The Jewish “Autonomous” Oblast (Birobidzhan) was set up by the Stalin regime partially for the same reason that Jews were forced into the Pale: to act as a buffer against invading armies, the former against Japanese incursion into Eastern Siberia.

While the Soviets attacked Zionism as imperialism, anti-Zionist policy (Zionism was banned in Birobidzhan, as it was throughout the USSR) was in fact imperialist: erecting colonies on indigenous lands to advance the interests and power of the metropole.