Editing Jewish Autonomous Oblast (section)

==== Stalin era and World War II ====
The Jewish population of JAO reached a pre-war peak of 20,000 in 1937.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=nzhq85nPrdsC&pg=PA326 A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony 1581–1990]</ref> According to the 1939 population census, 17,695 Jews lived in the region (16% of the total population).<ref name=behindcommunism/><ref name="atlas">[https://books.google.com/books?id=-w9JCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA257 Russian Political Atlas – Political Situation, Elections, Foreign Policy]{{Dead link|date=May 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

After the war ended in 1945, there was renewed interest in the idea of Birobidzhan as a potential home for Jewish refugees. The Jewish population in the region peaked at around 46,000–50,000 Jews in 1948, around 25% of the entire population of the JAO.<ref name="David Holley" />