History of the Jews in Russia

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Russian Jews
  • יהדות רוסיה (Hebrew)
  • Русские евреи (Russian)
  • רוסישע ייִדן (
    Yiddish
    )

The history of the Jews in Russia and

dissolution of the USSR which continues to this day, although it is still among the largest in Europe.[11]

Overview and background

The largest group among Russian Jews are Ashkenazi Jews, but the community also includes a significant proportion of other non-Ashkenazi from other

.

The presence of Jewish people in the European part of Russia can be traced to the 7th–14th centuries CE. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Jewish population in

anti-Jewish pogroms swept across different regions of the empire for several decades. More than two million Jews fled Russia between 1880 and 1920, mostly to the United States and Palestine. The Pale of Settlement took away many of the rights that the Jewish people of the late 17th century Russia had enjoyed. At this time, the Jewish people were restricted to an area of what is current day Belarus, Lithuania, eastern Poland and Ukraine.[12] Where Western Europe was experiencing emancipation at this time, in Russia the laws for the Jewish people were getting more strict. They were allowed to move further east, towards a less crowded region, though it was only a minority of Jews who took to this migration option.[12] The sporadic and often impoverished communities formed were known as Shtetls.[12]

Before 1917 there were 300,000

Bolshevik Red Army, although individual soldiers committed antisemitic abuses, had a policy of opposing antisemitism, and as a result, it won the support of much of the Jewish population. After a short period of confusion, the Soviets started executing guilty individuals and even disbanding the army units whose men had attacked Jews. Although pogroms were still perpetrated after this, in general the Jews regarded the Red Army as the only force which was able and willing to defend them. The Russian Civil War pogroms shocked world Jewry and rallied many Jews to the Red Army and the Soviet regime, strengthening the desire for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people.[15] In August 1919 the Soviet government arrested many rabbis, seized Jewish properties, including synagogues, and dissolved many Jewish communities.[17] The Jewish section of the Communist Party labeled the use of the Hebrew language "reactionary" and "elitist" and the teaching of Hebrew was banned.[18] Zionists were persecuted harshly, with Jewish communists leading the attacks.[13]
: 567 

Following the civil war, however, the new Bolshevik government's policies produced a flourishing of secular Jewish culture in Belarus and western Ukraine in the 1920s. The Soviet government outlawed all expressions of antisemitism, with the public use of the ethnic slur жид ("Yid") being punished by up to one year of imprisonment,

: 83 

In the 1930s, many Jews held high rank in the Red Army High Command: Generals

Grigori Shtern (Commander-in-Chief in the war against Japan and Commander at the front in the Winter War).[25]: 84  During World War Two, an estimated 500,000 soldiers in the Red Army were Jewish; about 200,000 were killed in battle. About 160,000 were decorated, and more than a hundred achieved the rank of Red Army general.[26] Over 150 were designated Heroes of the Soviet Union, the highest award in the country.[27] More than two million Soviet Jews are believed to have died during the Holocaust in warfare and in Nazi-occupied territories. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many Soviet Jews took the opportunity of liberalized emigration policies, with more than half of the population leaving, most for Israel and the West: Germany, the United States, Canada and Australia. For many years during this period, Russia had a higher rate of immigration to Israel than any other country.[28] Russia's Jewish population is still the third biggest in Europe, after France and United Kingdom.[29] In November 2012, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, one of the world's biggest museums of Jewish history, opened in Moscow.[30]

Early history

The Khazar Khaganate (650–850)

Jews have been present in contemporary Armenia and Georgia since the Babylonian captivity. Records exist from the 4th century showing that there were Armenian cities possessing Jewish populations ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 along with substantial Jewish settlements in the Crimea.[31] The presence of Jewish people in the territories corresponding to modern Belarus, Ukraine, and the European part of Russia can be traced back to the 7th–14th centuries CE.[32][33]

Kievan Rus'

In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Jewish population may have been restricted to a separate quarter in Kiev, known as the Jewish Town (Old East Slav: Жидове, Zhidovye, i.e. "The Jews"), the gates probably leading to which were known as the Jewish Gates (Old East Slavic: Жидовская ворота, Zhidovskaya vorota). The Kievan community was oriented towards

Andrei Bogolyubsky (1169–1174), although it is uncertain to which degree they would have been living there permanently.[34]

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Number of Jews in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth per voivodeship in 1764

Although northeastern Russia had a low Jewish population, countries just to its west had rapidly growing Jewish populations, as waves of anti-Jewish pogroms and expulsions from the countries of Western Europe marked the last centuries of the Middle Ages, a sizable portion of the Jewish populations there moved to the more tolerant countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Middle East.

Expelled en masse from England, France, Spain and most other Western European countries at various times, and persecuted in Germany in the 14th century, many Western European Jews migrated to Poland upon the invitation of Polish ruler

third estate
, although restricted to commercial, middleman services in an agricultural society for the Polish king and nobility between 1330 and 1370, during the reign of Casimir the Great.

After settling in Poland (later

Alexander the Jagiellonian expelled Jewish residents from Grand Duchy of Lithuania
, but reversed his decision in 1503.

In the

ethnic group
with a unique set of religious beliefs and practices, as well as an ethnically unique economic role.

Tsardom of Russia

Peter Shafirov, vice-chancellor of Russia under Peter the Great

Documentary evidence as to the presence of Jews in

as most Russian Jews after the fall of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
in 1795, from a Jewish family of Polish origin. He had extraordinary knowledge of foreign languages and served as the chief translator in the Russian Foreign Office, subsequently he began to accompany Tsar Peter on his international travels. Following this, he was raised to the rank of vice-chancellor because of his many diplomatic talents and skills, but was later imprisoned, sentenced to death, and eventually banished.

Russian Empire

Chabad Lubavitch
, 1775
Map of the Pale of Settlement, showing percentage of Jewish populations

Their situation changed radically, during the reign of

Catherine II, when the Russian Empire acquired rule over large Lithuanian and Polish territories which historically included a high proportion of Jewish residents, especially during the second (1793) and the third (1795) Partitions of Poland. Under the Commonwealth's legal system, Jews endured economic restrictions euphemised as "disabilities", which also continued following the Russian occupation. Catherine established the Pale of Settlement, which included Congress Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the Crimea
(the latter was later excluded). Jewish people were restricted to residence within the Pale and were required to obtain special permission to immigrate into other parts of Russia. Within the Pale, the Jewish residents were given right of voting in municipal elections, but their vote was limited to one third of the total number of voters, even though their proportion in many areas was much higher, even a majority. This served to provide an aura of democracy, while institutionalizing conflict amongst ethnic groups on a local level.

Jewish communities in Russia were governed internally by local administrative bodies, called the Councils of Elders (

land tax, etc.). Later, this right of collecting taxes was much abused; in 1844 the civil authority of the Councils of Elders over its Jewish population was abolished.[35]

Under Alexander I and Nicholas I, decrees were put forth requiring a Russian-speaking member of a Jewish community to be named to act as an intermediary between his community and the Imperial government to perform certain civil duties, such as registering births, marriages, and divorces. This position came to be known as the crown rabbi although they were not always rabbis and often were not respected by members of their own communities because their main job qualification was fluency in Russian, and they often had no education in, or knowledge of Jewish law.[36][37][38] The beginning of the 19th century was marked by intensive movement of Jews to Novorossiya, where towns, villages and agricultural colonies rapidly sprang up.

In 19th century, legally the Jews were a subcategory of the inorodtsy category, special ethnicity-based category of non-Slavic population that received a special treatment under the law.

Forcible conscription of Jewish cantonists

Cantonist Herzel Yankel Tsam. After 1827, Jewish boys were forcibly conscripted to military service at the age of twelve and placed in cantonist schools.[39][40]
Hovevei Zion
movement to encourage immigration to Ottoman Palestine. The family tea company itself was seized and confiscated by the Bolsheviks after 1917.

The 'decree of August 26, 1827' made Jews liable for military service, and allowed their conscription between the ages of twelve and twenty-five. Each year, the Jewish community had to supply four recruits per thousand of the population. However, in practice, Jewish children were often conscripted as young as eight or nine years old.

bribed their way out of having their children conscripted, fewer potential conscripts were available; the adopted policy deeply sharpened internal Jewish social tensions. Seeking to protect the socio-economic and religious integrity of Jewish society, the qahals did their best to include “non-useful Jews” in the draft lists so that the heads of tax-paying middle-class families were predominantly exempt from conscription, whereas single Jews, as well as "heretics" (Haskalah influenced individuals), paupers, outcasts, and orphaned children were drafted. They used their power to suppress protests and intimidate potential informers who sought to expose the arbitrariness of the qahal to the Russian government. In some cases, communal elders had the most threatening informers murdered (such as the Ushitsa case
, 1836).

The zoning rule was suspended during the

Catholic
boys were subject to similar pressure to convert and assimilate as the Russian Empire was hostile to Catholicism and Polish nationalism.

Haskalah in the Russian Empire

Samuel Polyakov, nicknamed the "most famous railroad king" of the 19th century. He co-founded the World ORT in the 1880s, the largest Jewish education organization in the Russian Empire, perpetuating a vocational education program influenced by the values of Haskalah.

The cultural and habitual isolation of the Jews gradually began eroding. An ever-increasing number of Jewish people adopted Russian customs and the Russian language. Russian education was spread among the Jewish population. A number of Jewish-Russian periodicals appeared.

abolition of serfdom in Russia. Under his rule Jewish people could not hire Christian servants, could not own land, and were restricted in travel.[43]

Christ-killers
" and the oppressors of the Slavic, Christian victims.

Victim of fanaticism. Painting by Mykola Pymonenko, 1899. The painting does not depict a pogrom, but actually documents an event in Ukraine, that the artist read about: a Jewish woman was attacked by members of her community for falling in love with a Christian man. The townspeople are raising sticks and objects, and her parents are shown to the right, denouncing her.

A large-scale wave of

scapegoated for the assassination of Alexander II. In the 1881 outbreak, there were pogroms in 166 Ukrainian towns, thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many families reduced to extremes of poverty;[citation needed] large numbers of men, women, and children were injured and some killed. Disorders in the south once again recalled the government attention to the Jewish question. A conference was convened at the Ministry of Interior and on May 15, 1882, so-called Temporary Regulations were introduced that stayed in effect for more than thirty years and came to be known as the May Laws
.

