Robert Weinberg Stalin’s Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland. An Illustrated History, 1928–1996
2002 ◽
pp. 492-494
Keyword(s):
This chapter takes a look at Robert Weinberg’s Stalin’s Forgotten Zion. In the book, Weinberg discusses the history of the ‘Birobidzhan project’, which officially began in March 1928 with a Soviet government decree. The book covers the seventy years of the chequered history of the project, which Weinberg regards as an experiment aimed at solving the ‘Jewish question’. The dream of establishing a Soviet Jewish homeland attracted foreign Jewish support, but the experiment failed mainly because of the great terror of 1937–1938. Though there was a short-lived renaissance of Yiddish culture in Birobidzhan after the Second World War, the repression by Stalin in his last years dealt a final blow to the experiment.