Birobidzhan, a Russian Jewish autonomous oblast near Vladivostok

Theodor Herzl, World Zionist Council president, sought support from the world’s great powers for the creation of a Jewish homeland. At the 6th Zionist Congress at Basel in 1903, it seemed as if it would take too long to save all the Jews in Europe by establishing a Jewish homeland in Israel. While waiting for the great powers to act, there was a risk that the 6 million Jews in Russia and 3 million Jews in Poland could be in dire peril. A temporary refuge was desperately needed. Uganda? Extremely remote territories in Canada and Australia, Iraq, Libya or Angola? They were all unsuccessful.

After WW1, the search continued in remote territories. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the situation of the Jewish people was considered as part of the overall question of ALL min­orities within the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders invested significant resources toward the cultural and national development of the Soviet Union’s many ethnic minorities. Soviet policies defined nationality primarily on the basis of language and territory, an understanding with which many East European Jewish intellectuals agreed. Most Jews in Eastern Europe spoke Yiddish so the Jews had a native language, but they did not have a territory; this was a problem that socialist Jewish activists and the Soviet state worked to rectify. 

The solut­ion to the problem of landlessness had been to move Jewish families to farm lands in Southern Russia (now Ukraine). Alas there was almost no room left on the Crimea.  So the new plan was to create an autonomous Jewish oblast/territory within the Soviet Union and to encourage Jews to move there.

Trans-Siberian Railway 

from Moscow to Vladivostok via Birobidzhan

On the Russian-China border north of Vladivostok, Biro-bidzhan had a harsh geography and climate: mountainous, covered with vir­gin forests of oak, pine and cedar, and swamplands; any new settlers would have to build their lives from scratch! And build they did – with help. In 1926 Polit­buro member Lazar Kaganovich spoke at a congress of Society for Jewish agricultural settlement Ozet: "The Jewish people now faces the great task of preserving its nationality. For this pur­pose a large segment of the Jewish population must transform it­self into a compact farming population, numbering at least several hundred thousand souls."

If most Russian Jews had worked primarily as traders and small-scale craftspeople, not as farmers, could they be moved from their socio­economic position into agriculture? Since the heart of the distant settle­ment was the Trans-Siberian railway and Birobidzhan Stat­ion, the railways prov­ided the only com­munic­ation link AND tons of emp­loy­ment opportunities. And to make colonisat­ion more enticing, the Soviet government allowed private land-ownership.

Then in March 1928, the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree for the settlement of working Jews near the Amur River in the Far East, the Jewish administrative unit in Birobidzhan. This new oblast would be located on the Trans-Siberian Railway and would become a separate economic unit.

 Biro­bid­zhan's main railway station (above). Note the names in
Russian and Yiddish

Settlers statue in front of the main railway station (below)

In the same year the first organised group of Jewish settlers arrived from cities and villages in Russia, including what is now Ukraine and Byelorussia. These indiv­id­uals settled in many different areas of the autonomous oblast, some in Biro­bid­zhan City and others in various rural settlements. Vald­geym was the first organised Jewish collective farm started in the oblast. The very next year, in 1929, Valdgeym's first school was opened with all subjects taught in Yiddish and Russian.

The number of Jewish citizens peaked at 30,000 and since they made up more than a quarter of the oblast’s total population, primary schools, high schools, training centres, Yiddish theatres and the Shalom Aleichem regional library were founded. The synagogue was small and only made of timber, because the soc­ialists were very interested in Judaism as a culture, not as a rel­igion.

Thus the mid-1930s was a period of great achievements in Birobid­zhan's development as a centre of Russian Jewish settlement. Even more excited were the 2000 Jewish pioneers from out­side the Soviet Union who emigrated to Birobidzhan in the 1930s. The American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan/Ambidjan, established in 1934, was heroic in its financial and practical support (at least until Senator McCarthy and his allies destroyed the Committee’s leaders and supporters in the USA).

Jewish farmers in Vald­geym in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, 1929

They originially came from Southern Russia, now Ukraine

Why did the Russians spend a fortune on the autonomous Jewish oblast? An important goal of the Birobidzhan project was to increase settle­ment in the remote Soviet Far East, especially along the vulnerable bord­er with China. The then-Manchurian border was often infiltrated by the Chinese, and threatened by Japan. So in Moscow they were encouraging:
1] a military and civilian population along the vulnerable bor­der with China,
2] an urgently needed comm­u­n­­ic­ations, especially a sophisticated train system and
3] a Russian base for tertiary studies and science expedit­ions in the East. And
4] Birobidzhan had abundant mineral wealth, especially in its tin ores. These would be the basis of a large national metallurgical industry.

In the end Birobidzhan Jewish community was greatly reduced. Twice, in 1936–37 and in 1948–49, Stalinist purges damaged Jewish dreams. Most remaining settlers immigrated in 1950 and 1951, ending the era of autonomous Jewish life and culture in Birobidzhan. Nonetheless the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok via Birobidzhan is still excellent; visitors can locate their grandparents’ houses, businesses and synagogues, and can still see the railway station named in Russian and Yiddish.