Fugu Plan realised – Yudayakuo / People’s Democratic Republic of Birobijan

For a while now despite not being sure how realistic the following scenario is, I have trying to weave together a Pre-WW2 ATL where the Japanese Fugu Plan is successful, with a Yiddish-speaking post-Jewish state coming into being called Yudayakuo by the Japanese (or Yidisher Medine in Yiddish) later renamed Birobijan, that manages to survive up to today as well as imagining there being a rivalry or feud of sorts between Yiddish-speaking Birobijan (on the East-side of Asia) and Hebrew-speaking Israel (on the West-side of Asia).

Yudayakuo / Birobijan is a neutral Soviet-conceived Japanese-founded Yiddish-speaking state, located in the alternate Japanese-occupied part of Russian Outer Manchuria in the following image (in light red as a rough example) with its capital being Birosalem (Biroshalaim in Yiddish or Birosaremu in Japanese).

Manchuria.png


The alternate movement advocating for a “Soviet Zion” in East Asia was called Yiddishism, which believes Yiddish not the revived Hebrew language to be the true language of the forward-thinking Jewish Working-class and later evolved into a competing Jewish nationalism seeking to found a Eurasian Soviet Zion against the Land of Israel based Zionism movement, which Yiddishists consider to be backward-thinking, with the alternate State of Israel coming into being in the 1930s a few years after Yudayakuo came into being.

It manages to survive WW2 due to its quiet neutrality as well as partly due to the alternate Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact that was never broken (in spite of being on opposite sides), along with the Japanese largely turning a blind eye towards Jewish Partisans secretly fighting for the Soviets despite the Nazis continual demands for Japan invade the Soviet Union and dissolve Yudayakuo, which fell on deaf ears (and soured relations between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan).

Though while encouraging Jewish immigration to Yudayakuo was in the Japanese interest towards realising the Fugu Plan, the emigration of non-fighting Jewish refugees and the prospect of resolving their own Jewish question was what ultimately motivated the Soviets.

Post-WW2, Yudayakuo renames itself as the People’s Democratic Republic of Birobijan and joins the Communist Bloc; though like the Mongolian People's Republic it is not a Soviet Satellite State.

It adopted “Never Say / Zog Nit Keynmol”, also known as the Partizaner Lid or "Partisan song" as the Birobijani national anthem in tribute to Jewish Partisans that fought with the Soviet Union against the Nazis, while the alternate Birobijani national flag is basically 7 Rainbow colours on a vertical axis (meant to vaguely symbolise the menorah and somewhat resembling the real-life flag for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast) within a Gold Star of David on a Red background, with the currency of Birobijan being the Birobijani Gelt.

Birobijan used to see the State of Israel as a fellow comrade in some respects because of its entrenched European leftist establishment despite at the same time viewing Israel as backward for clinging to the past due to returning to the Land of Israel instead of embracing the future, though it eventually becomes hostile to Israel and soon adopts a Pro-Arab view when Israel started aligning with the Western camp. Israeli citizens in turn increasingly seeing Birobijan as a sort of cartoonish pro-exilic post-Jewish communist-ruled Eurasian Ruritania, even though Birobijan had by then adopted PRC-style State Capitalism.

In today’s alternate Post-Communist era, I envision Birobijan resembling a sort of Yiddish-speaking semi-Europeanised far-eastern Hong Kong with a somewhat decadent and shallow secular post-soviet Yiddish culture, shorn of its religious roots that possesses a socialist-variation of Prussian-like cultural traits such as professionalism and an energetic competitive industrial prowess (a trait from Germans Jewish refugees / German refugees of Jewish descent).
 
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Would be interesting to see how their armed forces turn out in terms of aircraft and other equipment and also relations with their Japanese benefactors and the PRC.
 
Would be interesting to see how their armed forces turn out in terms of aircraft and other equipment and also relations with their Japanese benefactors and the PRC.

When it comes to weapons / equipment in Birobijan from pre-WW2 to post-WW2, I envision the arms largely being Japanese in origin (though some of the arms during WW2 were Soviet in origin via returning Jewish Partisans despite the Soviet’s distrust of Jews which was largely motivated by bigotry), with the potential threat of the Soviets breaking the Neutrality agreement being the main reason why the Japanese a gamble and supplied arms to Yudayakuo / Birobijan.

As for aircraft, it is possible that Yudayakuo-based scientists and engineers helped further develop the Nakajima Kikka during WW2 despite it being too late for the Japanese to prevent their defeat as in OTL. Though after WW2, Birobijan would go on developing their own aircraft using the Nakajima Kikka designs as a base. Along the lines of how the BMW factory in Eisenach ended up being in Soviet-occupied East Germany and after initially producing East-German pre-war BMWs renamed itself as Eisenacher Motorenwerk (EMW) and later VEB Automobilwerk Eisenach (AWE), which would go on producing its own infamous model called the Wartburg.

