ith the onset of the purges, the Kremlin gutted all projects that promoted Yiddish and Jewish culture in the Jewish Autonomous Region. But responsibility for the failure of the Birobidzhan experiment does not belong solely to the Kremlin. Young Soviet Jews were assimilating at a rapid pace, and Yiddish and the Jewish Autonomous Region did not figure prominently in the minds of those seeking to get ahead. Finally, the effort to create a new Jewish identity devoid of religious heritage and traditions proved to be a difficult task. By the end of the 1930s, the settlement of Jews in the region came to a standstill. Most non-Soviet observers concluded that the experiment in building a Soviet Zion had failed.