Artists revision Stalin's communist utopia for Soviet Jews
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Austrian artist Leopold Kessler has built a car ramp, strong enough to hold a jeep, leading up to the window of a Soviet-era apartment in Russia's remote 'Jewish Autonomous Republic' of Birobidzhan, envisioned by Stalin as a homeland for Communist Jews. Kessler says his work reflects the gap between rich and poor in modern Russia.
The work is one of many produced during a trip to Birobidzhan by US, European and South Korean artists, who have each responded to the area's unique combination of Soviet Jewish heritage, Chinese influence and modern Russian reality. Their show opened this week.
Closer to Beijing than to Moscow, Birobidzhan was founded in 1931 and designated by authorities as a new homeland for Soviet Jews. But Stalinist purges, disease and an unforgiving terrain took their toll on the tens of thousands of people who made the journey there, and many left again. Today, the number of practicing Jews in the city of Birobidzhan has dwindled to about 3,000 people out of a population of about 75,000. But they guard their identity with passion and pride. A giant menorah stands in front of the railway station and all street signs are in Yiddish as well as Cyrillic.
