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History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
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v • d • e

The vast territories of the Russian Empire at one time hosted the
largest Jewish population in the world. Within these territories the
Jewish community flourished and developed many of modern Judaism's
most distinctive theological and cultural traditions, while also
facing periods of intense antisemitic discriminatory policies and
persecutions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many Soviet Jews took
advantage of liberalized emigration policies, with over half their
population leaving, most for Israel. Despite this, the Jews in Russia
and the nations of the former Soviet Union constitute one of the
larger Jewish populations in Europe.

Contents [hide]
1 Early history
2 Tsarist Russia (1480s-1917)
2.1 Pogroms and the Pale of Settlement
2.2 Mass emigration and political activism
2.2.1 Jews and Bolshevism
3 After the October Revolution (1917-1991)
3.1 Under Lenin (1917-1924)
3.2 Under Stalin (1927-1953)
3.2.1 Before World War II
3.2.2 On the eve of the Holocaust
3.2.3 The Holocaust
3.2.4 Soviet reaction to the Holocaust
3.2.5 After World War II
3.3 After Stalin
3.4 The Soviet Union and Zionism
3.4.1 Effects of the Cold War
4 The collapse of the Soviet Union and emigration to Israel
5 Jews in Russia today
5.1 Jewish life
5.2 Post-Soviet countries and antisemitism
5.2.1 Russia
5.2.2 Ukraine
5.2.3 Belarus
5.2.4 Tajikistan
6 Assimilation trends
7 Demographic data
8 See also
9 Footnotes
10 References
10.1 In Russian
11 External links

[edit] Early history
Tradition places Jews in southern Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and
Georgia since before the days of the First Temple, and 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. Under the influence of
these Jewish communities, Bulan, the Khagan Bek of the Khazars, and
the ruling classes of Khazaria adopted Judaism at some point in the
mid-to-late 8th or early 9th centuries. After the overthrow of the
Khazarian kingdom by Sviatoslav I of Kiev (969), Jews in large numbers
fled to the Crimea, the Caucasus, and the Russian principality of Kiev
which was formerly a part of the Khazar territory. In the 11th and
12th centuries the Jews appear to have occupied in Kiev a separate
quarter, called the Jewish town ("Zhidove", i.e. "The Jews"), the
gates probably leading to which were known as the Jewish gates
("Zhidovskiye vorota"). The Kievan community was oriented towards
Byzantium (the Romaniotes), Babylonia and Palestine in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, but appears to have been increasingly open to the
European Ashkenazim from the twelfth century on. Few products of
Kievan Jewish intellectual activity are extant, however. Other
communities, or groups of individuals, are known from Chernigov and,
probably, Volodymyr-Volynskyi. At that time Jews are found also in
northeastern Russia, in the domains of Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky
(1169-1174), although it is uncertain to which degree they were living
there permanently.

Bukharan Jewish school. Samarkand, ca. 1910Though Russia had few Jews,
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 naturally accepted Polish
ruler Casimir III's invitation to settle in Polish-controlled areas of
Eastern Europe as a third estate, performing commercial, middleman
services in an agricultural society for the Polish king and nobility
between 1330 and 1370, during Casimir the Great's reign. Approximately
85 percent of the Jews in Poland during the 14th century were involved
in estate management, tax and toll collecting, moneylending or trade.

After settling in Poland (later Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) and
Hungary (later Austria-Hungary), the population expanded into the
lightly populated areas of Ukraine and Lithuania, which were to become
part of the expanding Russian empire. In 1495 Alexander the
Jagiellonian expelled the Jews from Grand Duchy of Lithuania but
reversed his decision in 1503.

Vilna Gaon
Baal Shem Tov from Podolia, the founder of Hasidism
Shneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of Chabad LubavitchIn the shtetls
populated almost entirely by Jews, or in the middle-sized town where
Jews constituted a significant part of population, Jewish communities
traditionally ruled themselves according to halakha, and were limited
by the privileges granted them by local rulers. (See also Shtadlan).
These Jews were not assimilated into the larger eastern European
societies, and identified as an ethnic group with a unique set of
religious beliefs and practices, as well as an ethnically unique
economic role.

