Editing Jewish Autonomous Oblast (section)

==== Growth of Jewish communities in the early 1930s ====
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| image1            = Щедрые дары еврейской земли, рынок у пос. Николаевка ф2.JPG
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| caption1          = Market near the village of Nikolaevka.
| caption2          = A menorah dominates the front of Birobidzhan's railway station.
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| caption3          = Vladimirovka village.
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In the 1930s, a Soviet promotional campaign was created to entice more Jewish settlers to move there. The campaign partly incorporated the standard Soviet promotional tools of the era, including posters and Yiddish-language novels describing a socialist utopia there. In one instance, leaflets promoting Birobidzhan were dropped from an airplane over a Jewish neighborhood in Belarus. In another instance, a government-produced Yiddish film called ''[[Seekers of Happiness]]'' told the story of a Jewish family from overseas making a new life for itself in Birobidzhan.<ref name=pereltsvaig/>

Early Jewish settlements included [[Valdgeym]], dating from 1928, which included the first [[collective farm]] established in the oblast,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Stalin's forgotten Zion: the harsh realities of Birobidzhan |url=http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/html/panel13.html |publisher=Swarthmore}}</ref> [[Amurzet]], which was the center of Jewish settlement south of Birobidzhan from 1929 to 1939,<ref>{{Cite web |date=31 August 2004 |title=A Jew Receives State Award in Jewish Autonomous Republic |url=http://fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=170388&cid=84435&media=80392&NewsType=80052&origMedia=80392&scope=3806&start=30 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://archive.today/20140720041927/http://web.archive.org/web/20070927015959/http://fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=170388&cid=84435&media=80392&NewsType=80052&origMedia=80392&scope=3806&start=30 |archive-date=July 20, 2014 |access-date=2009-02-18 |publisher=The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS |location=Birobidjan, RU}}</ref> and [[Smidovich]].

The [[Organization for Jewish Colonisation in the Soviet Union]], a Jewish Communist organization in North America, successfully encouraged the immigration of some US residents, such as the family of the future spy [[George Koval]], which arrived in 1932.<ref name=pereltsvaig/><ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Michael Walsh |date=May 2009 |title=George Koval: Atomic Spy Unmasked |url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/george-koval-atomic-spy-unmasked-125046223/ |magazine=[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]]}}</ref> Some 1,200 non-Soviet Jews chose to settle in Birobidzhan.<ref name=pereltsvaig/><ref name=rosen/>

As the Jewish population grew, so did the impact of [[Yiddish culture]] on the region. The settlers established a Yiddish newspaper, the ''[[Birobidzhaner Shtern]]''; a theatre troupe was created; and streets being built in the new city were named after prominent Yiddish authors such as [[Sholom Aleichem]] and [[I. L. Peretz]].<ref name="jewishcurrents" />