Description
In the 1930s, deep in Russia’s Far East near the Chinese border, the Soviet Union founded a bold experiment in national identity—the Jewish Autonomous Region, or Birobidzhan. Promoted as a socialist alternative to Palestine, it was envisioned as a homeland where Yiddish, not Hebrew, would be the language of culture and communism would replace religion. Thousands of Jews from across the USSR, and even from abroad, migrated to this remote and rugged territory in hopes of building a new kind of Jewish life. This lecture explores the utopian ideals, political propaganda, and harsh realities of Birobidzhan—from its early pioneers and cultural institutions to Stalin’s purges and the region’s postwar decline. Drawing on rare photos, archival films, and Yiddish songs, it examines how this “Soviet Zion” reflected both the dreams and disillusionments of 20th-century Jewish history.
