28th
J.A.O.
So, Josef Stalin’s solution to the problem of dozens of non-Russian ethnic and national groups all existing within the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic was to give them each their own autonomous sub-republics on their hereditary lands. Probem: the Jews had no concentrated hereditary lands, because, well, we’ve historically had trouble holding onto those. Solution: The Jewish Autonomous Oblast! Just give the Jews a small province way over by the Russian border with China near the Pacific Ocean, and let them make Yiddish the regional language, teach it in schools, and generally create a Jewish wonderland. It turned out that Jews still preferred the capital cities, their home villages, and Palestine to this Siberian outpost, so the Jewish population never grew above 20,000. But, it’s still right there on the map of Russia, right between the Federal Subjects of Khabarovsk and Amur. That, my friends, is where we should go after we graduate JDS.