Birobijani-Japanese relations would remain good after WW2 and despite being part of the Communist Bloc, Birobijan would be more aligned with the PRC rather than the Soviet Union which proved to be a wise decision when the alternate “Doctor’s Plot” surfaced in the Soviet Union and strained relations between the two, which were further worsened in the alternate Sino-Soviet split.

Its relations with Japan are more consistent with OTL PRC from 1949, when PRC relations with Japan changed from hostility and an absence of contact to cordiality and extremely close cooperation in many fields.

Birobijan officially stays out of the alternate Korean War, as in the ATL it does not end up sharing a border with Korea yet secretly supplies weaponry on behalf of the North, though the UN invasion proves to be more successful than in OTL with the alternate border between North and South Korea ending being north of the Imjin River, north of Wonsan harbour in the east to south of Songnim in the west.
 
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Yudayakuo / Birobijan is a neutral Soviet-conceived Japanese-founded Yiddish-speaking state, located in the alternate Japanese-occupied part of Russian Outer Manchuria in the following image (in light red as a rough example) with its capital being Birosalem (Biroshalaim in Yiddish or Birosaremu in Japanese).
Are Russians willing to give up Vladivostok?
 
which believes Yiddish not the revived Hebrew language to be the true language of the forward-thinking Jewish Working-class

Just so you know, this is going to be quite the trick. Yiddish, for almost all of the Jews in Europe, represented more tradition and the old way. If you want to avoid Hebrew, you're better off with German or Russian.
 
Are Russians willing to give up Vladivostok?

In the ATL the Empire of Japan ended up occupying all of Russian Outer Manchuria in the Russo-Japanese War, however from the end of WW2 until the Sino-Soviet split a Russian Naval Facility was based in the Birobijani port city of Wladiwost (alternate Vladivostok and imagining it being pronounced as "Vla-di-Vost").
 
Just so you know, this is going to be quite the trick. Yiddish, for almost all of the Jews in Europe, represented more tradition and the old way. If you want to avoid Hebrew, you're better off with German or Russian.

In the OTL. On the eve of WW2, there were apparently 11 to 13 million Yiddish speakers around the World with around five million people or 85 percent of the Jews who died in the Holocaust—being speakers of Yiddish.

You are probably right though I'd imagine that in the ATL the presence of Yudayakuo / Birobijan as one of two safe havens for European Jewish Refugees, meant that a number of Jews managed to survive the alternate Holocaust.

From what I've been able to read, it seems that Yiddish underwent a proccess of Secularization in the 20th century and emerged as a major Eastern European language, with Yiddish even emerging as the national language of a large Jewish community in Eastern Europe that rejected Zionism and sought Jewish cultural autonomy in Europe, which could potentially form the basis of the Yiddishism movement that believed the future lay in the Far East.

Perhaps the Yiddish in Yudayakuo / Birobijan could be slightly dominated by the more Slavic Eastern dialect with influances from the more German Western dialect (via the surviving refugees from Western Europe)?
 
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Just so you know, this is going to be quite the trick. Yiddish, for almost all of the Jews in Europe, represented more tradition and the old way. If you want to avoid Hebrew, you're better off with German or Russian.
Not quite. Among the Zionists and the assimilationists, it represented tradition and the old ways. Promotion of Yiddish as a literary language and as an embryonic mass language was associated with left-wing non-zionists.
 
Yudayakuo / Birobijan is a neutral Soviet-conceived Japanese-founded Yiddish-speaking state, located in the alternate Japanese-occupied part of Russian Outer Manchuria in the following image (in light red as a rough example) with its capital being Birosalem (Biroshalaim in Yiddish or Birosaremu in Japanese).

ISTM that you are attempting to conflate two entirely separate historical incidents.

The Birobidzhan settlement was a Soviet idea for territorializing the Jewish
"nationality" among Soviet citizens, in Soviet territory, under Soviet control.

The Fugu Plan was a Japanese idea for establishing a Jewish colony in the Far East, in Japanese territory, under Japanese control, for the benefit of the Japanese Empire. (Some Japanese, influenced by anti-semitic conspiracy theories, came believe that what Japan needed was some Jews working for them, who would fix things with the Jews that secretly controlled the U.S. and Britain.)

One can't really put them together.

However:

I once came up with a scenario for delaying the outbreak of the Pacific War by four months or so. The details don't matter here, but assume it. Also assume that the 1941 fall rains in Russia hold off another week, and that the Moscow Panic of October 1941 gets completely out of control.

