Jewish Autonomous Region, who knew? well somewhere in the nether reaches of my memory...
Post writer on road trip writing a series of very interesting articles.
Russian Chronicles: "Birobidzhan has one of the more unusual histories of any Russian city I've been in. Founded in 1927 as a 'homeland' for Soviet Jews, it was declared the capital of the new Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934. Unfortunately for the Jewish migrants who were enticed to move here, it was located thousands of miles away from European Russia, with harsh winters and swarms of ravenous mosquitoes in the summer.
Between the late 1920s and early 1930s, 41,000 Soviet Jews relocated here. Some were fleeing persecution and famine in western Russia and Ukraine, while others were drawn by government promises of free rail travel and 600 rubles per 'settler.' But many of them left almost as soon as they got here -- by 1938, 28,000 had fled the region�s harsh conditions. Still, the Jewish schools and synagogues functioned up until the late 1940s, when a resurgence of religious repression shut them down, seemingly for good. After that, all Jewish cultural and religious activities essentially went underground, until perestroika finally led to a revival in the late 1980s."