[edit] Tsarist Russia (1480s-1917)
Documentary evidence as to the presence of Jews in Muscovite Russia is
first found in the chronicles of 1471. The relatively small population
of Jews were generally free of major persecution: although there were
laws against them during this period, they do not appear to be
strictly enforced.

In the 1480s the principality of Muscovy became the religious
equivalent of the Caliphate or Holy Roman Empire. Based on the theory
of the Third Rome, it was believed that the Tsar ruled the only
rightful, practically independent Orthodox state, surrounded by Muslim
and Roman Catholic infidels. According to prophecy, there were to be
only three Romes, that is, centers of rightful religious faith. The
first two, ancient Rome and Constantinople, have already fallen,
leaving the only hope on earth with Moscow. The religious zeal of such
a theory reasoned for the ultimate measures against the "enemies of
the faith", including the Jews.

Muscovite treatment of the Jews became harsher in the reign of Ivan
IV, The Terrible (1533-84). For example, in his conquest of Polotsk in
February 1563, some 300 local Jews who declined to convert to
Christianity were, according to legend, drowned in the Dvina.

Jews were not tolerated in the area of Muscovy, from 1721 the official
doctrine of Imperial Russia was openly antisemitic. Even if Jews were
tolerated for some modest time, eventually they were expelled, as when
the captured part of Ukraine was cleared of Jews in the year 1727.
These policies made Muscovite Russia a very hostile environment for
Jewish people.

See also Chmielnicki Uprising

[edit] Pogroms and the Pale of Settlement

Map of the Pale of SettlementThe traditional measures of keeping
Russia free of Jews failed when the main territory of Poland was
annexed during the partitions. During the second (1793) and the third
(1795) partitions, large populations of Jews were taken over by
Russia, and the Tsar established a Pale of Settlement that included
Poland and Crimea. Jews were supposed to remain in the Pale and
required special permission to move to Russia proper, while Russian
officials pursued alternating policies designed to encourage
assimiliation (such as opening public schools to Jews) and destroy
independent Jewish life (such as forbidding Jews to live in certain
towns).

Rebellions beginning with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, followed by
the struggle of Russia's intelligentsia, and the rise of nihilism,
liberalism, socialism, syndicalism, and finally Communism threatened
the old tsarist order. Assuming that many radicals were of Jewish
extraction, tsarist officials increasingly resorted to popularizing
religious and nationalistic fanaticism.

Sholom Aleichem, a Yiddish writer who portrayed life in the
PaleAlexander II, known as the "Tsar liberator" for the 1861 abolition
of serfdom in Russia, was also known for his suppression of national
minorities. Under his rule Jews could not commission Christian
servants, could not own land, and were restricted to where they could
and couldn't travel.[1] Nevertheless, he approved the policy of Polish
politician Alexander Wielopolski in the Kingdom of Poland that gave
Jews equal rights to other citizens (the prior status of Jews was
different; it is questionable whether this distinct status was more or
less beneficial). Alexander III was a staunch reactionary who strictly
adhered to the old maxim "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationalism." His
escalation of anti-Jewish policies sought to popularize "folk
antisemitism," which portrayed the Jews as "Christ-killers" and the
oppressors of the Slavic, Christian victims.

A large-scale wave of anti-Jewish pogroms swept southern Russia in
1881, after Jews were wrongly blamed for the assassination of
Alexander II. In the 1881 outbreak, there were pogroms in 166 Russian
towns, thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many families reduced
to extremes of poverty; women sexually assaulted, and large numbers of
men, women, and children killed or injured. The new czar, Alexander
III, blamed the Jews for the riots and on May 15, 1882 introduced the
so-called Temporary Regulations ("Временные правила") that stayed in
effect for more than thirty years and came to be known as the May
Laws.