The repressive legislation was repeatedly revised. Many historians noted the concurrence of these state-enforced antisemitic policies with waves of pogroms[46] that continued until 1884, with at least tacit government knowledge and in some cases policemen were seen inciting or joining the mob. The systematic policy of discrimination banned Jewish people from rural areas and towns of fewer than ten thousand people, even within the Pale, assuring the slow death of many shtetls. In 1887, the quotas placed on the number of Jews allowed into secondary and higher education were tightened down to 10% within the Pale, 5% outside the Pale, except Moscow and Saint Petersburg, held at 3%, even though the Jewish population was a majority or plurality in many communities. It was possible to evade these restrictions upon secondary education by combining private tuition with examination as an "outside student". Accordingly, within the Pale such outside pupils were almost entirely young Jews. The restrictions placed on education, traditionally highly valued in Jewish communities, resulted in ambition to excel over the peers and increased emigration rates. Special quotas restricted Jews from entering profession of law, limiting number of Jews admitted to the bar.

In 1886, an Edict of Expulsion was enforced on the historic Jewish population of

Kiev. Most Jews were expelled from Moscow in 1891 (except few deemed useful) and a newly built synagogue was closed by the city's authorities headed by the Tsar's brother. Tsar Alexander III refused to curtail repressive practices and reportedly noted: "But we must never forget that the Jews have crucified our Master and have shed his precious blood."[47]

In 1892, new measures banned Jewish participation in local elections despite their large numbers in many towns of the Pale. The Town Regulations prohibited Jews from the right to elect or be elected to town Dumas. Only a small number of Jews were allowed to be members of a town Duma, through appointment by special committees.

Distribution of Jews in Europe around 1900

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Russian Empire had not only the largest Jewish population in the world, but actually a majority of the world's Jews living within its borders.

Russian census of 1897, the total Jewish population of Russia was 5,189,401 persons of both sexes (4.13% of total population). Of this total, 93.9% lived in the 25 provinces of the Pale of Settlement
. The total population of the Pale of Settlement amounted to 42,338,367—of these, 4,805,354 (11.5%) were Jews.

About 450,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Russian Army during

Pavel Ignatiev
as Minister of Education.

Mass emigration

Joseph Trumpeldor, the most decorated Jewish soldier in the Imperial Russian Army for his bravery in the Russo-Japanese War, before conducting operations in the Ottoman Empire.

Even though the persecutions provided the impetus for mass emigration, there were other relevant factors that can account for the Jews' migration. After the first years of large emigration from Russia, positive feedback from the emigrants in the U.S. encouraged further emigration. Indeed, more than two million

Hovevei Zion made what came to be known the First Aliyah to Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire
.

The Tsarist government sporadically encouraged Jewish emigration. In 1890, it approved the establishment of "The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in

Syria and Palestine"[51] (known as the "Odessa Committee" headed by Leon Pinsker) dedicated to practical aspects in establishing agricultural Jewish settlements
in Palestine.

Jewish emigration from Russia, 1880–1928[52]
Destination Number
Australia 5,000
Canada 70,000
Europe 240,000
Palestine (modern day Israel) 45,000
South Africa 45,000
South America 111,000
United States 1,749,000

Jewish members of the Duma

.

In total, there were at least twelve Jewish deputies in the First

Duma (1906–1907), falling to three or four in the Second Duma (February 1907 to June 1907), two in the Third Duma (1907–1912) and again three in the fourth, elected in 1912. Converts to Christianity like Mikhail Herzenstein and Ossip Pergament
were still considered as Jews by the public (and antisemitic) opinion and are most of the time included in these figures.

At the 1906 elections, the

Jewish Labour Bund had made an electoral agreement with the Lithuanian Labourers' Party (Trudoviks), which resulted in the election to the Duma of two (non-Bundist) candidates in the Lithuanian provinces: Dr. Shmaryahu Levin for the Vilnius province and Leon Bramson for the Kaunas province.[53]

Among the other Jewish deputies were

Three of the Jewish deputies, Bramson, Chervonenkis and Yakubson, joined the Labour faction; nine others joined the Kadet fraction.

Two of them,

Terijoki), both from the Constitutional Democratic Party, were assassinated by the Black Hundreds antisemite terrorist group. "The Russkoye Znamya declares openly that 'Real Russians' assassinated Herzenstein and Iollos with knowledge of officials, and expresses regret that only two Jews perished in crusade against revolutionaries.[57]

The Second Duma included seven Jewish deputies:

The two Jewish members of the Third Duma were the Judge Leopold Nikolayevich (or Lazar) Nisselovich (Courland province, Kadet) and Naftali Markovich Friedman (Kaunas province, Kadet). Ossip Pergament was reelected and died before the end of his mandate.[60]

Friedman was the only one reelected to the Fourth Duma in 1912, joined by two new deputies, Meer Bomash, and Dr. Ezekiel Gurevich.[58]

Jews in the revolutionary movement

Kampf un kempfer – a Yiddish pamphlet published by the PSR exile branch in London 1904.

Many Jews were prominent in Russian revolutionary parties. The idea of overthrowing the Tsarist regime was attractive to many members of the Jewish intelligentsia because of the oppression of non-Russian nations and non-Orthodox Christians within the Russian Empire. For much the same reason, many non-Russians, notably Latvians or Poles, were disproportionately represented in the party leaderships.

In 1897

Menshevik factions. A notable number of Bolshevik party members were ethnically Jewish, especially in the leadership of the party, and the percentage of Jewish party members among the rival Mensheviks was even higher. Both the founders and leaders of Menshevik faction, Julius Martov and Pavel Axelrod
, were Jewish.

Because some of the leading Bolsheviks were

atheistic and internationalistic ideology of the Bolsheviks (See proletarian internationalism, bourgeois nationalism
) was incompatible with Jewish traditionalism. Bolsheviks such as Trotsky echoed sentiments dismissing Jewish heritage in place of "internationalism".

Soon after seizing power, the Bolsheviks established the Yevsektsiya, the Jewish section of the Communist party in order to destroy the rival Bund and Zionist parties, suppress Judaism and replace traditional Jewish culture with "proletarian culture".[61]

Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda
on police information card from 1912

In March 1919,

Marxist terms. According to Lenin, antisemitism was an "attempt to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants from the exploiters toward the Jews". Linking antisemitism to class struggle, he argued that it was merely a political technique used by the tsar to exploit religious fanaticism, popularize the despotic, unpopular regime, and divert popular anger toward a scapegoat. The Soviet Union also officially maintained this Marxist-Leninist interpretation under Joseph Stalin, who expounded Lenin's critique of antisemitism. However, this did not prevent the widely publicized repressions of Jewish intellectuals during 1948–1953 when Stalin increasingly associated Jews with "cosmopolitanism" and pro-Americanism
.

Jews were prominent in the Russian

Makhnovist anarchist leaders also included several Jews.[63]

The attempts of the socialist Bund to be the sole representative of the Jewish worker in Russia had always conflicted with Lenin's idea of a universal coalition of workers of all nationalities. Like some other socialist parties in Russia, the Bund was initially opposed to the Bolsheviks' seizing of power in 1917 and to the dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly. Consequently, the Bund suffered repressions in the first months of the Soviet regime.[citation needed] However, the antisemitism of many Whites during the Russian Civil War caused many if not most Bund members to readily join the Bolsheviks, and most of the factions eventually merged with the Communist Party. The movement did split in three; the Bundist identity survived in interwar Poland, while many Bundists joined the Mensheviks.

Dissolution and seizure of Jewish properties and institutions

Samara Choral Synagogue in Samara. It was shut down by the Soviet Government in 1929.

In August 1919 Jewish properties, including synagogues, were seized and many Jewish communities were dissolved. The anti-religious laws against all expressions of religion and religious education were imposed upon the Jewish population, just like on other religious groups. Many Rabbis and other religious officials were forced to resign from their posts under the threat of violent persecution. This type of persecution continued on into the 1920s.[64]

In 1921, a large number of Jews opted for Poland, as they were entitled by the

peace treaty in Riga to choose the country they preferred. Several hundred thousand joined the already numerous Jewish population of Poland
.

The chaotic years of World War I, the February and October Revolutions, and the Civil War were fertile ground for the antisemitism that was endemic to tsarist Russia. During the World War, Jews were often accused of sympathizing with Germany and often persecuted.

Pogroms were unleashed throughout the Russian Civil War, perpetrated by virtually every competing faction, from Polish and Ukrainian nationalists to the Red and White Armies.[65] 31,071 civilian Jews were killed during documented pogroms throughout the former Russian Empire; the number of Jewish orphans exceeded 300,000. A majority of pogroms in Ukraine during 1918–1920 were perpetrated by the Ukrainian nationalists, miscellaneous bands and anti-Communist forces.[66]

Perpetrator Number of pogroms or excesses Number murdered[66]
Hryhoriv's bands 52 3,471
Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic 493 16,706
White army 213 5,235
Miscellaneous bands 307 4,615
Red Army 106 725
Others 33 185
Polish army 32 134
Total 1,236 31,071

Soviet Union

Before World War II

Bolshevik revolutionaries Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, later executed or assassinated on Stalin's orders

Continuing the policy of the Bolsheviks before the Revolution, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party strongly condemned the pogroms, including official denunciations in 1918 by the Council of People's Commissars. Opposition to the pogroms and to manifestations of Russian antisemitism in this era were complicated by both the official Bolshevik policy of assimilationism towards all national and religious minorities, and concerns about overemphasizing Jewish concerns for fear of exacerbating popular antisemitism, as the White forces were openly identifying the Bolshevik regime with Jews.[67][68][69]

Lenin recorded eight of his speeches on gramophone records in 1919. Only seven of these were later re-recorded and put on sale. The one suppressed in the Nikita Khrushchev era recorded Lenin's feelings on antisemitism:[70]

The Tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organized

Tsarism, which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.[71]

Despite the Soviet state's official opposition to antisemitism, the spring of 1918 saw widespread anti-Jewish violence perpetrated by members of the

Red Guard comprised mostly untrained workers and peasants with no overarching command structure, leaving the state with virtually no control over the volunteer forces.[72] Between March and May 1918, various Red Guard squadrons, embittered by their military defeat and animated by revolutionary sentiment, attacked Jews in cities and towns across the Chernihiv region of Ukraine. One of the most brutal instances of this violence occurred in the city of Novhorod-Siverskyi, where it was reported that 88 Jews were killed and 11 injured in a pogrom incited by Red Guard soldiers.[73] Similarly, after the successful capture of the city of Hlukhiv, the Red Guard murdered at least 100 Jews, whom the soldiers accused of being 'exploiters of the proletariat.'[74] In all, Jewish activist Nahum Gergel estimated that the Red forces were responsible for about 8.6% of pogroms during the years 1918–1922, while Ukrainian and White Army forces were responsible for 40% and 17.2%, respectively.[75]

Soviet politician and administrator Lazar Kaganovich in 1936

Lenin was supported by the

Budyonny's troops,[76] though the whole issue was effectively ignored. Volkogonov writes that "While condemning antisemitism in general, Lenin was unable to analyze, let alone eradicate, its prevalence in Soviet society".[77] Likewise, the hostility of the Soviet regime towards all religion made no exception for Judaism, and the 1921 campaign against religion saw the seizure of many synagogues (whether this should be regarded as antisemitism is a matter of definition—since Orthodox Christian churches received the same treatment). In any event, there was still a fair degree of tolerance for Jewish religious practice in the 1920s: in the Belarusian capital Minsk, for example, of the 657 synagogues existing in 1917, 547 were still functioning in 1930.[78]

CPSU set up a government committee (the Komzet
) and a public society (the OZET).

