Minsk: United Jewish Vocational School. Drawing lesson, 1920-1929. In the early part of the Stalin era, the Kremlin established a new administrative territory in the Soviet Far East--the Jewish Autonomous Region--to serve as a Jewish homeland. The capital of the region was the city of Birobidzhan. This album includes 274 photographs of the early years of Birobidzhan, beginning in the late 1920s. National Library of Russia