The victims of a 1905 pogrom in DnipropetrovskThe Chief Procurator of
the Holy Synod and the tsar's mentor, friend, and adviser Konstantin
Pobedonostsev was reported as saying that one-third of Russia's Jews
was expected to emigrate, one-third to accept baptism, and one-third
to starve.[2] The respressive legislation was repeatedly revised. Many
historians noted the concurrence of these state-enforced antisemitic
policies with waves of pogroms[3] that continued until 1884, with at
least tacit government knowledge and in some cases policemen were seen
inciting or joining the mob.

In the aftermath of the first Kishinev pogrom. Theodore Roosevelt to
Nicholas II: "Stop your cruel oppression of the Jews."[4]The
systematic policy of discrimination banned Jews 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 St. Petersburg, held at 3%. Strict restrictions prohibited
Jews from practicing many professions. In 1886, an Edict of Expulsion
was enforced on Jews of Kiev. In 1891, Moscow was cleansed of its Jews
(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."[5]

Literacy rates in 1897[6] Category Russian
Empire Russian
Jews
Males 38.7 64.6
Females 17.0 36.6
Average 27.7 50.1
The restrictions placed on education, traditionally highly valued in
Jewish communities, resulted in ambition to excel over the peers and
increased emigration rates.

Joseph Trumpeldor, the most decorated Jewish soldier in the Russian
Army for his bravery in the Russo-Japanese WarIn 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… That way,
reverse proportional representation was achieved: the majority of
town's taxpayers had to be subjugated to minority governing the town
against Jewish interests."[7]

[edit] Mass emigration and political activism
Jewish emigration from Russia, 1880-1928[8] Destination Number
Australia 5,000
Canada 70,000
Europe 240,000
Palestine region 45,000
South Africa 45,000
South America 111,000
USA 1,749,000
The persecutions provided the impetus for mass emigration and
political activism among Russian Jews. More than two million of them
fled Russia between 1880 and 1920. While vast majority emigrated to
the United States, some turned to Zionism. In 1882, members of Bilu
and Hovevei Zion made what came to be known the First Aliyah to
Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire.

The founder of Hovevei Zion Leon PinskerThe 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 Eretz Israel," (known as the "Odessa Committee"
headed by Leon Pinsker) dedicated to practical aspects in establishing
agricultural Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel.

A larger wave of pogroms broke out in 1903-1906, leaving an estimated
2,000 Jews dead, and many more wounded. At least some of the pogroms
are believed to have been organized or supported by the Tsarist
Russian secret police, the Okhranka.

Even more pogroms accompanied the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the
ensuing Russian Civil War, when an estimated 70,000 to 250,000
civilian Jews were killed in atrocities throughout the former Russian
Empire; the number of Jewish orphans exceeded 300,000. In his book 200
Years Together, Alexander Solzhenitsyn provides the following numbers
from Nahum Gergel's 1951 study of the pogroms in the Ukraine during
1917-1918: out of estimated 887 mass pogroms, about 40% were
perpetrated by the Ukrainian forces led by Symon Petliura, 25% by the
Green Army and various nationalist and anarchist gangs, 17% by the
White Army, especially forces of Anton Denikin, and 8.5% by the Red
Army.

See also Cantonist, Kishinev pogrom, Beilis trial, Jewish gauchos

[edit] Jews and Bolshevism
See also: Jewish Bolshevism

The Protocols published by Russian emigrants in Paris, 1927. The cover
image portrays the Bolshevik Revolution as an alleged "Jewish
plot"Many members of the Bolshevik party were ethnically Jewish,
especially in the leadership of the party, and the percentage of
Jewish party members among the rival Mensheviks was even higher. 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 leadership. This fact
was abused by the Tsarist secret police, the Okhranka, which used
antisemitism and xenophobia as a weapon against the Russian
revolutionary movement and promulgated fraudulent Protocols of the
Elders of Zion to explain Russian revolutions as a part of a powerful
world conspiracy.