According to Zvi Gitelman: "Never before in Russian history—and never subsequently has a government made such an effort to uproot and stamp out antisemitism."[79]

According to the

Russian SFSR
and 3.8% in other Soviet republics.

Russian Jews were long considered to be a non-native ethnic group among the

People's Commissar
for Nationalities Affairs after the revolution, to qualify as a nation, a minority was required to have a culture, a language, and a homeland.

Moscow Trial
.

Yiddish, rather than Hebrew, would be the national language, and proletarian socialist literature and arts
would replace Judaism as the quintessence of culture. The use of Yiddish was strongly encouraged in the 1920s in areas of the USSR with substantial Jewish populations, especially in the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republics. Yiddish was one of the Belarusian SSR's four official languages, alongside Belarusian, Russian, and Polish. The equality of the official languages was taken seriously. A visitor arriving at main train station of the Belarusian capital Minsk saw the city's name written in all four languages above the main station entrance. Yiddish was a language of newspapers, magazines, book publishing, theater, radio, film, the post office, official correspondence, election materials, and even a Central Jewish Court. Yiddish writers like Sholem Aleichem and Mendele Mocher Seforim were celebrated in the 1920s as Soviet Jewish heroes.

Minsk had a public, state-supported Yiddish-language school system, extending from kindergarten to the Yiddish-language section of the Belarusian State University. Although Jewish students tended to switch to studying in Russian as they moved on to secondary and higher education, 55.3 percent of the city's Jewish primary school students attended Yiddish-language schools in 1927.[81] At its peak, the Soviet Yiddish-language school system had 160,000 students in it.[82] Such was the prestige of Minsk's Yiddish scholarship that researchers trained in Warsaw and Berlin applied for faculty positions at the university. All this leads historian Elissa Bemporad to conclude that this “very ordinary Jewish city” was in the 1920s “one of the world capitals of Yiddish language and culture."[83]

Jews also played a disproportionate role in Belarusian politics through the Bolshevik Party's Yiddish-language branch, the Yevsekstsia. Because there were few Jewish Bolsheviks before 1917 (with a few prominent exceptions like

Kamenev), the Yevsekstia's leaders in the 1920s were largely former Bundists, who pursued as Bolsheviks their campaign for secular Jewish education and culture. Although for example only a bit over 40 percent of Minsk's population was Jewish at the time, 19 of its 25 Communist Party cell secretaries were Jewish in 1924.[84]
Jewish predominance in the party cells was such that several cell meetings were held in Yiddish. In fact, Yiddish was spoken at citywide party meetings in Minsk into the late 1930s.

Jewish Autonomous Oblast on the map of Russia

To offset the growing Jewish national and religious aspirations of Zionism and to successfully categorize Soviet Jews under Stalin's definition of nationality, an alternative to the Land of Israel was established with the help of Komzet and OZET in 1928. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast with its center in Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East was to become a "Soviet Zion".[85] Despite a massive domestic and international state propaganda campaign, however, the Jewish population in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast never reached 30% (in 2003 it was only about 1.2%[86]). The experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s, during Stalin's first campaign of purges.

In fact the Bolshevik Party's Yiddish-language Yevsekstia was dissolved in 1930, as part of the regime's overall turn away from encouraging minority languages and cultures and towards Russification. Many Jewish leaders, especially those with Bundist backgrounds, were arrested and executed in the purges later in the 1930s,[citation needed] and Yiddish schools were shut down. The Belasusian SSR shut down its entire network of Yiddish-language schools in 1938.

In his January 12, 1931, letter "Antisemitism: Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States" (published domestically by Pravda in 1936), Stalin officially condemned antisemitism:

In answer to your inquiry: National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Antisemitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Antisemitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Antisemitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of antisemitism.

In the U.S.S.R. antisemitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active antisemites are liable to the death penalty.[87]

1938 NKVD arrest photo of the poet Osip Mandelstam, who died in a Gulag.

The

Molotov–Ribbentrop pact—the 1939 non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany—created further suspicion regarding the Soviet Union's position toward Jews. According to the pact, Poland, the nation with the world's largest Jewish population, was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939. While the pact had no basis in ideological sympathy (as evidenced by Nazi propaganda about "Jewish Bolshevism"), Germany's occupation of Western Poland was a disaster for Eastern European Jews. Evidence suggests that some, at least, of the Jews in the eastern Soviet zone of occupation welcomed the Russians as having a more liberated policy towards their civil rights than the preceding antisemitic Polish regime.[88] Jews in areas annexed by the Soviet Union were deported eastward in great waves;[citation needed
] as these areas would soon be invaded by Nazi Germany, this forced migration, deplored by many of its victims, paradoxically also saved the lives of several hundred thousand Jewish deportees.

The NKVD photo of writer Isaac Babel made after his arrest during Stalin's Great Purge.

Jews who escaped the purges include

destalinization
.

Beyond longstanding controversies, ranging from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact to anti-Zionism, the Soviet Union did grant official "equality of all citizens regardless of status, sex, race, religion, and nationality". The years before the Holocaust were an era of rapid change for Soviet Jews, leaving behind the dreadful poverty of the Pale of Settlement. Forty percent of the population in the former Pale left for large cities within the USSR.

Emphasis on education and movement from countryside

industrialized cities
allowed many Soviet Jews to enjoy overall advances under Stalin and to become one of the most educated population groups in the world.

Yakov Kreizer, field commander of the Red Army.

Because of Stalinist emphasis on its urban population, interwar migration inadvertently rescued countless Soviet Jews; Nazi Germany penetrated the entire former Jewish Pale—but were kilometers short of Leningrad and Moscow. The migration of many Jews farther East from the Jewish Pale, which would become occupied by Nazi Germany, saved at least 40 percent of the Pale's original Jewish population.

By 1941, it was estimated that the Soviet Union was home to 4.855 million Jews, around 30% of all Jews worldwide. However, the majority of these were residents of rural western

Holocaust. Only around 800,000 Jews lived outside the occupied territory, and 1,200,000 to 1,400,000 Jews were eventually evacuated eastwards.[89] Of the three million left in occupied areas, the vast majority is thought to have perished in German extermination camps
.

World War II and the Holocaust

Lieutenant General Semyon Krivoshein, one of the Red Army's most influential tank commanders.
Artisans' Synagogue, in Rostov-on-Don. Burned down in 1942, during the Great Patriotic War
Soviet writer and journalist Ilya Ehrenburg with Soviet soldiers in 1942

Over two million Soviet Jews are believed to have died during the Holocaust, second only to the number of Polish Jews who fell victim to

Ponary, 20,000 Jews killed in Kharkiv at Drobnitzky Yar, 36,000 Jews machine-gunned in Odessa, 25,000 Jews of Riga killed in the woods at Rumbula, and 10,000 Jews slaughtered in Simferopol in the Crimea.[citation needed
] Although mass shootings continued through 1942, most notably 16,000 Jews shot at Pinsk, Jews were increasingly shipped to concentration camps in German Nazi-occupied Poland.

Local residents of German-occupied areas, especially Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Latvians, sometimes played key roles in the genocide of other Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Slavs, Romani, homosexuals and Jews alike. Under the Nazi occupation, some members of the Ukrainian and Latvian Nazi police carried out deportations in the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lithuanians marched Jews to their death at Ponary. Even as some assisted the Germans, a significant number of individuals in the territories under German control also helped Jews escape death (see Righteous Among the Nations). In Latvia, particularly, the number of Nazi-collaborators was only slightly more than that of Jewish saviours. It is estimated that up to 1.4 million Jews fought in Allied armies; 40% of them in the Red Army.[90] In total, at least 142,500 Soviet soldiers of Jewish nationality lost their lives fighting against the German invaders and their allies[91]

1946. The official response to an inquiry by JAC about the military decorations of Jews during the war (1.8% of the total number). Some antisemites attempted to accuse Jews of lack of patriotism and of hiding from military service.

The typical Soviet policy regarding the Holocaust was to present it as

Kiev from the Nazi occupation, the Extraordinary State Commission (Чрезвычайная Государственная Комиссия; Chrezv'chaynaya Gosudarstvennaya Komissiya) was set out to investigate Nazi crimes. The description of the Babi Yar massacre was officially censored as follows:[92]

Draft report (December 25, 1943) Censored version (February 1944)

"The Hitlerist bandits committed brutal mass extermination of the Jewish population. They announced that on September 29, 1941, all Jews were required to arrive to the corner of Melnikov and Dokterev streets and bring their documents, money and valuables. The butchers herded them to Babi Yar, took away their valuables, then shot them."

"The Hitlerist bandits herded thousands of Soviet citizens to the corner of Melnikov and Dokterev streets. The butchers marched them to Babi Yar, took away their valuables, then shot them."

Stalinist antisemitic campaigns

The revival of Jewish identity after the war, stimulated by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, was cautiously welcomed by Stalin as a means to put pressure on Western imperialism in the Middle East, but when it became evident that many Soviet Jews expected the revival of Zionism to enhance their own aspirations for separate cultural and religious development in the Soviet Union, a wave of repression was unleashed.[93]

In January 1948

's session a high Soviet official still denied the "rumors" about their disappearance.

The

Doctors' Plot allegation in 1953 was a deliberately antisemitic policy: Stalin targeted "corrupt Jewish bourgeois nationalists", eschewing the usual code words like "rootless cosmopolitans" or "cosmopolitans". Stalin died, however, before this next wave of arrests and executions could be launched in earnest. A number of historians claim that the Doctors' Plot was intended as the opening of a campaign that would have resulted in the mass deportation of Soviet Jews had Stalin not died on March 5, 1953. Days after Stalin's death the plot was declared a hoax
by the Soviet government.

These cases may have reflected Stalin's paranoia, rather than state ideology—a distinction that made no practical difference as long as Stalin was alive, but which became salient on his death.

In April 1956, the

Folkshtimme
published sensational long lists of Soviet Jews who had perished before and after the Holocaust. The world press began demanding answers from Soviet leaders, as well as inquiring about the current condition of the Jewish education system and culture. The same autumn, a group of leading Jewish world figures publicly requested the heads of Soviet state to clarify the situation. Since no cohesive answer was received, their concern was only heightened. The fate of Soviet Jews emerged as a major human rights issue in the West.

