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‘Red Jerusalem’: Birobidzhan, The Frustrated Jewish Republic in Soviet Union.

  • 중앙사론
  • 2012, (36), pp.289-330
  • Publisher : Institute for Historical Studies at Chung-Ang University
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

Kayoung Ko 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The Soviet government, back in 1934, declared the foundation of the Autonomous Region for Jews in Birobidzhan, the far eastern area of its territory. The decision had considerable repercussions all over the world. Moscow emphasized the fact that the Jewish Autonomous Region was the first realizaton of the Jewish aspirations to have their own territory. Encouraged by the decision, many Jews came over to Birobidzhan harboring the dream to build a Jewish republic. They seemed to come a step closer towards their dream. But what drove the Soviet government to reach the decision was the Jewish petitions made in the course of the Revolution. In this sense, the gap was found between the cause of Soviet's realization of the Revolutionary promise and the reality of granting the autonomy for Jews in Birobidzhan. What the Soviet authority really wanted was to develop the frontier area in the far east with the expected Jewish fund from overseas. The leaders in Moscow saw that the development of rural area in the Crimean peninsula in the 1920s, designed to distribute farming land to the Jews, had drawn enormous funding from abroad. With the Birobidzhan project, the Soviets intended to strengthen the frontier area facing China. For that purpose, the authorities pursued the project as part of the Siberian development plan. They did so without proper preparations and sent the Jewish people into the undeveloped area. The Birobibzhan project can be divided into three stages. The first phase was the period between 1928 and 1929. In this period, the Jews who came to the area harboured the passion and hope and laid the foundation for the construction of the Jewish province against all odds. The second was between 1930 and 1933 in which the administrative center of the ‘Birobidzhan zone’ came into place. Economically they built collective farms and socio-culturally they gradually settled into the area. The third was the period after 1934, during which the government pursued the 2nd Five-Year Economic Plan. The Moscow leaders wanted to spurt on the development of the area and promoted Birobidzhan into ‘the Autonomous Region of Jews’. The soviet government blew the trumpet on the future plan to build a Jewish republic in Birobidzhan. But the lack of preparations and poor conditions drove many of the Jewish migrants away from the area. And the migration of Jews into the area gradually turned into a forced migration. Crucially in the late 1930s, Stalin made a purge of the Jews who were involved in constructing collective farms and the Jewish leaders, which brought the Jewish migration plan to a stop. The Jewish migration resumed a bit in the wake of the Great War. But finally the Birobidzhan project came to a tragic ending with the construction of Israel followed by mass crackdown on Jews. Birobidzhan became merely as a showcase of the project. The frustration left a painful lesson for the Jews. They came to have all the more enhanced aspirations to have their own state, not to be swayed by any other forces, the Zionism. The failure of the Birobidzhan project served as a turning point for those who opposed the Zionist project to come to accept it.

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