White Army propaganda poster depicting Leon Trotsky, the founder of
the Red Army. The caption reads: "Peace and Liberty in
Sovdepia"Because some of the leading Bolsheviks were ethnic Jews, and
Bolshevism supports a policy of promoting international proletarian
revolution—most notably in the case of Leon Trotsky—led many enemies
of Bolshevism, and continues to lead contemporary antisemites, to draw
a picture of Communism as a political slur at Jews and accusing Jews
of pursuing Bolshevism to benefit Jewish interests, reflected in the
terms "Jewish Bolshevism" or "Judeo-Bolshevism". In Nazi Germany, the
regime of Adolf Hitler used this theory as a rallying cry to paint a
picture of a supposed "Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy". Even today, many
antisemites continue to promote the idea of a link between the Jews
and Communism. The original atheistic and internationalistic ideology
of the Bolsheviks (See proletarian internationalism, bourgeois
nationalism) was incompatible with Jewish traditionalism and the later
covert tendencies towards Russian nationalism and (especially after
World War II) antisemitism in the Soviet regime placed many secular
Jews in conflict with the regime.

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".

Most of the Old Bolsheviks, Jewish and Gentile alike, including
members of the Yevsektsiya, were repressed by Stalin during the Great
Purge of 1930s.

[edit] After the October Revolution (1917-1991)

[edit] Under Lenin (1917-1924)
In March 1919, Lenin delivered a speech "On Anti-Jewish Pogroms"[9] on
a gramophone disc. Lenin sought to explain the phenomenon of
antisemitism in 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
Stalin, who expounded Lenin's critique of antisemitism. However, this
did not prevent the widely publicized repressions of Jewish
intellectuals during 1948–1953 (see After World War II).

Such actions, along with extensive Jewish participation among the
Bolsheviks, plagued the Communists during the Russian Civil War
against the Whites with a reputation of being "a gang of marauding
Jews"; Jews comprised a majority in the Communist Central Committee,
outnumbering even ethnic Russians. At the same time, the vast majority
of Russia's Jews, much like their ethnic Russian neighbours, were not
in any political party.

The attempts of the socialist Jewish Labor 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 other socialist parties in Russia, the Bund was
initially opposed to the Bolsheviks' seizing of power in 1917 and to
the dissolving 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 under Rafael Abramovich,
while many Bundists joined the Mensheviks.

In 1921, a large number of Jews opted for Poland, as they were
entitled by peace treaty in Riga to choose the country they preferred.
Several hundred thousand, despite the prospect of a Communist
paradise, joined the already numerous Jewish population of Poland.

[edit] Under Stalin (1927-1953)

Jewish Autonomous Oblast on the map of Russia
[edit] Before World War II
Russian Jews were long considered a non-native "Semitic" ethnicity in
a "Slavic" Russia, and such categorization was solidified when ethnic
minorities in the Soviet Union were categorized according to ethnicity
(национальность), with Jews being no exception. Under Stalin, a Soviet
minority was required to have a culture, a language, and a homeland.

To offset the growing Jewish national and religious aspirations of
Zionism and to successfully categorize Soviet Jews under Stalin's
nationality, an alternative to the Land of Israel was established with
the help of Komzet and OZET in 1928. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast with
the center in Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East was to become a
"Soviet Zion". Yiddish, rather than "reactionary" Hebrew, would be the
national language, and proletarian socialist literature and arts would
replace Judaism as the quintessence of culture. Despite a massive
domestic and international state propaganda campaign, the Jewish
population there never reached 30% (as of 2003 it was only about
1.2%). The experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s, during
Stalin's first campaign of purges. Jewish leaders were arrested and
executed, and Yiddish schools were shut down.

