Ironically, the USSR was one of i believe two nations in the entire world that did not have strict quotas on the number of Jewish refugees allowed to enter. While every other country in the west turned Jewish people away to die in the camps, the USSR took in something like 1 or 1.5 million Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis.
And after the war, when everyone knew much much the Jewish people of Europe had suffered, the US and UK balked at accepting Jewish refugees. But hey, uhhhh… how about you move to some land over here in the Middle East.
The creation of Israel was basically a voluntary Madagascar Plan (voluntary only on the part of the settlers, I mean).
Russia created an eastern jewish oblast, likely as part of a plan to populate the east. If that had became the Jewish state, the world might not be in this predicament.
Yeah. It never really took off. It was way way far away from anything. It did have a pretty cool Yiddish culture during it's heyday though. afaik there were two things going on - Folks didn't want to live on the far side of the eastern edge of the world, and I think a lot of Soviet Jewish people were very secular and not that excited about having a Jewish admin area.
Unironically, because women had income and the right to divorce, they reported more pleasure from sex in communist countries. Communists are just hotter.