The Soviet Union and Zionism

Itzik Feffer (left), Albert Einstein and Solomon Mikhoels in the United States in 1943. Feffer was executed on the Night of the Murdered Poets and rehabilitated posthumously in 1955, after Stalin's death.

Marxist

anti-nationalism[vague] and anti-clericalism had a mixed effect on Soviet Jews. Jews were the immediate benefactors, but they were also long-term victims, of the Marxist notion that any manifestation of nationalism is "socially retrogressive". On one hand, Jews were liberated from the religious persecution of the Tsarist years of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality". On the other, this notion was threatening to Jewish cultural institutions, the Bund, Jewish autonomy, Judaism and Zionism
.

Political Zionism was officially stamped out as a form of bourgeois nationalism during the entire history of the Soviet Union. Although Leninism emphasizes the belief in "self-determination", this fact did not make the Soviet state more accepting of Zionism. Leninism defines self-determination by territory or culture, rather than by religion, which allowed Soviet minorities to have separate oblasts, autonomous regions, or republics, which were nonetheless symbolic until its later years. Jews, however, did not fit such a theoretical model; Jews in the Diaspora did not even have an agricultural base, as Stalin often asserted when he attempted to deny the existence of a Jewish nation, and they certainly did not have a territorial unit. Marxist notions even denied the existence of a Jewish identity beyond the existence of a religion and caste; Marx defined Jews as a "chimerical nation".

menorah dominating the main square in Birobidzhan, in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast
, founded in the Russian Far East in 1936

Lenin, who claimed to be deeply committed to egalitarian ideals and the universality of all humanity, rejected Zionism as a reactionary movement, "bourgeois nationalism", "socially retrogressive", and a backward force that deprecates class divisions among Jews. Moreover,

Marxism-Leninism
.

Without changing his official

anti-Zionist stance, from late 1944 until 1948 Joseph Stalin adopted a de facto pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and hasten the decline of British influence in the Middle East.[96]

In a May 14, 1947 speech during the

announced:

As we know, the aspirations of a considerable part of the Jewish people are linked with the problem of Palestine and of its future administration. This fact scarcely requires proof... During the last war, the Jewish people underwent exceptional sorrow and suffering...

The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference, since this would be incompatible with the high principles proclaimed in its Charter...

The fact that no Western European State has been able to ensure the defence of the elementary rights of the Jewish people and to safeguard it against the violence of the fascist executioners explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own State. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize this aspiration.[97]

Soviet approval in the United Nations Security Council was critical to the UN partitioning of the British Mandate of Palestine, which led to the founding of the State of Israel. Three days after

Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948. At the time, the U.S. maintained an arms embargo on both sides in the conflict. See Arms shipments from Czechoslovakia to Israel 1947–1949
.

By the end of 1957 the USSR switched sides in the Arab–Israeli conflict and throughout the course of the Cold War unequivocally supported various Arab regimes against Israel. The official position of the Soviet Union and its satellite states and agencies was that Zionism was a tool used by the Jews and Americans for "racist imperialism".

A Soviet birth certificate from 1972 indicating the person's parents' ethnicity as "Jew".

As Israel was emerging as a close Western ally, the specter of Zionism raised fears of internal dissent and opposition. During the later parts of the Cold War, Soviet Jews were suspected of being possible traitors, Western sympathisers, or a security liability. The Communist leadership closed down various Jewish organizations and declared Zionism an ideological enemy. Synagogues were often placed under police surveillance, both openly and through the use of informers.[citation needed]

As a result of the persecution, both state-sponsored and unofficial, antisemitism was ingrained in the society and remained for years: ordinary Soviet Jews often suffered hardships, epitomized by often not being allowed to enlist in universities, work in certain professions, or participate in government. However, it should be mentioned that this was not always the case and this kind of persecution varied depending on the region. Still many Jews felt compelled to hide their identities by changing their names.

The word "Jew" was also avoided in the media when criticising undertakings by Israel, which the Soviets often accused of racism, chauvinism etc. Instead of Jew, the word Israeli was used almost exclusively, so as to paint its harsh criticism not as antisemitism but anti-Zionism. More controversially, the Soviet media, when depicting political events, sometimes used the term 'fascism' to characterise Israeli nationalism (e.g. calling Jabotinsky a 'fascist', and claiming 'new fascist organisations were emerging in Israel in the 1970s' etc.).

1967–1985

In a 1965 letter in the New York Times Nobel Physics laureate Lev Landau (above) and Evsei Liberman said that as Soviet Jews they opposed the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry.[98]

According to the census of 1959 the Jewish population of the city

Leningrad numbered 169,000 and the Great Choral synagogue was open in the 1960s with some 1,200 seats. The rabbi was Avraham Lubanov. This synagogue has never been closed. The great majority of the Leningrad Jews were not religious, but several thousand used to visit the synagogue on great holidays, mostly on Simchat Torah.[99]

A mass emigration was politically undesirable for the Soviet regime. As increasing numbers of Soviet Jews applied to emigrate to Israel in the period following the 1967

exit visas, was that persons who had been given access at some point in their careers to information vital to Soviet national security
could not be allowed to leave the country.

After the Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair in 1970 and the crackdown that followed, strong international condemnations caused the Soviet authorities to increase the emigration quota. From 1960 to 1970, only 4,000 people left the USSR; in the following decade, the number rose to 250,000.[100]

In 1972, the USSR imposed the so-called "diploma tax" on would-be emigrants who received higher education in the USSR.

Kremlin soon revoked the tax, but continued to sporadically impose various limitations. Besides, an unofficial Jewish quota was introduced in the leading institutions of higher education by subjecting Jewish applicants to harsher entrance examinations.[103][104][105][106]

At first almost all of those who managed to get exit visas to Israel actually made aliyah, but after the mid-1970s, most of those allowed to leave for Israel actually chose other destinations, most notably the United States.

Glasnost and end of the USSR

In 1989 a record 71,000 Soviet Jews were granted exodus from the USSR, of whom only 12,117 immigrated to Israel. At first, American policy treated Soviet Jews as refugees and allowed unlimited numbers to emigrate, but this policy eventually came to an end. As a result, more Jews began moving to Israel, as it was the only country willing to take them unconditionally.

In the 1980s, the liberal government of Mikhail Gorbachev allowed unlimited Jewish emigration, and the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991. As a result, a mass emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union took place. Since the 1970s, over 1.1 million Russians of Jewish origin immigrated to Israel, of whom 100,000 emigrated to third countries such as the United States and Canada soon afterward and 240,000 were not considered Jewish under Halakha, but were eligible under the Law of Return due to Jewish ancestry or marriage. Since the adoption of the Jackson–Vanik amendment, over 600,000 Soviet Jews have emigrated.

Modern-day Russia

Tomsk Choral Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Siberia
Grand Choral Synagogue of Saint Petersburg
, among the largest synagogues in Europe and the world.
President Putin lighting a Hannukah Menorah with Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar. Judaism is officially designated as one of Russia's four state-religions.[107]
Grigory Perelman
Arkady Rotenberg, a billionaire businessman and co-owner of Stroygazmontazh. He is considered a close confidant of Vladimir Putin.
Sergey Kiriyenko, the youngest Prime Minister of Russia
Russian opposition politician Yevgeny Roizman, who served as the Mayor of Yekaterinburg from 2013 to 2018. He was arrested in 2022 after denouncing the war in Ukraine.

Judaism today is officially designated as one of Russia's four "traditional religions", alongside Orthodox Christianity, Islam and Buddhism.[107] However, the Jewish community continues to decrease rapidly, going from 232,267 people in the 2002 census to 83,896 in 2021, not counting 500 Crimean Karaites, of which 28,119 lived in Moscow and 5,111 lived in the surrounding Moscow Oblast for a total of 33,230, or 39.61% of the entire Russian Jewish population. A further 9,215 lived in Saint-Petersburg with 851 in the surrounding Leningrad Oblast for a total of 10,066, or 12.00% of the entire Russian Jewish population; thus, Russia's two largest cities and surrounding areas hosted 51.61% of the total Russian Jewish population.

The third most populous community was Crimea, which had a population of 2,522 (of which 864 Krymchaks) in the Autonomous Republic in addition to 517 (including 35 Krymchaks) in Sevastopol, for a total of 3,039 (of which 29.58% Krymchaks), not counting 215 Crimean Karaites. This amounts to 3.62% of the total Russian Jewish population.

After Crimea, the most numerically significant populations were Sverdlovsk with 2,354 (2.81%) and Samara, with 2,266 (2.70%), followed by Tatarstan with 1,792 (2.14%), Rostov Oblast with 1,690 (2.01%), Chelyabinsk with 1,677 (2.00%), Krasnodar Krai with 1,620 (1.93%), Stavropol with 1,614 (1.92%), Nizhny Novgorod with 1,473 (1.76%), Bashkortostan with 1,209 (1.44%), Saratov with 1,151 (1.37%) and Novosibirsk with 1,150 (1.37%). The remaining 20,565 (24.52%) of Russian Jews lived in regions with communities numbering fewer than 1,000 Jews.

Despite being designated as a Jewish oblast, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast has only 837 self-identifying Jews, or 0.56% of the total population of the Autonomous Oblast. This is down 64.03% from the 2,327 recorded in the 2002 census, or 1.22% of the Oblast's population at the time.

As of the 2021 census, most Russian Jews are Ashkenazi (82,644 of the 83,896 total, or 98.51%). The second largest community are the Krymchaks, who numbered 954, or 1.14% of the Jewish population. There were 266 Mountain Jews (0.32%) and only remnants of the formerly significant Bukharan and Georgian communities, who numbered 18 (0.02%) and 14 (0.02%) respectively. In addition to this, there were 500 Crimean Karaites, who have historically not identified as Jews.

Most Crimean Karaites lived in Crimea (215, or 43.00%) or Moscow (60); most Krymchaks lived in Crimea (864, or 90.57% of the total) or Sebastopol (35, or 3.68%) meaning 899, or 94.23% of the Russian Krymchak population, still lives on the Crimean peninsula, largely rurally. The Crimean Karaite population in Crimea has declined by well over 50% since the Ukrainian census of 2001. Conversely, most

Juhurim have left the Caucasus region, and the largest single community still in Russia (84, 31.58%) is found in Moscow. Of the Jewish populations remaining in the northern Caucasus, most are now Ashkenazi, with only a few being Mountain Jews. There are still 145 Mountain Jews scattered throughout the northern Caucasus, of which 60 are in Dagestan (amounting to 6.49% of the republic's Jewish population), 47 are in Kabardino-Balkaria (6.02%), 29 are in Stavropol (1.80%), 6 are in Krasnodar (0.37%) and 3 are in Adygea
(2.24%). There are no Mountain Jews remaining in Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia-Alania or Karachay-Cherkessia.