Stalin's letter "Antisemitism: Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News
Agency in the United States" dated January 12, 1931 indicated his
official position:

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.[10]

In 1936 Pravda, the party's newspaper and main propaganda organ,
printed a beneficial explanation of the vile nature of antisemitism.
It stated that "national and racial chauvinism is a survival of the
barbarous practices of the cannibalistic period... it served the
exploiters... to protect capitalism from the attack of the working
class; antisemitism, a phenomenon profoundly hostile to the Soviet
Union, is repressed in the USSR."

Despite the official Soviet opposition to antisemitism, critics of the
ensuing USSR characterize it as an antisemitic regime, pointing out
the Non-Aggression Pact with Nazi Germany, the Jewish casualties in
the Great Purges, and Soviet hostility toward Jewish religious and
cultural institutions (The Purges, and this hostility, however, that
was applied with practically equal force against all religious and non-
communist cultural institutions). They also cite Soviet anti-Zionism.
The Soviet Union did vote in favor of the Partition Plan of Resolution
181, which opened the way for the creation of the state of Israel, in
the United Nations 1947 vote, and also recognized Israel immediately
after the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was
unilaterally proclaimed, Soviet support for Israel was short-lived,
though important. In 1948 the Israelis used vital Soviet arms,
obtained via Czechoslovakia to defend the new state. Soviet
authorities refused to grant emigration visas for Israel to Soviet
Jews, and the USSR took a generally consistent pro-Arab stance during
the cold war.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact—the 1939 non-aggression pact with Nazi
Germany—created further suspicion regarding the Soviet Union's
position toward Jews. The pact, arguably allowed Hitler to freely
enter Poland, the nation with the world's largest Jewish population,
but it was neither an acceptance of Nazism nor instigated by anti-
Jewish objectives. With Western backing of the White Russian army in
the Russian Civil War a recent memory, and with the failure of Popular
Front politics, Stalin appears to have despaired of an alliance with
the Western democracies against the Nazis. Believing the USSR to be
incapable of resisting the Nazis militarily, he sought a deal. This
was certainly a disaster for Eastern Europe's Jews, but that was a
side effect rather than a motivation.

The Great Purges are popularly portrayed as antisemitic in the West,
thereby ignoring the actual context of Stalin's consolidation of
power. A number of the most prominent victims of the Purges—Trotsky,
Zinoviev, and Kamenev, to name a few—were ethnic Jews. That is,
however, an oversimplification, since Stalin was just as brutal when
acting against his real or imagined enemies who were not Jewish—e.g.,
Bukharin, Tukhachevsky, Kirov, and Ordzhonikidze. The number of
prominent Jewish Old Bolsheviks killed in the purge reflects the fact
that Jews were the largest group in the Central Committee after the
Russians and that Jews had a high participation among the Bolsheviks.

In addition, some Stalinists survived notwithstanding their Jewish
heritage. Stalin did not purge Lazar Kaganovich, a loyal supporter who
came to Stalin's attention in the 1920s as a successful bureaucrat in
Tashkent, who aided Stalin and Molotov against Kirov and who
participated in his brutal elimination of rivals in the 1930s.
Kaganovich's loyalty endured after Stalin's death, when his opposition
to de-Stalinization caused him to be expelled from the party in 1957,
along with Molotov.

[edit] On the eve of the Holocaust
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 shtetls to newly
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.

Due to 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 great wave of deportations from the areas annexed by
Soviet Union according to the Nazi-Soviet pact, often seen by victims
as genocide, paradoxically also saved lives of a few hundred thousand
Jewish deportees. However horrible their conditions, the fate of Jews
in Nazi Germany was much worse. The migration of many Jews deeper East
from the part of the Jewish Pale that would become occupied by Germany
saved at least forty percent of this area's Jewish population.

