The Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) and Birobidzhan is one tragic example of the Soviet Union's nationality policies. These nationality policies encouraged ethnic minorities to express their cultural identity within a Soviet framework, "national in form, socialist in content". Through this method, nationalities were only allowed cultural expression if it lined up with Soviet socialism. In this case, it exposed the Soviet states deep-rooted antisemitism that guided their treatment of Soviet Jews.
Birobidzhan resulted in several thousand Soviet Jews being displaced from mainstream Soviet life, pushed to a undeveloped region of Siberia. Soviet Jews were pushed away from traditional centers of Jewish life in the Soviet Union. The JAR served as a way to counter Zionism through seeking Jewish loyalty to the Soviet state. The state's suppression of Hebrew and Jewish religious practices exposed the Soviet Union's contradictory approach, only allowing Jewish culture if it was acceptable and agreed with Soviet socialism. There was a lack of real autonomy in the JAR and Jewish culture was always subordinate to Soviet ideology.
The most striking expression of Soviet antisemitism, however, was the Great Terror and the Great Purges. Several Jewish supporters of Birobidzhan were victims of the Great Purges, many being arrested or executed. The Soviet state's intention to foster Jewish cultural life in the JAR was quickly abandoned due to the deep-rooted antisemitism. Expressions of Jewish character, like Jewish schools, newspapers, and theatre were shut down, and the few that remained were heavily censored.
Levin states, "what remained of the initial grand design for a Jewish national territory during the late Soviet period was merely a façade for Soviet propaganda. Generally ignoring the "Jewish question," it used Birobidzhan mostly to publicize the equality of nations to the international arena and argue for the absence of national or religious discrimination, including antisemitism, in the USSR,". In reality, the USSR was rife with antisemitism and the failed project of Birobidzhan exposes that.
Overall, Birobidzhan was a failure as a cultural project that perpetuated Soviet antisemitism. It exposed the broader contradictory approach to nationality policies that the Soviet state took that subjugated distinct nationalities, such as the Soviet Jews. The Soviet government hoped to control Jewish identity and rewrite it to make it fit within a socialist context. Their goal was not truly the national consciousness of distinct nationalities, but instead assimilation and ideological conformity, exposing its oppressive reality.