A failed Soviet attempt for Jewish settlement: The Birobidzhan project

Abstract

This paper focuses on the history of the Birobidzhan region and its development as a Jewish settlement under Stalin. It argues that unwelcoming geographic and climatic conditions, administrative mistakes, and problems concerning development of a Jewish culture, language and religion were major obstacles in turning the Jewish Autonomous Region into a Jewish Homeland. Several reasons, domestic and international, led the Soviet administration to consider creating a national homeland for Soviet Jews. While as early as 1924 Crimea was considered as a possible Jewish homeland, the focus quickly turned towards Birobidzhan. The year 1928, when Birobidzhan was given the status of Jewish National District, marks the rise of the region as a Jewish land, and the region became the center of attention and attraction for Soviet Jews. On May 7, 1934, Birobidzhan was officially promoted by a special decree from the status of a District to that of a Jewish Autonomous Region. Stalin’s purges of 1937 stopped the development of the Jewish Autonomous Region, which received new waves of emigrants between 1934 and 1937. The stagnation which continued during the Second World War ended after the war with an increase of Jewish settlers and revival of Jewish culture, language and religion in the region. Anti-Semitic purges of 1948 did not spare the Jewish Region. The Jewish Autonomous Region survived the purges of 1930s, but could never recover from the destruction of the 1948 purges. The primary sources used in this research include a report written 1927 by the expedition committee for Birobidzhan, reports of American-Jewish Agrarian Organization, 1924-1938; memoirs of Jewish writers in and out of Birobidzhan, and articles by Michael I. Kalinin.