>sotsgorod/ bauhaus brigade/ hannes meyer/ birobidzhan

As a reaction on what was happening in Germany, Stalin thought of some good public relations: in 1934 he declared an Autonomous Jewish Region in the Far East of the Soviet Union. He invited Jews from all over the world to settle in their new Zion. The small village of Birobidzhan was planned to grow into the capital of the region.

Hannes Meyer was sent in to design a city plan. Hannes Meyer in a letter: "I wander among 350 wooden and adobe houses, in search of a unity of style. But the settlement resembles a chaotic exhibition of ethnographic building. Not an artistic expression of the Jewish people."
school in the 1930s

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