Jewish Autonomous Region was established in 1934 in the Far East of Soviet Union, and was meant to be a home to the Jewish minority. By doing that, Soviet leadership was hoping to slow down the Jewish emigration to Palestine and elsewhere, and perhaps to even attract some Jews from abroad. Obviously, there was a need to “colonize” the very sparsely populated area, so that was an incentive as well. In a way it worked, and by the late 1940’s the Jewish comprised roughly one-third of the population of the region, but started to decline rapidly soon after. At this point, only a few thousands of ethnic Jews are remaining in the region (less than 1%).
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