish settlements in the Crimea, in the Ukraine, Stavropol Territory, near Smolensk and Pskov didn't meet with success because of lack of free grounds in these regions and necessity of transfer of concrete owners' lands to Jewish settlers. The southern region of Priamurye, called then Birsko-Bidzhanskiy region, after an investigation by the expedition led by B.L.Bruk, the professor, under a management of V.R.Viliams in 1927, was recognized as a territory, favorable for compact moving of the working Jews.
History of the JAR establishment, as the first and only state territorial unit of the Jews not only in the USSR, but also in the world (Israel was established on a solution of UNO in 1948), begins from the fact that the Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for KOMZET of free grounds near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the working Jews" on March 28, 1928. The decree meant that there was "a possibility of establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the territory of the called region".
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