Apart from the Krymchaks, all Jewish communities were heavily urbanised - 100% of Bukharan and Georgian Jew, 95.39% of Ashkenazim, 94.74% of Mountain Jews and 91.00% of Crimean Karaites lived in urban areas, whereas only 34.91% of Krymchaks did.

Most Russian Jews are secular and identify themselves as Jews via ethnicity rather than religion, although interest about

Lubavitcher
Jewish Movement has been active in this sector, setting up synagogues and Jewish kindergartens in Russian cities with Jewish populations. In addition, most Russian Jews have relatives who live in Israel.

There are several major Jewish organizations in the territories of the former USSR. The central Jewish organization is the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS under the leadership of Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.[108]

A linguistic distinction remains to this day in the Russian language where there are two distinct terms that correspond to the word Jew in English. The word еврей ("yevrey" – Hebrew) typically denotes a Jewish ethnicity, as "Hebrew" did in English up until the early 20th century. The word иудей ("iudey" – Judean, etymologically related to the English Jew) is reserved for denoting a follower of the Jewish religion, whether he or she is ethnically Jewish or ethnically Gentile; this term has largely fallen out of use in favor of the equivalent term иудаист ("iudaist"-Judaist). For example, according to a 2012 Russian survey, евреи account for only 32.2% of иудаисты in Russia, with nearly half (49.8%) being Ethnic Russians (русские),.[109] An ethnic slur, жид (borrowed from the Polish Żyd, Jew), also remains in widespread use in Russia.

Antisemitism is one of the most common expressions of

Penal Code),[111] In 2002, the number of antisemitic neo-Nazi groups in the republics of the former Soviet Union, led Pravda to declare in 2002 that "Anti-Semitism is booming in Russia".[112] In January 2005, a group of 15 Duma members demanded that Judaism and Jewish organizations be banned from Russia.[113] In 2005, 500 prominent Russians, including some 20 members of the nationalist Rodina party, demanded that the state prosecutor investigate ancient Jewish texts as "anti-Russian" and ban Judaism. An investigation was in fact launched, but halted after an international outcry.[114][115]

Overall, in recent years, particularly since the early 2000s, levels of antisemitism in Russia have been reportedly low, and steadily decreasing.[116][117] In 2019, Ilya Yablogov wrote that many Russians were keen on antisemitic conspiracy theories in 1990s but it declined after 2000 and many high-ranking officials were forced to apologize for the antisemitic behavior.[118]

In Russia, both historical and contemporary antisemitic materials are frequently published. For example, a set (called Library of a Russian Patriot) consisting of twenty five antisemitic titles was recently published, including

Protocols of the Elders of Zion
, and others.

Antisemitic incidents are mostly conducted by extremist, nationalist, and Islamist groups. Most of the antisemitic incidents are against Jewish cemeteries and building (community centers and synagogues) such as the assault against the Jewish community's center in Perm in March 2013[120] and the attack on Jewish nursery school in Volgograd in August 2013.[121] Nevertheless, there were several violent attacks against Jews in Moscow in 2006 when a neo-Nazi stabbed 9 people at the Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue,[122] the failed bomb attack on the same synagogue in 1999.[123]

Attacks against Jews made by extremist Islamic groups are rare in Russia although there has been increase in the scope of the attacks mainly in Muslim populated areas. On July 25, 2013, the rabbi of Derbent was attacked and badly injured by an unknown person near his home, most likely by a terrorist. The incident sparked concerns among the local Jews of further acts against the Jewish community.[124]

After the passage of some anti-gay laws in Russia in 2013 and the incident with the "Pussy-riot" band in 2012 causing a growing criticism on the subject inside and outside Russia a number of verbal antisemitic attacks were made against Russian gay activists by extremist activists and antisemitic writers such as Israel Shamir who viewed the "Pussy-riot" incident as the war of Judaism on the Christian Orthodox church.[125][126][127]

Today, the Jewish population of Russia is shrinking due to small family sizes, and high rates of assimilation and intermarriage. This shrinkage has been slowed by some Russian-Jewish emigrants having returned from abroad, especially from Germany. The great majority of up to 90% of children born to a Jewish parent are the offspring of mixed marriages, and most Jews have only one or two children.[128]

The EuroStars young adults program provides Jewish learning and social activities in 32 cities across Russia.[129][130][131] Some have described a 'renaissance' in the Jewish community inside Russia since the beginning of the 21st century.[10]

The Chief Rabbi of Russia, Rabbi Berel Lazar, spoke out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, called Russia to withdraw and for an end to the war, and offered to mediate.[132] The Chief Rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, left Russia after he refused a request from state officials to publicly support the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[133] On 30 June 2023, Goldschmidt was designated in Russia as a foreign agent.[134]

Historical demographics

  • Jewish % of the population in each SSR
  • 1939
    1939
  • 1959
    1959
  • 1989
    1989
Demographic data for Russian Empire, Soviet Union and Post-Soviet states Jews
Year Jewish population (including Tats) Notes
1914 More than 5,250,000 Russian Empire
1926[135] 2,672,499
First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union

A result of border change (secession of Poland and union of Bessarabia with Romania), emigration and assimilation.

1939[136] 3,028,538 A result of natural growth, emigration, assimilation and repressions
Early 1941 5,400,000 A result of the annexation of Western Ukraine and Belarus, Baltic republics, and inflow of Jewish refugees from Poland
1959 2,279,277 See the
immigration to Israel
.
1970 2,166,026 A result of natural population decline (death rates being greater than birth rates), emigration, and assimilation (such as intermarriage)
1979 1,830,317 Decline for the same reason as for 1970
1989 1,479,732
Soviet Census
. Final census in the entire Soviet Union. Decline for the same reason as for 1970.
2002 233,439 A result of border changes (namely the fall of Soviet Union, with only Russia considered in the 2002 census rather than the entire USSR) mass emigration, natural population decline, and assimilation.
2010 159,348 Further mass emigration, natural population decline and assimilation.
2021 83,896 Decline for the same reason as 2010. However, this census included Crimea, which including Sevastopol had 3,039 Jews; this means the population increased in one respect due to border changes. The population as compared to 2010 was thus only 80,857, a drop of around 50%.
Jewish population in each SSR and former SSR by year (using 1989 SSR borders)[137][a]
SSR 1897 1926 1939 1959 1970 1979 1989 1999-2001 2009-2011 2019-2022
Russian SFSR
/Russia
250,000[138] 539,037 891,147 880,443 816,668 713,399 570,467 233,439 159,348 83,896
Ukrainian SSR/Ukraine
2,680,000[139] 2,720,000[140] 2,700,000[141][142][c] 840,446 777,406 634,420 487,555 106,600 71,500 45,000[143]
Byelorussian SSR/Belarus
690,000[144][c] 150,090 148,027 135,539 112,031 24,300 12,926 13,705[145]
Uzbek SSR/Uzbekistan
37,896 50,676 94,488 103,058 100,067 95,104 40,000 15,000 9,865[146]
Azerbaijan SSR/Azerbaijan
59,768 41,245 46,091 49,057 44,345 41,072 8,916 9,084[147] 9,500
Latvian SSR/Latvia
95,675[148][b] 95,600[149] 36,604 36,686 28,338 22,925 9,600 6,454 8,094[150]
Kazakh SSR/Kazakhstan
3,548 19,240 28,085 27,676 23,601 20,104 6,823 3,578[151] 2,500[143]
Lithuanian SSR/Lithuania
263,000[149] 24,683 23,566 14,703 12,398 4,007 3,050 2,256[152][e]
Estonian SSR/Estonia
4,309[149] 5,439 5,290 4,993 4,653 2,003 1,738 1,852[153]
Moldavian SSR/Moldova
250,000[154] 95,107 98,072 80,124 65,836 5,500 3,628 1,597[155][d]
Georgian SSR/Georgia
30,389 42,300 51,582 55,382 28,298 24,795 2,333 2,000 1,405[156][f]
Kirghiz SSR/Kyrgyzstan
318 1,895 8,607 7,677 6,836 6,005 1,571 604 433[157]
Turkmen SSR/Turkmenistan
2,045 3,037 4,102 3,530 2,866 2,509 1,000[158] 700[159] 200
Armenian SSR/Armenia
335 512 1,042 1,049 962 747 109 127 150
Tajik SSR/Tajikistan
275 5,166 12,435 14,627 14,697 14,580 197 36[160] 25
Former Soviet Union
5,250,000 2,672,499 3,028,538 2,279,277 2,166,026 1,830,317 1,479,732 460,000 280,678 180,478
Historical Russian Jewish population
YearPop.±%
1897250,000—    
1926539,037+115.6%
1939891,147+65.3%
1959880,443−1.2%
1970816,668−7.2%
1979713,399−12.6%
1989570,467−20.0%
2002233,439−59.1%
2010159,348−31.7%
202183,896−47.4%
Source: [137][161][162][138]
The Jewish population data includes Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Bukharan Jews (or Central Asian Jews), Krymchaks (all per the 1959 Soviet census), and Tats.[163]
Jewish population in each SSR and former SSR by year (using 1989 SSR borders) as a percent of the total population[137][a]
SSR % 1926 % 1939 % 1959 % 1970 % 1979 % 1989 % 2002[161] % 2010[162]
Russian SFSR
/Russia
0.58% 0.81% 0.75% 0.63% 0.52% 0.39% 0.18% 0.11%
Ukrainian SSR/Ukraine
6.55%[164][c] 2.01% 1.65% 1.28% 0.95% 0.20% 0.16%
Byelorussian SSR/Belarus
6.55%[165][c] 1.86% 1.64% 1.42% 1.10% 0.24% 0.14%[166]
Moldavian SSR/Moldova
3.30% 2.75% 2.03% 1.52% 0.13% 0.11% 0.06%
Estonian SSR/Estonia
0.38%[149] 0.45% 0.39% 0.34% 0.30% 0.14% 0.13%
Latvian SSR/Latvia
5.19%[148][b] 4.79%[149] 1.75% 1.55% 1.13% 0.86% 0.40% 0.31%[167]
Lithuanian SSR/Lithuania
9.13%[149] 0.91% 0.75% 0.43% 0.34% 0.10% 0.10%[168]
Georgian SSR/Georgia
1.15% 1.19% 1.28% 1.18% 0.57% 0.46% 0.10% 0.08%
Armenian SSR/Armenia
0.04% 0.04% 0.06% 0.04% 0.03% 0.02% <0.01% <0.01%
Azerbaijan SSR/Azerbaijan
2.58% 1.29% 1.25% 0.96% 0.74% 0.58% 0.10% 0.10%[147]
Turkmen SSR/Turkmenistan
0.20% 0.24% 0.27% 0.16% 0.10% 0.07% 0.01% <0.01%
Uzbek SSR/Uzbekistan
0.80% 0.81% 1.17% 0.86% 0.65% 0.48% 0.02% 0.02%
Tajik SSR/Tajikistan
0.03% 0.35% 0.63% 0.50% 0.39% 0.29% <0.01% <0.01%
Kirghiz SSR/Kyrgyzstan
0.03% 0.13% 0.42% 0.26% 0.20% 0.14% 0.02% 0.01%
Kazakh SSR/Kazakhstan
0.06% 0.31% 0.30% 0.22% 0.16% 0.12% 0.03% 0.02%
Former Soviet Union
1.80% 1.80% 1.09% 0.90% 0.70% 0.52% 0.16% 0.10%

a^ The Jewish population data for all of the years includes Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Bukharan Jews (or Central Asian Jews), Krymchaks (all per the 1959 Soviet census), and Tats.[169]
b^ The data is from 1925.
c^ The data is from 1941.
d^ The data is from 2014.
e^ Does not include 192 Karaim.

