Choosing Birobidzhan
In the 1920s, Soviet leaders sought a territory for concentrated Jewish settlement within the USSR. Their choice fell on Birobidzhan, a remote area in the Russian Far East along the Amur River, bordering China.
Officially decreed on 28 March 1928, the Birobidzhan Jewish National District was created to encourage settlement in a border region often infiltrated by Chinese and White Russian forces. The location had harsh winters, dense forests, swamplands, and few inhabitants—mainly Cossack descendants, Koreans, Kazakhs, and Tungusic peoples.
Early Settlement and Challenges
The first 654 Jewish settlers arrived in spring 1928, but nearly half left within months due to flooding, disease outbreaks, and severe living conditions. To attract more settlers, Soviet propaganda promoted the district through posters, films, and Yiddish literature.
Immigrants came from across the USSR and abroad, including about 1,200 non-Soviet Jews, among them the family of future Soviet spy George Koval. By 1934, the district was upgraded to the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAO) within the RSFSR, and by the late 1940s, the Jewish population peaked at roughly 46,000–50,000, around 25% of the total population.
Cultural and Demographic Shifts
In the 1930s and 1940s, Yiddish culture flourished: the Birobidzhaner Shtern newspaper, a Yiddish theatre troupe, and streets named after Yiddish authors reflected the community’s growth. After World War II, interest in Birobidzhan as a home for Jewish refugees increased, but migration slowed as political repression rose.
By the 1959 census, the Jewish population had halved to about 14,269. Following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, most remaining Jews emigrated, many to Israel, leaving fewer than 2% of the local population Jewish.
Present-Day Birobidzhan
Today, the JAO is Russia’s only autonomous oblast and one of the few places where Yiddish is a recognized minority language. While 2021 census data recorded only 837 Jews—0.6% of the population—some Jewish cultural life remains, including Yiddish instruction in select schools and a Chabad-run synagogue.
The region’s economy is based on agriculture, mining, and manufacturing, and its location on the border with China is strengthened by the Tongjiang–Nizhneleninskoye railway bridge, opened in 2021. Despite its small Jewish population, the oblast remains a unique remnant of the Soviet-era project to create a Jewish territory within Russia’s Far East.
In the late 1920s, the Soviet Union launched a bold plan: to create a Jewish homeland in the remote Far East.
The project took shape in Birobidzhan, a harsh borderland along the Amur River, chosen as much for strategic defense as for cultural settlement…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/Z4heJEdNd4
— Fascinating True Stories (@FascinatingTrue) August 15, 2025