No, the Soviet Union was a multinational state, although ethnic Russians were largely in control. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union established the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in eastern Siberia, with its capital in Birobidzhan. At its peak in the 1930s, when many Jews were relocated there, the area was 30 percent Jewish and Yiddish was widely used. Forceful relocation to eastern Siberia was not popular, and today, most of the Jews have left not only from the Jewish Autonomous Oblast but from the former Soviet Union.