Russian Jewish aliyah and immigration to countries outside Israel

Israel

(Israel's parliament) from 2013 to 2020.
Year TFR
2000 1.544
1999 1.612
1998 1.632
1997 1.723
1996 1.743
1995 1.731
1994 1.756
1993 1.707
1992 1.604
1991 1.398
1990 1.390

In present times, the largest number of Russian Jews are

olim (עוֹלים) and sabras. In 2011 Russians were around 15% of Israel's 7.7 million population (including Halakhally non-Jews who constituted about 30% of immigrants from the former Soviet Union).[170]
The Aliyah in the 1990s accounts for 85–90% of this population. The population growth rate for
Former Soviet Union (FSU)-born olim were among the lowest for any Israeli groups, with a Fertility rate of 1.70 and natural increase of just +0.5% per year.[171] The increase in Jewish birth rate in Israel during the 2000–2007 period was partly due to the increasing birth rate among the FSU olim, who now form 20% of the Jewish population of Israel.[172][173]
96.5% of the enlarged Russian Jewish population in Israel either belong to

The Total Fertility Rate for FSU-born olim in Israel is given in the table below. The TFR increased with time, peaking in 1997, then slightly decreased after that and then again increased after 2000.[171]

In 1999, about 1,037,000 FSU-born olim lived in Israel, of whom about 738,900 made aliyah after 1989.[175][176] The second largest oleh (עוֹלֶה) group (Moroccan Jews) numbered just 1,000,000. From 2000 to 2006, 142,638 FSU-born olim moved to Israel, while 70,000 of them emigrated from Israel to countries like the U.S. and Canada—bringing the total population to 1,150,000 by January 2007.[1] The natural increase was around 0.3% in the late 1990s. For example, 2,456 in 1996 (7,463 births to 5,007 deaths), 2,819 in 1997 (8,214 to 5,395), 2,959 in 1998 (8,926 to 5,967) and 2,970 in 1999 (9,282 to 6,312). In 1999, the natural growth was +0.385%. (Figures only for FSU-born olim moved in after 1989).[177]

An estimated 45,000 illegal immigrants from the Former Soviet Union lived in Israel at the end of 2010, but it is not clear how many of them are actually Jews.[178]

In 2013, 7,520 people, nearly 40% of all olim, made aliyah from the Former Soviet Union.[179][180][181][182] In 2014 4,685 Russian citizens relocated to Israel, more than double than usual in any of the previous 16 years.[183] In 2015, nearly 7,000 or just over twenty percent of all olim came from the former Soviet Union.[184][185] As a consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Jewish Agency reported in March 2022 that hundreds of Jewish refugees sheltering in Poland, Romania and Moldova were scheduled to leave for Israel the following week.[186] Of an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Jews in Ukraine, over 26.3% have fled the country; between 10,000[187] and 15,200 refugees had arrived in Israel.[188]

Recent olim and olot (עוֹלות) from the Former Soviet Union include notables such as

.

United States

American singer Regina Spektor, who cites poets such as Pasternak in her songs.

The second largest Russian Jewish population is in the United States. According to RINA, there is a core Russian Jewish population of 350,000 in the U.S. The enlarged Russian Jewish population in the U.S. is estimated to be 700,000.[2]

Notable Russia, Imperial Russia, Soviet Union, and former Soviet Union, born Jewish Americans (living and deceased) include

.

Large Russian Jewish communities include

Sunny Isles Beach neighborhood of South Florida; Skokie and Buffalo Grove, suburbs of Chicago; and West Hollywood, California
.

Germany

The fourth largest Russian-Jewish community exists in Germany with a core Russian-Jewish population of 119,000 and an enlarged population of 250,000.[189][190][191]

In the 1991–2006 period, approximately 230,000 ethnic Jews from the FSU immigrated to Germany. In the beginning of 2006, Germany tightened the immigration program. A survey conducted among approximately 215,000 enlarged Russian Jewish population (taking natural decrease into consideration) indicated that about 81% of the enlarged population was religiously Jewish or Atheist, while about 18.5% identified as Christian. That gives a core Russian Jewish population of 111,800 (religiously Jewish, 52%) or 174,150 (religiously Jewish or Atheist).[192][193]

Notable Russian Jews in Germany include Valery Belenky, Maxim Biller, Friedrich Gorenstein, Wladimir Kaminer, Lev Kopelev, Elena Kuschnerova, Alfred Schnittke, Vladimir Voinovich, and Lilya Zilberstein.

Canada

The fifth largest Russian Jewish community is in Canada. The core Russian Jewish population in Canada numbers 30,000 and the enlarged Russian Jewish population numbered 50,000+, mostly in Montreal and Toronto.[194] Notable Russian Jewish residents include judoka Mark Berger, ice hockey player Eliezer Sherbatov, voice actress Tara Strong,[195] and the musical group Tasseomancy.

Australia

Jews from the former Soviet Union settled in Australia in two migration waves in the 1970s and 1990s. About 5,000 immigrated in the 1970s and 7,000 to 8,000 in the 1990s.[196] The estimated population of Jews from the former Soviet Union in Australia is 10,000 to 11,000, constituting about 10% of the Australian Jewish population. About half of the Jews from the former Soviet Union are from Ukraine and a third from the Russian Federation.[197]

Finland

Hundreds of Russian Jews have moved to Finland since 1990 and have helped to stem the negative population growth of the Jewish community there.[198] The total number of Jews in Finland have grown from 800 in 1980 to 1,200 in 2006. Of all the schoolgoing Jewish children, 75% have at least one Russian born parent.

Other countries

Maya Plisetskaya receives a governmental award from President of Russia Vladimir Putin on 20 November 2000.

Leon Poliakov, Evgeny Kissin, Alexandre Koyré, Ida Rubinstein, Lev Shestov, and Anatoly Vaisser. Some other notable Russian Jews are Roman Abramovich, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Boris Berezovsky, and Maxim Vengerov (United Kingdom), Gennadi Sosonko (Netherlands), Viktor Korchnoi (Switzerland), and Maya Plisetskaya
(Spain).

