BIROBIDJAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 100, 29 April 1937, Page 17

BIROBIDJAN.

"BALKANS OF ASIA."

TITANIC WAR MEASURES.

SOVIET'S FAB EAST PLANS. 11. (By ELI AS TOBENKIN.) NEW YORK, March. With rare dramatic accident, 19,000 Jews who, over a period of nearly 10* years, had trekked their way from European Russia to Birobidjan, largely in order to found a State where their national customs, language and culture would have soil to root in, to-day find themselves in the heart of a region that is holding the world's spotlight as the "Balkana of the Far East." Birobidjan is the Jewish autonomous region in the Soviet Far East on which attention has just been centred by news of the arrest of several Jewish leaders on charges of "Trotskyism and counter-revolution." Whether there will be a war between Kussia and Japan may be doubted. But there is no doubt about the preparations for such a war; they are titanic on both sides. Nor is there any doubt about the objectives of such a war. A part of the Japanese Army, the part responsible for the "Manchukuo incident in 1931, is bent on pushing its policy of conquest into Russia and making the frontier of the Soviet Union somewhere near Lake Baikal.

By this arrangement, Japan would gam the Soviet's maritime provinces, enabling it to turn the sea of Japan into a sort of inland like; the Amur area, with the untapped coal and metal regions of Birobidjan; and, finally, the whole of Transbaikalia. The "moral principle underlying these huge war preparations- is the contention that Japan lives under the- constant threat of "Soviet indoctrination," which is a polite expression for Communist propaganda. The Soviet Programme. | The Soviet programme for the defence j of the Far East can be divided into three major classifications:—

1. Direct military preparations; the continued strengthening of the Far Eastern Army, the navy, the air force and the rapid replacement of the Czarist fortifications at Vladivostok with defences of a newer type. 2. Development of heavy industries, including primarily the quick upbuilding of coal, oil and metallurgical bases in the Far East, similar to those which the Soviet Government has built ud in the Urals.

3. The uniform economic development of the Soviet Far East "along all fronts," which means intensified colonisation and "empire building" on a lar<*e scale. D

The first part of this programme is purely military and has already been carried almost to the full. The second and third parts are still in the initial stages. The development of the industrial and economic aspects, which promises to be rapid, will vitally affect the course of civilisation in the whole of East Asia. The Soviet Far East has far-reaching possibilities as a commercial as well as industrial centre, and Vladivostok, which is Russian for "Ruler of the East," may become the ruler of the East in fact as well as in name. The port of Vladivostok is

being enlarged and modernised at a tremendous speed. The Soviet has ports higher up, at Nikolayevsk and in Kamchatka, but the Vladivostok port is kept open all the year round. The double tracking of the.. 1800-mile trans-Siberian railroad from Chita to Vladivostok will be completed in another twelve months at the latest.

The Baikal-Amur railroad, 1800 miles long, running from Nikolayevsk on the Amur to the Baikal River, where it unites with the trans-Siberian railroad, is already in operation. With the widely developed network of civil aviation, the region has virtually overcome what has been its greatest drawback—lack of adequate transportation. Metal and Mineral Resources. It is the plan of the Kremlin to establish on the territory of Birobidjan the third metallurgical base in the Soviet Union. The north-western part of Birodidjan is almost exclusively a mountainous region, and is part of the little Khingan chain of mountains, which start in Manchuria and extend well into the Soviet territory. The Khingan mountains are noted for their 'von and other ore deposits. In Southern Birobidjan, the bureau region is rich in coal. Moscow plans to establish there a sort of Far Eastern counterpart of the Kuznetsk-Magnitogorsk coal and iron base in the rural mountains.

The eastern part of Birobidjan is in the area which the Soviet Government hopes, by means of extensive drainage, to develop into a granary as important for Asiatic Russia as the Ukraine is for the Central and European part.

There is one more plan which the Soviet Government has for Birobidjan. It intends to transform the region into a commercial centre of the Far East, supplementary to Vladivostok and other cities in the maritime section, which are 100 close to Japan, to suit Soviet military experts.

Already the Red military headquarters of the Far East is located at Khabarovsk, only 170 kilometres from Birobidjan. This comparative proximity will facilitate co-operation between the proposed commercial centre and the military capital. The distance "from Birobidjan to Vladivostok is 675 miles, and, though the Japanese navy might reach Vladivostok, it could never 'ndanger Birobidjan. Against air attacks the region is capably guarded. — (N.A.N.A.)