Managing cultural, ethnic, religious and national identities in the Jewish autonomous region of post-Soviet Russia

It would be a mistake to assume that ethnopolitics is only a matter of confrontation between different ethnic groups. On the contrary, there are a range of examples where ethnopolitics is pursued in a spirit of compromise and co-operation. One of them is the case of the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan in Post-Soviet Russia. Often ethnic groups realize that co-operation and cultural coexistence are more profitable than conflict. Beginning in 1928 the Soviet Union set aside a territory the side of Belgium for Jewish settlement, located some five thousands miles east of Moscow along the Soviet-Chinese border. Believing that Soviet Jewry, like other national minorities, deserved a territorial homeland, the regime decided to create a Jewish enclave that would become the Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934 and is popularly known as Birobidzhan, the region’s capital city. The Soviet political class hoped that Birobidzhan would serve as an alternative to Palestine by fostering the development of a secular, non-religious and Yiddish Jewish culture rooted in socialist principles. In fact, the establishment of JAR was the first instance of an officially acknowledged Jewish national territory since ancient times. But the history of the Region was very tragic and the experiment failed dismally. Nevertheless, Birobidzhan’s continued and renewed existence of today is not only a curious legacy of Soviet national policy, but after the break-up of the Soviet Union and particularly after the religious rebirth, represents an interesting case-study in order to study interethnic relations. Today the Region’s economic prosperity, combined with its Yiddish heritage, helps to create a soil for a Jewish local future, but remembering that membership of a national minority shall be a matter of free personal choice and no disadvantage shall result from the choice of such membership. The coexistence between Jewish, Orthodox, Protestant, and Muslim religions and cultures is a remarkable example of the co-operative side of ethnopolitics.