Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region (Jewish Encounters Series) in Around the World in 80 Books

Jan 19, 2021 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: audio, nonfiction, memoir

I can't recall where I first heard about Birobidzhan -- maybe in a short story by Ken Kalfus? Anyway, I've always been interested in strange little pockets of geography and history, and was curious to learn more about this Soviet experiment in creating a Jewish homeland, so I picked this up. Coming from a journalist like Gessen, I was expecting a lively story. However, I also think I was expecting more of a social history and sense of the day-to-day life, rather than the relatively tepid (and sa I can't recall where I first heard about Birobidzhan -- maybe in a short story by Ken Kalfus? Anyway, I've always been interested in strange little pockets of geography and history, and was curious to learn more about this Soviet experiment in creating a Jewish homeland, so I picked this up. Coming from a journalist like Gessen, I was expecting a lively story. However, I also think I was expecting more of a social history and sense of the day-to-day life, rather than the relatively tepid (and sad) administrative story it mostly is.

Gessen opens and closes the book with her personal history as a teenage Soviet Jew who was able to emigrate to the West in the 1970s. These bookends are full of human connection and life and serve as stark contrast to the dry history between them. Obviously life as a Jew in Tsarist Russia and post-Revolution USSR was fraught with danger and complex written and unwritten rules to navigate. Factions of Russian/Soviet Jewish society (communist, Yiddish-language advocates, Zionists, etc.) were engaged in lobbying for various options for an autonomous situation, be it in the USSR (Crimea being another option that proved too strategically important to gain traction) or beyond (Palestine). The jockeying of various writers and intellectuals for primacy in this debate, and their various feuds, took up far too much time and space for my taste.

The bottom line is that the initial geographic surveys were explicit that Birobidzhan would be a terrible place to try to create an agrarian Jewish territory, and that was entirely borne out following its establishment in 1929. Even in the best of circumstances, the land was not suitable and the necessary basic resources were not provided by the central authorities, and despite a fair amount of funds flowing in from Jewish charities in America to help develop infrastructure, the place could never hope to become self-sustaining. Within a few years of its founding, Stalin's purges began, and the whole concept of the project became untenable, then the war came. In the war's aftermath, the territory became the internal dumping ground for displaced Jews from across the Soviet Union who had no hope of returning to their former lives, creating an unofficial Eastern gulag.

Throughout it all, it's clear that Jews in the Soviet Union were in an untenable situation, as members of Anti-Fascist committees were prosecuted for being part of nationalist organizations, and other such absurdities. By the end of it all, readers will have absorbed another depressingly familiar tale of Stalin's reign of terror and despair. At the end, Gessen visits the territory and finds basically no remnants of Jewish social life as people either fled the country or resigned themselves to assimilation. It's a short book, so not a huge investment, but those seeking more of a sense of the place might prefer to check out the slim book "Stalin's Forgotten Zion," which has lots of photos. ...more

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