AHC: Jewish majority kingdom in Belarus

  • Thread starter Deleted member 97083
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Deleted member 97083

With the latest POD possible, POD no earlier than 1000, how could you create a Jewish majority country in Belarus region?
 
It would ask making Belarus an important economical and productive hub, as medieval Jewish communities tended to be scattered along trade roads and production centers.
And let's say Belarus suffered from a significant backwardness historically, eclipsed both by the trade roads in Russia (Volga/Baltic or Dniepr/Baltic) on the East, and Poland on the West with the Amber Road. You'd need to at least delay the appearence or revival of these to really have a go at an alternative in Belarus which isn't that obvious : there's a reason why Jewish presence isn't recorded there before the Late Middle-Ages.
And we're talking of an earlier presence, not a majority : I've no idea how it could be possible without a conversion of Slavic peoples, which at the very least requires a Late Antiquity PoD.
 
OTL, Jews moved to the region that is now Belarus because of progressive policies under the PLC, and then stayed there after the Partitions because Russia wouldn't let them leave.

The latest PoD is...if you could make Imperial Russia restrict the Pale of Settlement to being mostly that region, instead of basically all former PLC lands in Russia. I'm not sure you could quite tip Jews into a majority in the whole of modern Belarus, but you'd get close (assuming only moderate deaths due to the forced relocation).

If that country ever manages to break free from Russia: BAM!
 
I'd had a thread a while back asking about the effects of Vladimir the Great converting to Judaism, which he had apparently considered. If he had done so, and enough of the rest of the Russian people had done so as well over the ensuing centuries, then getting the area of OTL Belarus to be majority Jewish would be relatively simple.
 
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trurle

Banned
The main threat to the fledgling Jewish state would be Grand Duchy of Lithuania which conquered now Belarus area in 14th century.
Either Grand Duchy of Lithuania must be Jewish (possible with pre-1190 POD avoiding creation of Teutonic Knights order, plus other changes), or Lithuania should not expand to Belarus in 14th century (this will likely require stopping the Mongol conquest of Russian states - so Jewish Belarus would become a buffer state between Lithuania and wanked Russia)
 
the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Siberia never contained anywhere near ALL the Jews in the USSR. I said moving ALL the Jews in USSR into the area of Belarus would be the pod.
 
Not going to work. Even sparsely populated Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Siberia never got over 20% Jews.

They also never got anything like all the Jews there. The Jewish population of Birobidzhan never exceeded ~20,000 (compare: 2.7 million in the USSR in 1926). Not even 1% of Soviet Jews ever came near the JAO.
 

trurle

Banned
the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Siberia never contained anywhere near ALL the Jews in the USSR. I said moving ALL the Jews in USSR into the area of Belarus would be the pod.
How? After a most clumsy and poor Jewish fraction will be transferred, the problems associated with transfer will snowball to catastrophic proportions, likely resulting in outright cancellation of transfer. Industry and R&D of Soviet Union falling apart in every region besides Belarus is the most straightforward consequence. Absolute majority of early Soviet engineer/scientists, and large fraction of communist party leadership were Jews.
 
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CaliGuy

Banned
OTL, Jews moved to the region that is now Belarus because of progressive policies under the PLC, and then stayed there after the Partitions because Russia wouldn't let them leave.

The latest PoD is...if you could make Imperial Russia restrict the Pale of Settlement to being mostly that region, instead of basically all former PLC lands in Russia. I'm not sure you could quite tip Jews into a majority in the whole of modern Belarus, but you'd get close (assuming only moderate deaths due to the forced relocation).

If that country ever manages to break free from Russia: BAM!
This is probably the best way to fulfill this AHC.

Alternatively, though, one can have the Nazis win World War II and--instead of implementing the Holocaust--creating a massive Jewish reservation in Belarus (the Belarusians can either stay or be deported to Siberia). Then, several decades later, the Nazis--who are by now becoming less and less popular--try to increase their popularity by restoring the Hohenzollern monarchy. Eventually, the Nazis loosen restrictions on the Jews in the Belarus reservation, who in turn proceed to demand their own, Jewish monarch as well as the transformation of Belarus into a Jewish kingdom. Once a reformist Nazi leadership--under the aegis of the Hohenzollerns--comes to power in Germany, this Jewish request is granted and Belarus becomes a Jewish-majority kingdom.
 

Deleted member 97083

OTL, Jews moved to the region that is now Belarus because of progressive policies under the PLC, and then stayed there after the Partitions because Russia wouldn't let them leave.

The latest PoD is...if you could make Imperial Russia restrict the Pale of Settlement to being mostly that region, instead of basically all former PLC lands in Russia. I'm not sure you could quite tip Jews into a majority in the whole of modern Belarus, but you'd get close (assuming only moderate deaths due to the forced relocation).

If that country ever manages to break free from Russia: BAM!

This is probably the best way to fulfill this AHC.
Would the language of this Jewish kingdom, formed in the aftermath of a Belarus-sized Russian Pale, be the Germanic Yiddish? Or would it be an East Slavic language?
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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After Brest-Litovsk, the victorious Germans take the ethnically very mixed Guberniya of Grodno, and declare it a state for the Yiddish-speakers of Europe. It is in that odd ethnic borderland between Pole, Belarussian and Lithuanian.
 

Deleted member 97083

In this scenario, the oft-suggested Jewish Kaliningrad idea might be actually plausible.
 
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