Russian Prime Ministers of Jewish origin

See also

Notes

References

  1. ^ a b "Monthly Bulletin of Statistics". Cbs.gov.il. Archived from the original on November 4, 2007. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  2. ^ a b Kliger, Sam (June 14, 2004). "Russian Jews in America: Status, Identity and Integration" (PDF). AJCRussian.org. The American Jewish Committee. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 1, 2017. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
  3. ^ "German Jews more than victims, community head says". Jewish Journal. January 5, 2011. Archived from the original on October 31, 2018. Retrieved October 30, 2018.
  4. ^ "All-Russian population census 2020". rosstat.gov.ru. Archived from the original on January 24, 2020. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
  5. ^ Gruzman, Emmanuel (May 12, 2018). "Russian-speaking Jews in Australia: more difficulties at first but more satisfied at last". plus61j.net.au. May 12, 2018. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved June 8, 2018.
  6. ^ Arena – Atlas of Religions and Nationalities in Russia Archived December 6, 2017, at the Wayback Machine. Sreda.org
  7. ^ Arena – Atlas of Religions and Nationalities in Russia. Sreda.org
  8. ^ 2012 Survey Maps Archived March 20, 2017, at the Wayback Machine. "Ogonek", № 34 (5243), August 27, 2012. Retrieved September 24, 2012.
  9. Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901–1906. Archived from the original
    on March 28, 2007. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
  10. ^ a b Renaissance of Jewish life in Russia Archived April 30, 2018, at the Wayback Machine November 23, 2001, By John Daniszewski, Chicago Tribune
  11. ^ "Jews". Pew Research Center. December 18, 2012. Archived from the original on August 5, 2013. Retrieved March 17, 2021.
  12. ^ a b c Gartner, Lloyd P. (2010). History of the Jews in Modern Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 163–190.
  13. ^ from the original on February 6, 2017. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  14. ^ Pogroms in the Ukraine (1919–1921) Archived September 26, 2015, at the Wayback Machine Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, April 3, 2008, retrieved September 9, 2015.
  15. ^ a b Modern Jewish History: Pogroms Archived December 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Jewish Virtual Library, 2008, retrieved September 9, 2015.
  16. ^ Weiner, Rebecca. "The Virtual Jewish History Tour". Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved July 31, 2020.
  17. from the original on June 2, 2021. Retrieved March 30, 2017.
  18. from the original on December 24, 2019. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  19. from the original on December 25, 2019. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  20. from the original on December 21, 2019. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  21. ^ Brook, James (July 11, 1996). "Birobidzhan Journal; A Promised Land in Siberia? Well, Thanks, but ..." The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 16, 2017. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
  22. Constitution of the Russian Federation
    , Article 65
  23. ^ Спектор Р., руководитель Департамента Евро-Азиатского Еврейского конгресса (ЕАЕК) по связям с общественностью и СМИ (2008). Гуревич В.С.; Рабинович А.Я.; Тепляшин А.В.; Воложенинова Н.Ю. (eds.). "Биробиджан – terra incognita?" [Birobidzhan – terra incognita?] (PDF). Биробиджанский проект (опыт межнационального взаимодействия): сборник материалов научно-практической конференции (in Russian): 20. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 14, 2019. Retrieved September 9, 2015. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |agency= ignored (help)
  24. from the original on December 26, 2019. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  25. ^ from the original on December 27, 2019. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  26. ^ Gutman, Israel (1988). Fighters Among the Ruins: The Story of Jewish Heroism During World War II. Bnai Brith Books.
  27. ^ Jewish Soldiers in the Allied Armies Archived December 14, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Yad Vashem, 2002-07-30, retrieved September 7, 2015.
  28. ^ Maltz, Judy. "One, two, three, four – we opened up the Iron Door". haaretz.com. Archived from the original on September 17, 2016. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
  29. ^ Jewish Population of the World Archived December 24, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Jewish Virtual Library, retrieved September 9, 2015.
  30. ^ Sokol, Sam (November 8, 2012). "Peres inaugurates Russian Jewish museum". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on January 25, 2017. Retrieved August 23, 2016.
  31. ^ "Armenia". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  32. ^ "Belarus: Virtual Jewish History Tour". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. April 25, 1991. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  33. ^ "Ukraine: Virtual Jewish History Tour". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Archived from the original on October 17, 2015. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  34. ^ a b A. I. Pereswetoff-Morath, A Grin without a Cat, vol. 2: Jews and Christians in Medieval Russia – Assessing the Sources (Lund Slavonic Monographs, 5), Lund 2002
  35. from the original on February 17, 2017. Retrieved February 12, 2017.
  36. ^ Glassman, Deborah (December 2004). "Rabbonim, Rebbes, and Crown Rabbis of Lyakhovichi-An Original Publication of Lyakovichi Shtetl Website". jewishgen.org. Jewish Gen, Inc. Archived from the original on February 22, 2015. Retrieved May 31, 2015.
  37. OCLC 170203576. Archived from the original on March 27, 2015. Retrieved May 31, 2015. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help
    )
  38. from the original on May 14, 2016. Retrieved May 31, 2015.
  39. ISBN 0-253-33811-5. p.5 Archived December 31, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
  40. ^ Herzl Yankl Tsam Archived April 24, 2017, at the Wayback Machine (Beyond the Pale)
  41. ^ Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Geoffrey Jones, Oxford University Press, 2000
  42. ^ Duffy, James P., Vincent L. Ricci, Czars: Russia's Rulers for Over One Thousand Years, p. 324
  43. ^ "Antisemitism in Imperial Russia". Worldfuturefund.com. Archived from the original on July 18, 2011. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  44. ^ "Czar Alexander III". Fortunecity.com. Archived from the original on January 16, 2011. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  45. Riasanovsky, Nicholas
    , A History of Russia, p. 395
  46. ^ But Were They Good for the Jews? by Elliot Rosenberg, p. 183
  47. ^ The Pittsburgh Press, October 25, 1915, p. 11
  48. ^ "The Jewish Agency for Israel Timeline". Jafi.org.il. Jewish Agency for Israel. May 15, 2005. Archived from the original on December 3, 2008. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  49. ^ Lewin, Rhoda G. (1979). "Stereotype and reality in the Jewish immigrant experience in Minneapolis" (PDF). Minnesota History. 46 (7): 259. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 21, 2020. Retrieved January 20, 2017.
  50. ^ "The Hovevei Zion in Russia-The Odessa committee 1889–1890". Zionistarchives.org.il. April 18, 1935. Archived from the original on March 31, 2006. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  51. ^ Jewish Emigration from Russia: 1880–1928 Archived October 17, 2018, at the Wayback Machine (Beyond the Pale)
  52. from the original on June 24, 2016. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  53. ^ a b Frumkin, Jacob G.; Gregor Aronson; Alekseĭ Aleksandrovich Golʹdenveĭzer (1966). Russian Jewry: 1860–1917. New York City: T. Yoseloff. Archived from the original on July 25, 2020. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  54. from the original on April 26, 2016. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
  55. from the original on June 10, 2016. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
  56. ^ "4-year review" (PDF). American Jewish Yearbook (1910–1911). Archived (PDF) from the original on June 13, 2010. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  57. ^ a b Slutsky, Yehuda. "Duma". Encyclopaedia Judaica. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  58. from the original on May 2, 2016. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
  59. ^ "Ossip. Y. Pergament dead. Leader of Jews and Duma Member, He Was Under Indictment" (PDF). The New York Times. May 30, 1909. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 25, 2021. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
  60. ^ Gitelman, Zvi "Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU", Princeton, 1972
  61. ^ Lenin's March 1919 speech On Anti-Jewish Pogroms ("О погромной травле евреев": text, audio)
  62. ^ "The Makhnovists on The National and Jewish Questions", History of The Makhnovist Movement by Peter Arshinov, Freedom Press
  63. ^ "Russia". Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 17. Keter Publishing House Ltd. pp. 531–553.
  64. ^ "Pogromy". Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on November 15, 2017. Retrieved October 6, 2009.
  65. ^ a b Henry Abramson, Jewish Representation in the Independent Ukrainian Governments of 1917–1920, Slavic review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 542–550
  66. ^ Benjamin Pinkus. The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority. Cambridge University Press, 1988
  67. ^ Naomi Blank "Redefining the Jewish Question from Lenin to Gorbachev: Terminology or Ideology"!, in Yaacov Ro'i, (ed.) Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union, Routledge, 1995
  68. ^ William Korey Russian Anti-semitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism, Routledge, 1995
  69. ^ Ronald Clark (1988) Lenin: The Man Behind the Mask, p. 456
  70. ^ Lenin, Vladimir (1919). "Anti-Jewish Pogroms". Speeches on Gramophone Records. Archived from the original on March 19, 2020. Retrieved June 29, 2008.
  71. ^ McGeever, Brendan. Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
  72. ^ Ibid.
  73. ^ Ibid.
  74. ^ Bemporad, Elissa. Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
  75. ^ Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War
  76. ^ Dmitrij Volkogonov: Lenin. Počátek teroru. Dialog, Liberec 1996, p. 173
  77. ^ Elissa Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk, Indiana University Press, 2013, p. 119
  78. .
  79. ^ Stalin, Joseph (1913): Marxism and the National Question Archived July 28, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  80. ^ Elissa Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk, Indiana University Press, 2013, p. 110
  81. ^ "The Jews of the Soviet Union". The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot. Archived from the original on June 25, 2018. Retrieved June 25, 2018.
  82. ^ Bemporad, op.cit., p. 9
  83. ^ Bemporad, op.cit., pp. 38, 40
  84. ^ OZET lottery posters and tickets Archived July 6, 2008, at the Wayback Machine featured in Swarthmore College's online exhibition "Stalin's Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland."
  85. ^ Mark Tolts: The Post-Soviet Jewish Population in Russia and the World. Archived March 27, 2009, at the Wayback Machine Published in: Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe, 2004, No. 1 (52). p. 51
  86. ^ Joseph Stalin. Works, Vol. 13, July 1930 – January 1934, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955, p. 30
  87. ^ Saul Friedlander (2008) The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939–1945. London, Phoenix: 43–8
  88. ^ Эвакуация и национальные отношения в советском тылу в годы Великой Отечественной Войны (in Russian). Archived from the original on September 28, 2011.
  89. ^ Lador-Lederer, Joseph. World War II: Jews as Prisoners of War, Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, vol.10, Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 1980, pp. 70–89, p. 75, footnote 15. [1] Archived August 25, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  90. ^ [2] Archived September 14, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
  91. ^ Draft report by the Commission for Crimes Committed by the Nazis in Kiev from February 1944 Archived November 9, 2017, at the Wayback Machine. The page 14 shows changes made by G. F. Aleksandrov, head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
  92. from the original on February 6, 2017. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  93. MVD
  94. ^ Rubenstein, Joshua. "Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Introduction)". JoshuaRubenstein.com. Archived from the original on October 28, 2005.
  95. ^ A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson, London, 1987, p. 527
  96. ^ UN Debate Regarding the Special Committee on Palestine: Gromyko Statement. 14 May 1947 77th Plenary Meeting Archived January 9, 2006, at the Wayback Machine Document A/2/PV.77
  97. p. 199
  98. ^ "Refworld | Soviet Union: Whether synagogues in Leningrad were open and functioning during the 1960s". Archived from the original on October 7, 2021. Retrieved March 19, 2021.
  99. ^ History of Dissident Movement in the USSR Archived February 22, 2017, at the Wayback Machine by Lyudmila Alexeyeva. Vilnius, 1992 (in Russian)
  100. ^ All Things Considered (October 30, 2010). "How A Quest To Save Soviet Jews Changed The World". NPR. Archived from the original on April 22, 2013. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
  101. from the original on June 2, 2021. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
  102. .
  103. ^ Edward Frenkel (October 2012). "The Fifth problem: math & anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union". The New Criterion. Archived from the original on 7 December 2015. Retrieved 12 December 2015.
  104. ^ Dominic Lawson (11 October 2011). "More migrants please, especially the clever ones". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  105. ^ Andre Geim (2010). "Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Archived from the original on 16 June 2017. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  106. ^ a b The Post-Soviet Treasure Hunt: Time, Space, and Necropolitics in Siberian Buddhism ANYA BERNSTEIN, Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol. 53, No. 3 (JULY 2011), pp. 623–653, Cambridge University Press
  107. ^ Margolin, Dovid (May 25, 2015). "'Eurostars' Program Shines, Seen in the Effect on Russian Youth Visiting Europe". FJC.ru. Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS. Archived from the original on July 8, 2015. Retrieved May 25, 2015.