Result: Moscow falls, and the USSR collapses. The Germans halt on the Volga, leaving a sort of Vichy regime to rule the remainder of the USSR.
Japan, not currently about to go to war with the U.S., occupies eastern Siberia, including Birobidzhan. Large numbers of Jews flee German occupied Russia, and from elsewhere in eastern Europe. One place they can go without crossing a firing line or ocean is east - and many end up at Birobidzhan. Japan decides to expand and continue the Fugu Plan, with Birobidzhan as the focus.

With the defeat of the USSR, the Nazis are somewhat less paranoid. They pursue their goal of judenfrei Europe by expulsions as well as massacres. They deport a lot of Jews to the east, there being no fighting in the way.

What with one thing and another, about 2 million Jews end up in Jewish Siberia, and have considerable autonomy there.

Meanwhile, the Pacific War breaks out in mid-1942; Germany declares war on the U.S. as well. However - because the Pacific War hasn't started yet, Eighth Army is able to follow up the CRUSADER victory, and takes Tripoli in May 1942, ending the North African campaign.

What with one thing and another, the Allies are clearly defeating the Axis in Europe by mid-1944. They have asked for unconditional surrender, but this is less fearsome with the USSR not being among the expected victors and occupiers. The Schwarze Kapelle succeeds in removing Hitler and arranges a mildly conditional surrender at the end of 1944. Starting late hurt Japan in the Pacific War, and it's also over by then.

When peace breaks out, the Jewish state declares independence.
 
Not quite. Among the Zionists and the assimilationists, it represented tradition and the old ways. Promotion of Yiddish as a literary language and as an embryonic mass language was associated with left-wing non-zionists.

You are apparently correct. I just checked; I'd thought that the Bund was a German-language organization, but it turns out it was in fact Yiddish.

I apologize for the misinformation.
 
ISTM that you are attempting to conflate two entirely separate historical incidents.

The Birobidzhan settlement was a Soviet idea for territorializing the Jewish
"nationality" among Soviet citizens, in Soviet territory, under Soviet control.

The Fugu Plan was a Japanese idea for establishing a Jewish colony in the Far East, in Japanese territory, under Japanese control, for the benefit of the Japanese Empire. (Some Japanese, influenced by anti-semitic conspiracy theories, came believe that what Japan needed was some Jews working for them, who would fix things with the Jews that secretly controlled the U.S. and Britain.)

One can't really put them together.

However:

I once came up with a scenario for delaying the outbreak of the Pacific War by four months or so. The details don't matter here, but assume it. Also assume that the 1941 fall rains in Russia hold off another week, and that the Moscow Panic of October 1941 gets completely out of control.

Result: Moscow falls, and the USSR collapses. The Germans halt on the Volga, leaving a sort of Vichy regime to rule the remainder of the USSR.
Japan, not currently about to go to war with the U.S., occupies eastern Siberia, including Birobidzhan. Large numbers of Jews flee German occupied Russia, and from elsewhere in eastern Europe. One place they can go without crossing a firing line or ocean is east - and many end up at Birobidzhan. Japan decides to expand and continue the Fugu Plan, with Birobidzhan as the focus.

With the defeat of the USSR, the Nazis are somewhat less paranoid. They pursue their goal of judenfrei Europe by expulsions as well as massacres. They deport a lot of Jews to the east, there being no fighting in the way.

What with one thing and another, about 2 million Jews end up in Jewish Siberia, and have considerable autonomy there.

Meanwhile, the Pacific War breaks out in mid-1942; Germany declares war on the U.S. as well. However - because the Pacific War hasn't started yet, Eighth Army is able to follow up the CRUSADER victory, and takes Tripoli in May 1942, ending the North African campaign.

What with one thing and another, the Allies are clearly defeating the Axis in Europe by mid-1944. They have asked for unconditional surrender, but this is less fearsome with the USSR not being among the expected victors and occupiers. The Schwarze Kapelle succeeds in removing Hitler and arranges a mildly conditional surrender at the end of 1944. Starting late hurt Japan in the Pacific War, and it's also over by then.

When peace breaks out, the Jewish state declares independence.


That was my intention.

While I agree with you that it would probably be unlikely to be called Birobijan, it could still be Soviet-conceived Japanese-founded in the sense that the Soviets themselves initially hoped to take advantage of the Japanese encouraging Jewish immigration to the region and use the Yiddishism movement to bring Japanese occupied Outer Manchuria under Russian control, before coming to the realization during WW2 that the state of Yudayakuo would allow the Soviets to resolve their own Jewish problem or something along those lines.
 
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