Khazaria, SSR

I doubt it, I read up on the different historical theories about Yiddish, and one interesting (but obvious wrong) one is that Eastern Yiddish is descendent of Gothic with Turkish and Western Yiddish influence. So it would likely be the popular doctrine, that most Khazarian Jews spoke Gothic with heavily Turkish influence. It would keep USSR to have to force the entire Jewish population to learn and speak a language they didn't know.

True, but given the Soviet machinations in Central Asia previously, and the eradication of the Chagatai language, it might be possible.
 
Of course, it might make ore sense to have a Khazar SSR in the Crimea rather than in Kazakhstan.

Crimea is the most Russian territory outside Russia. It's the base of the Black Sea fleet and riveria playground for the previlaged. There's no way Stalin would make it a Jewish homeland.

The attraction of western Kazakhstan is that it's sparsely populated but has agricultural and petro-chemical potential, while not far from major industrial centers like Stalingrad and Samara.
 
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Crimea is the most Russian territory outside Russia. It's the base of the Black Sea fleet and riveria playground for the previlaged. There's no way Stalin would make it a Jewish homeland.

The attraction of western Kazakhstan is that it's sparsely populated but has agricultural and petro-chemical potential, while not far from major industrial centers like Stalingrad and Samara.

Crimea also has Tatars and a native Jewish co mmunity. Also, this is the same Stalin that was willing to give his main postwar gain, Kaliningrad, to Lithuania. Kaliningrad, you will recall, became the headquarters of the Baltic fleet. Furthermore, Krushchev later gave the Crimea to Ukraine, so its status in the RSFSR was not sacrosanct.
 
I doubt that the Jewish autonomous republic would be called Khazaria. I am not aware that the Soviets ever promoted that theory about the origins of the modern Jews.

However, such a republic, whatever its name, is not beyond the realm of possibility. Stalin might figure in the mid-1930s that rather than watching Jews all over the Soviet Union for "Trotskyite" tendencies it would be preferable to gather them all where he could keep a better eye on them. Also, Stalin at that time had no ideological interest in slaughtering Jews AS JEWS (real and imaginary Trotskyites were something else); if he felt he could attract people from non-Soviet Eastern Europe who could strengthen his own country he might well have done so. But how many would have come? Many were in denial about the extent of the danger they faced from the Nazis.

Every thing would have become problematic during the Stalin-Hitler Pact period when Stalin fired Litvinov as Foreign Minister so Ribbentrop wouldn't have to meet with a Jew. But would the Nazis at that point have cared if Stalin continued to take in Jews from Poland etc.? At the beginning of the war the Nazis were still speculating on sending the Jews out of Europe rather than killing them (although Hitler already had the idea of killing them, which he expressed elliptically in Mein Kampf).

One thing is sure: if the Jews of the Ukraine and other western parts of the Soviet Union had in large numbers moved to the new national homeland, it would have saved lots of lives.

As to increasing the hostility between the Soviet Union and Israel during the Cold War, I think not. If a million or so Jewish lives were saved, the Israeli government and people would have recognized that fact.

One sinister angle: when Stalin was nearing death in 1953, his paranoia increased and he imagined a Jewish doctor's plot. He began to think of a mass purge of the Jews. What would have happened to the autonomous republic then, if Stalin had survived long enough to carry out his mad scheme.

If such a republic survived the breakup of the Soviet Union I could see it and Israel merging into one Jewish state (this is not an outlandish idea--remember the former East and West Pakistan, also separated by long distances). This would have made the West Bank less important, except for religious extremists, and a way might have been found to settle the dispute with the Palestinians long before now.
 
If you want to be historic borderwise it should be formed in the Greater Northern Caucuses, as Western Kazakhstan was'nt always part of it and when it was was essentially the Eastern borderlands.
 
Why are we assuming Israel still forms if the POD is 1934? Assuming WWII and the Holocaust still happen roughly as per OTL, why would the Allies, specifically the US, support a Jewish state in Palestine when there's already one in Kazakhstan?
 
Why are we assuming Israel still forms if the POD is 1934? Assuming WWII and the Holocaust still happen roughly as per OTL, why would the Allies, specifically the US, support a Jewish state in Palestine when there's already one in Kazakhstan?

By the mid-30's their had already been quite a bit of Jewish immigration to Palestine as a result of the 1917 Balfour Declaration by Britain that called for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".
 
Why are we assuming Israel still forms if the POD is 1934? Assuming WWII and the Holocaust still happen roughly as per OTL, why would the Allies, specifically the US, support a Jewish state in Palestine when there's already one in Kazakhstan?

You also need to remember that Israel has a degree of biblical significance to the Jewish people that is simply non existent in central Asia. Plus, the Jews in Palestine didn't really much care for the opinion of the UN and of the major western powers. If you will recall for a moment the actual founding of Israel, it was done without any proper authorization from any international body.

Though it is likely that Israel would of been slower to receive international recognition from many powers, it still is probable that it would of emerged as a state.
 
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By the mid-30's their had already been quite a bit of Jewish immigration to Palestine as a result of the 1917 Balfour Declaration by Britain that called for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".

Granted, but again, why would the allies, especially the US, support any such state? At that point Israel is primarily a British affair, and a headache at that as they deal with Jews flooding the Palestinian territory and pissing off the Arab natives. At the same time though the growth of 'Israel' would be much slower due to the POD and the OP's accompanying text. There might be an Israel as a province of the British mandate in the Middle East and possibly involved in some sort of federation or power-sharing scheme in the successor state, but as an independent, Jewish, state? I find that unlikely considering the context.
 
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Granted, but again, why would the allies, especially the US, support any such state? At that point Israel is primarily a British affair, and a headache at that as they deal with Jews flooding the Palestinian territory and pissing off the Arab natives. At the same time though the growth of 'Israel' would be much slower due to the POD and the OP's accompanying text. There might be an Israel as a province of the British mandate in the Middle East and possibly involved in some sort of federation or power-sharing scheme in the successor state, but as an independent, Jewish, state? I find that unlikely considering the context.

Essentially because no one would really care, the British already had plans for it, and by that point you could'nt really create a successful Levantine Federation.

That, and creating a Jewish state could be seen by the West as a way of 'keeping the world Jewry from supporting the Soviets'.
 
Why are we assuming Israel still forms if the POD is 1934? Assuming WWII and the Holocaust still happen roughly as per OTL, why would the Allies, specifically the US, support a Jewish state in Palestine when there's already one in Kazakhstan?

This is actually a very good point, and could make the Khazarian SSR idea more consequential in some respects.
 
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