https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Amurze ... 0e93?hl=en
The Jewish Autonomous Oblast (Russian: Евре́йская автоно́мная о́бласть, Yevreyskaya avtonomnaya oblast; Yiddish: ייִדישע אווטאָנאָמע געגנט, yidishe avtonome gegnt[14]) is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous oblast) in the Russian Far East, bordering Khabarovsk Krai and Amur Oblast in Russia and Heilongjiang province in China. It is also referred to as "Yevrey"[15][unreliable source] (Yiddish: יעװרײ) and "Birobidzhan"[16] (Yiddish: ביראָבידזשאַן). Its administrative center is the town of Birobidzhan. As of the 2010 Census, JAO's population was 176,558,[9] making 0.1% of the Russia's total population. The JAO is Russia's only autonomous oblast[17] and, aside from Israel, the world's only Jewish territory with an official status.
Soviet authorities established the autonomous oblast in 1934. It was the result of Soviet nationality policy under Stalin, which provided the Jewish population of the Soviet Union with a territory in which to pursue Yiddish cultural heritage.[18] According to the 1939 population census, 17,695 Jews lived in the region (16% of the total population). The Jewish population peaked in 1948 at around 30,000, about one-quarter of the region's population.[19]
In 1953, Joseph Stalin died and thereafter the Jewish population in the JAO began a long decline. The census of 1959 found that the Jewish population of the JAO had declined by approximately 50%, down to 14,269 persons.[20] In 2002, there were 2,327 people of Jewish descent living in the JAO (1.2% of the total population), while ethnic Russians made up 90% of the JAO population. By 2010, according to data provided by the Russian Census Bureau, there were only 1,628 people of Jewish descent remaining in the JAO (1% of the total population), while ethnic Russians made up 92.7% of the JAO population.[21] By 2010, according to data provided by the Russian Census Bureau, 97 persons spoke Yiddish, 312 persons spoke Hebrew, and a further 54 persons spoke unspecified Jewish languages.[22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast
