A Soviet Jewish homeland: Birobidzhan, 1934-1940

Jewish wheelwrights, apparently happy in the Far East, c. 1935-1940.

Nearly every archive that arrives at the IISH contains a small surprise. Among the papers of the British communist Alec Waterman (1909-1966) there were documents and especially photographs about the position of the Jews in Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe during the interbellum. The oldest series of photographs refers to Birobidzhan in the 1930s. The photographs acquired, even though they were probably all part of the official propaganda, pay tribute to the brief experiment with a Soviet Jewish homeland, of which little remains today.

What was Birobidzhan?
In the Soviet Union in between two world wars, most Jews were poor. Isolated in their shtetls, most inhabitants were small, independent artisans or small merchants. Jews were underrepresented in industry and agriculture, which were the spearheads of Stalins new policy. To compensate, small Jewish agricultural settlements were set up on the Crimea, in the Ukraine, and in Byelorussia. Until the early 1930s, the Soviet authorities allowed a nationalities policy under certain conditions. Jews were eligible for this arrangement as well. An autonomous Jewish republic in the Far East was established on 8 May 1934. The site selected for Birobidzhan was along the Chinese border north of Vladivostok. Birobidzhan was intended as an alternative to Palestine.

During the first year there were 12.000 Jewish settlers, most residing in kolkhozes. They did their best to preserve a secular Yiddish culture through schools, theatres, clubs and libraries. Figures of settlers remained modest and many settlers stayed only briefly. The experiment was far from being successful. It ended with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Text was taken from On the Waterfront -
newsletter of the Friends of the IISH
Issue 12 (pdf, 2.7 Mb)