History of the Jews in the Soviet Union
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The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is inextricably linked to much earlier
Armenia
The history of the Jews in Armenia dates back more than 2,000 years. After Eastern Armenia came under Russian rule in the early 19th century, Jews began arriving from
Azerbaijan
The History of the Jews in
Many Jewish émigrés from Azerbaijan settled in Tel-Aviv and
Belarus
The Jews in Belarus, then known as
In the second half of the 20th century, there was a large wave of Belarusian Jews immigrating to Israel (see
Estonia
The history of the Jews in Estonian SSR[9] starts with individual reports of Jews in what is now Estonia from as early as the 14th century. However, the process of permanent Jewish settlement in Estonia began in the 19th century, especially after they were granted the official right to enter the region by a statute of Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1865. This allowed the so-called Jewish 'Nicholas soldiers' (often former cantonists) and their descendants, First Guild merchants, artisans, and Jews with higher education to settle in Estonia and other parts of the Russian Empire outside their Pale of Settlement. The "Nicholas soldiers" and their descendants, and artisans were, basically, the ones who founded the first Jewish congregations in Estonia. The Tallinn congregation, the largest in Estonia, was founded in 1830. The Tartu congregation was established in 1866 when the first fifty families settled there. Synagogues were built, the largest of which were constructed in Tallinn in 1883 and Tartu in 1901. Both of these were subsequently destroyed by fire in World War II.
The life of the small Jewish community in Estonia was disrupted in 1940 with the
Georgia
The Georgian Jews (Georgian: ქართველი ებრაელები, romanized: kartveli ebraelebi) are from Georgia, in the Caucasus. Georgian Jews are one of the oldest communities in Georgia, tracing their migration into the country during the Babylonian captivity in 6th century BC.[12] In 1801, the Russian Empire annexed Eastern Georgia. In the beginning of the 19th century, Ashkenazi Russian Jews were forced to move to Georgia by the Russian government. The Ashkenazi Jews and the Georgian Jews began establishing contact with each other, but relations were strained. Georgian Jews viewed the Ashkenazim as godless and secular, while the Ashkenazim looked down on the Georgian Jews. Zionism was a uniting cause for the two groups. Beginning in 1863, groups of Jews began making aliyah, mostly for religious reasons. The Red Army invaded Georgia in February 1921, prompting a mass exodus from the region.
Initially, the Soviets allowed the Jews to maintain their religious customs, but after a Georgian rebellion in 1924, the Bolshevik government terminated all Zionist activity, imposed economic restrictions, and generally discriminated against the Jewish community.[citation needed] As a result, many Jewish businesses were bankrupted and 200 families applied for exit visas. Only 18 were allowed to emigrate. In the mid-1920s, the Soviets focused on industrializing and secularizing the Jews of Georgia. Mass numbers of Jews were forced to work in factories or to join craft cooperatives and collective farm projects. In 1927–1928, OZET, the organization for settling Jewish workers on farms, established a number of Jewish collective farms. These small homogeneous communities became isolated Jewish communities where Jewish learning was continued. Recognizing this, the Communists disbanded the communities in the 1930s, scattering the Jews among various farms and destroying Jewish communal life. The situation of the Jewish community of Georgia improved dramatically due to the end of the Soviet occupation.
Russia
Ukraine
Jews living in the
The Ukrainian Jews were targeted and murdered during the
See also
- History of the Jews in Armenia
- History of the Jews in Azerbaijan
- History of the Jews in Belarus
- History of the Jews in Carpathian Ruthenia
- History of the Jews in Estonia
- History of the Jews in Galicia (Eastern Europe)
- History of the Jews in Georgia
- History of the Jews in Kazakhstan
- History of the Jews in Kyrgyzstan
- History of the Jews in Latvia
- History of the Jews in Lithuania
- History of the Jews in Moldova
- History of the Jews in Russia
- History of Jews in Udmurtia and Tatarstan
- History of the Jews in Tajikistan
- History of the Jews in Turkmenistan
- History of the Jews in Ukraine
- History of the Jews in Uzbekistan
Aspects of Jewish history specific to the Soviet era
- Antisemitism in the Soviet Union
- Doctors' plot
- Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
- Night of the Murdered Poets
- Rootless cosmopolitan
- Stalin and antisemitism
- Jackson–Vanik amendment
- Lishkat Hakesher
- National Coalition Supporting Soviet Jewry
- Soviet Anti-Zionism
- Jewish Autonomous Oblast
- Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry
Post-Soviet Union
Pre-Soviet Union
- History of the Jews in the Russian Empire
Footnotes
- ISBN 0521389267– via Google Books.
- ^ ISBN 0253214181– via Google Books.
- ^ Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Eurasia: Armenia and Jews Archived 6 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ (in Russian) The Electronic Jewish Encyclopædia: Azerbaijan
- ISBN 978-0-02-866097-4.
- ^ Associated Press, 21 October 2008, "Belarus marks ghetto's destruction 65 years on"
- ^ [1] Archived 6 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c "Belarus: Virtual Jewish History Tour". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. 25 April 1991. Retrieved 16 April 2013.
- ^ Jewish History in Estonia at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org
- Holocaust and Genocide Studies12.2, 308–325.
- ^ Berg, Eiki (1994). The Peculiarities of Jewish Settlement in Estonia. GeoJournal 33.4, 465–470.
- ^ The Wellspring of Georgian Historiography: The Early Medieval Historical Chronicle The Conversion of Katli and The Life of St. Nino, Constantine B. Lerner, England: Bennett and Bloom, London, 2004, p. 60
- ^ a b c "YIVO | Ukraine". www.yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
- ^ "YIVO | Einsatzgruppen". www.yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
References
- Schneer, David (2004). Yiddish and the creation of Soviet Jewish culture 1918–1930. New York City: Cambridge University Press. OCLC 52418128.
- Gitelman, Zvi (2001). A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253214181.
Further reading
- Levin, Nora. The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917 (2 vol, NYU Press, 1988) online.
- Levy, Richard S., ed. Antisemitism: A historical encyclopedia of prejudice and persecution (Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO, 2005) pp 26–28.
- Murav, Harriet; Estraikh, Gennady, eds. (2014). Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering. Boston: JSTOR j.ctt1zxsjkw.