  108. ^ Плотность населения [Population Density]. Главная страница проекта 'Арена' (in Russian). Sreda.org, Среда. October 19, 2012. Archived from the original on March 25, 2014. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
  109. ^ "Anti-Semitism in Russia: Anti-Semitism in Politics". ADL.org. Archived from the original on September 6, 2008. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  110. ^ "Fourteenth periodic reports of States parties due in 1994 : Russian Federation". Unhchr.ch. United Nations Commission on Human Rights. July 28, 1997. CERD/C/299/Add.15. Archived from the original on September 26, 2007. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  111. ^ Explosion of anti-Semitism in Russia Archived February 13, 2005, at the Wayback Machine Pravda, 2002-07-30, retrieved October 17, 2005.
  112. ^ Deputies Urge Ban on Jewish Organizations, Then Retract Archived May 30, 2006, at the Wayback MachineBigotry Monitor. Volume 5, Number 4. January 28, 2005. Published by UCSJ. Editor: Charles Fenyvesi
  113. ^ Prosecutor Drops Charges of Antisemitism Against Duma Deputies Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback MachineBigotry Monitor. Volume 5, Number 24. June 17, 2005. Published by UCSJ. Editor: Charles Fenyvesi
  114. ^ Russia to Drop Probe of Jewish Law Code Accused of Stoking Ethnic Hatred Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback MachineBigotry Monitor. Volume 5, Number 26. July 1, 2005. Published by UCSJ. Editor: Charles Fenyvesi
  115. ^ В Москве представлен отчет об антисемитизме в 2014 году Archived July 28, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Москва, 13 Февраля 2015, 21:46 – REGNUM
  116. ^ Президент ФЕОР: Россия — "остров спокойствия" на фоне Западной Европы Archived January 25, 2017, at the Wayback Machine 11:0007.11.2014 (обновлено: 11:42 7 November 2014)
  117. S2CID 208619530
    . Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  118. ^ "Russia bans Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' over fears it fuels rise of far-Right". Telegraph.co.uk. March 26, 2010. Archived from the original on November 8, 2017. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  119. ^ "Global Anti-Semitism: Selected Incidents Around the World in 2013". ADL.org. Archived from the original on August 22, 2013. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
  120. ^ "Jewish nursery school attacked". Antisemitism.org.il. Volgograd: The Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism. August 27, 2013. Archived from the original on September 30, 2013. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
  121. ^ Krichevsky, Lev (July 30, 1999). "Rabbi's son foils bombing attempt at Moscow shul". j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California, Jweekly.com. Moscow. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Archived from the original on July 6, 2015. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
  122. ^ Kramer, Andrew E. (January 12, 2006). "World Briefing: Asia, Europe, Americas and Africa". The New York Times. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
  123. ^ "После покушения на раввина евреи Дагестана живут в страхе". Izrus.co.il. July 26, 2013. Archived from the original on August 5, 2013. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
  124. ^ Исраэль Шамир – Церковь: передышка закончилась [Israel Shamir – The Church: a break over]. Russdom.ru (in Russian). Archived from the original on October 5, 2013. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
  125. ^ "Pussy Riot ответят за все грехи". Radiovesti.ru. November 24, 2012. Archived from the original on October 5, 2013. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
  126. ^ "Russia is now scapegoating Jews in its battle against gays". Americablog.com. August 30, 2013. Archived from the original on April 10, 2014. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
  127. ^ "Russia's Jews Fading Away?". Israel National News. October 25, 2010. Archived from the original on June 27, 2013. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  128. ^ "Studies Begin for 1000 EuroStars participants". The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS.[permanent dead link]
  129. ^ Margolin, Dovid (May 22, 2015). "'Eurostars' Program Shines, Seen in the Effect on Russian Youth Visiting Europe". Chabad.org. Archived from the original on July 22, 2015. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  130. ^ "500 Russian Jews to shop at Paris market where Jews were killed". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. April 28, 2015. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 13, 2015. The delegation is part of the Russian Jewish community's Eurostars program, in which participants learn about Europe's Jewish communities and then travel to visit some of them.
  131. ^ "Russian Chief Rabbi, Seen as Putin Ally, Calls for End to Ukraine War". Haaretz.
  132. ^ "Moscow's former chief rabbi: 'The best option for Russian Jews is to leave'". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. January 3, 2023.
  133. ^ "Russia brands exiled former Moscow chief rabbi a 'foreign agent'". The Times of Israel. July 2, 2023.
  134. ^ "Всесоюзная перепись населения 1926 года". Demoscope.ru. Archived from the original on March 6, 2013. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  135. ^ "Всесоюзная перепись населения 1939 года". Demoscope.ru. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  136. ^ a b c "Приложение Демоскопа Weekly". Demoscope.ru. January 15, 2013. Archived from the original on October 12, 2013. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  137. ^ a b "Archived copy". Archived from the original on October 16, 2013. Retrieved April 14, 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  138. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on May 18, 2013. Retrieved December 22, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  139. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on May 18, 2013. Retrieved December 22, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  140. from the original on June 2, 2021. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  141. from the original on October 7, 2021. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  142. ^ a b "Jewish Population of the World". jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  143. ^ "YIVO | Belarus". Yivoencyclopedia.org. October 23, 1943. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  144. ^ 2019 Belarus Census
  145. ^ "Uzbek Census 2021". data.egov.uz.
  146. ^ a b "Ethnic composition of Azerbaijan 2009". Pop-stat.mashke.org. April 7, 1971. Archived from the original on July 29, 2013. Retrieved December 22, 2012.
  147. ^ a b "Ethnicities in Latvia. Statistics". Roots-saknes.lv. Archived from the original on May 24, 2013. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  148. ^ a b c d e f "OSS Report on Wartime Population Changes in the Baltic [1939–1944]". Lituanus.org. Archived from the original on January 11, 2013. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  149. ^ "Latvijas iedzīvotāju sadalījums pēc nacionālā sastāva un valstiskās piederības" (PDF). Pilsonības un migrācijas lietu pārvalde. January 18, 2021.
  150. ^ "UNdata | record view | Population by national and/Or ethnic group, sex and urban/Rural residence".
  151. ^ "Gyventojų ir būstų surašymai - Oficialiosios statistikos portalas".
  152. ^ "Rv0222U: Rahvastik Soo, Rahvuse Ja Maakonna Järgi, 1. Jaanuar. Haldusjaotus Seisuga 01.01.2018".
  153. from the original on June 2, 2021. Retrieved December 22, 2012.
  154. ^ "Republic of Moldova 2014 - Census de facto complete tabulation". Data.un.org.
  155. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 5, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  156. ^ "Kyrgyz Census 2021". stat.kg.
  157. ^ "HISTORY AND GENERAL INFORMATION ON THE TURKMENISTAN JEWISH COMMUNITY". jewseurasia.org.
  158. ^ "Turkmenistan Virtual Jewish History Tour". jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  159. ^ "Tajik Census 2010" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on January 16, 2013.
  160. ^ a b "World Jewish Population, 2002" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 21, 2020. Retrieved November 23, 2012.
  161. ^ a b "Powered by Google Docs". Docs.google.com. Archived from the original on June 2, 2021. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  162. ^ YIVO | Population and Migration: Population since World War I Archived January 22, 2021, at the Wayback Machine. Yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved on 2013-04-14.
  163. ^ "The Consequences of the Second World War and the Stalinist Repression" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 20, 2013. Retrieved October 13, 2012.
  164. ^ "Holocaust in Belorussia [Page 27]". Jewishgen.org. Archived from the original on October 24, 2012. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  165. ^ "Ethnic composition of Belarus 2009". Pop-stat.mashke.org. Archived from the original on June 16, 2020. Retrieved December 22, 2012.
  166. ^ "Database". Data.csb.gov.lv. Archived from the original on December 19, 2012. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  167. ^ "Rodiklių duomenų bazė". Db1.stat.gov.lt. Archived from the original on October 14, 2013. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  168. ^ "YIVO | Population and Migration: Population since World War I". Yivoencyclopedia.org. Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  169. ^ Sherwood, Harriet (August 17, 2011). "Israel's former Soviet immigrants transform adopted country". The Guardian. Archived from the original on March 12, 2020. Retrieved October 16, 2018.
  170. ^ a b "Fertility behaviour of recent immigrants to Israel: A comparative analysis of immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 12, 2007. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  171. ^ Wayne State University Press – Jewish Studies: – Page 1 Archived September 12, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  172. ^ "Jewish Zionist Education" (PDF). Jafi.org.il. May 15, 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 27, 2009. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  173. ^ "Monthly Bulletin of Statistics". Cbs.gov.il. Archived from the original on October 21, 2007. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  174. ^ "Population" (PDF). Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 12, 2008. Retrieved October 28, 2007.
  175. ^ "Table 1. - Immigrant population from USSR (former) (1), by year of immigration" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 12, 2008. Retrieved October 28, 2007.
  176. ^ "Mmigrant Population From The Former Ussr". CBS.gov.il. Archived from the original on October 14, 2013. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
  177. ^ Friedman, Ron (January 18, 2011). "Oz unit far from hitting deportation target for illegals". Jpost.com. Archived from the original on January 20, 2011. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  178. ^ "Aliyah on the Rise: 19,200 New Immigrants Arrive in Israel in 2013". Algemeiner. December 30, 2013. Archived from the original on April 10, 2014. Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  179. ^ "Immigration to Israel Rises by 7% – Led by French". Forward. December 29, 2013. Archived from the original on March 11, 2014. Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  180. ^ "Aliyah Hits Ten-Year High: Approximately 26,500 New Immigrants Arrived in Israel in 2014". The Jewish Agency. January 2, 2015. Archived from the original on July 2, 2015. Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  181. ^ "Aliyah Figures at Highest in a Decade; France Leads the Way". Arutz Sheva. December 31, 2014. Archived from the original on June 1, 2015. Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  182. Radio Free Europe
    (July 3, 2015)
  183. ^ Eylon Aslan-Levy (December 30, 2015). "Aliyah Numbers Rise, but Majority Coming From Just Three Countries". Tablet. Archived from the original on April 29, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2016.
  184. ^ Omri Efraim (December 29, 2015). "Aliyah to Israel increases in 2015". Ynetnews. Ynet News. Archived from the original on April 6, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2016.
  185. ^ Gross, Judah Ari. "Hundreds of Jews fleeing Ukraine to arrive in Israel next week". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
  186. ^ "In time for Passover: Israeli immigration minister visits Ukraine to get Jews to Israel". Israel365 News | Latest News. Biblical Perspective. April 7, 2022. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
  187. ^ Kershner, Isabel (23 March 2022). "Ukraine War Ignites Israeli Debate Over Purpose of a Jewish State". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 March 2022.
  188. ^ Sergio DellaPergola, "World Jewish Population 2002" Archived December 22, 2004, at the Wayback Machine, American Jewish Year Book, 102, New York, 2002
  189. ^ Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland. "Central Council of Jews in Germany". Zentralratdjuden.de. Archived from the original on December 26, 2017. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  190. ^ Foreigners in Wonderland: Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union Archived October 18, 2007, at the Wayback Machine by Judith Kessler
  191. ^ (in Russian) В Германии началась депопуляция еврейских общин Archived October 22, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (In Germany, Depopulation of Jewish Community Has Begun) by Pavel Polian. Demoscope
  192. ^ (in Russian) Новое о еврейских иммигрантах из б. СССР в Германию. Результаты государственного обследования Archived October 22, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (New About Jewish Immigrants from FSU to Germany.) by Pavel Polyan. Demoscope
  193. ^ http://jewishtoronto.org/getfile.asp?id=13787[permanent dead link]
  194. ^ Headapohl, Jackie (May 17, 2018). "Hero In Disguise". Detroit Jewish News.
  195. ^ Gruzman, Emmanuel (May 12, 2018). "Russian-speaking Jews in Australia: more difficulties at first but more satisfied at last". plus61j.net.au. May 12, 2018. Retrieved June 8, 2018.
  196. ^ "Australian Bureau of Statistics". abs.gov.au. Archived from the original on February 23, 2011. Retrieved June 8, 2018.
  197. ^ Matt Siegel (March 12, 2007). "In Finland, immigrants from FSU revitalize a dying Jewish community". Jewishtoronto.net. Archived from the original on March 10, 2008. Retrieved April 14, 2013.

Further reading

External links