[edit] The Holocaust
Main article: The Holocaust
Over two million Soviet Jews died during the Holocaust, second only to
the number of Polish Jews who fell victim to Hitler. Even before the
mass deportations to the death camps in 1942, German death squads, the
Einsatzkommandos, shot hundreds of thousands of Jews throughout 1941.
Among some of the larger massacres in 1941 were: 33,771 Jews of Kiev
shot in ditches at Babi Yar; 100,000 Jews of Vilna killed in the
forests of 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. Though mass shootings continued through 1942, most notably
16,000 Jews shot at Pinsk, Jews were increasingly shipped to
concentration camps in 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, Gypsies,
homosexuals and Jews alike. Under the Nazi occupation, some members of
the Ukrainian and Latvian 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.

Over 200,000 Jews died in battle fighting in the Red Army against the
Nazis.

[edit] Soviet reaction to the Holocaust

1946. The official response to an inquiry by JAC about the
participation of the Jewish soldiers in the war (1.8% of the total
number). Some antisemites attempted to accuse Jews of the lack of
patriotism and of hiding from the military serviceThe typical Soviet
policy regarding the Holocaust was to present it as atrocities against
Soviet citizens, given that the first victims of Auschwitz were Soviet
prisoners of war. However, official Soviet texts usually did
acknowledge the specific genocidal targeting of the Jews. For example,
after the liberation of Kiev from the Nazi occupation in 1943, the
Extraordinary State Commission (Чрезвычайная Государственная Комиссия)
was set out to investigate Nazi crimes and its first report was ready
by December 25, 1943. It contained (a preserved copy exists) the
following sentence:

"The Hitlerist bandits committed mass murder of the Jewish population.
They announced that on September 29, 1941, all the Jews were required
to arrive to the corner of Melnikov and Dokterev streets and bring
their documents, money and valuables. The butchers marched them to
Babi Yar, took away their belongings, then shot them."
The officially censored version of the text was:

"The Hitlerist bandits brought thousands of civilians to the corner of
Melnikov and Dokterev streets. The butchers marched them to Babi Yar,
took away their belongings, then shot them."[11]
See also Vasily Grossman, Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Black Book

[edit] After World War II

Solomon MikhoelsIn January 1948 Solomon Mikhoels, a popular actor-
director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater and the chairman of the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was killed in a suspicious car accident.
[12] Mass arrests of prominent Jewish intellectuals and suppression of
Jewish culture followed under the banners of campaign against
"rootless cosmopolitans" and anti-Zionism. On August 12, 1952, in the
event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets, thirteen most
prominent Yiddish writers, poets, actors and other intellectuals were
executed on the orders of Joseph Stalin, among them Peretz Markish,
Leib Kvitko, David Hofstein, Itzik Feffer and David Bergelson.[13] In
the 1955 UN Assembly's session a high Soviet official still denied the
"rumors" about their disappearance.

A caricature from the Soviet magazine "Krokodil", January 1953The
Doctors' plot allegation in 1953 was a deliberately antisemitic
policy: Stalin targeted "corrupt Jewish bourgeois nationalists,"
eschewing the usual code words like "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.

See also "Russian" aliyah in Israel.

[edit] Jews in Russia today

[edit] Jewish life

A prayer in a Moscow synagogueMost Russian Jews are secular and
identify themselves as Jews via ethnicity rather than religion,
similar to secular Jews in America and other Western countries,
although interest about Jewish identity as well as practice of Jewish
tradition amongst Russian Jews is growing. Lubavitch has been a
catalyst in this sector, setting up synagogues and Jewish
kindergartens in Russian cities with Jewish populations. In addition,
most Russian Jews have relatives in Israel.

Since the dissolution of the USSR, democratization in the former USSR
has brought with it a good deal of tragic irony for the country's
minorities, especially the Jewish population. The absence of Soviet-
era repression exposed the remaining Jews to a resurgence of
antisemitism in the former Soviet Union. However, there has not been a
return to mass antisemitic incidents in Russia or anywhere else
throughout the former Soviet Union.

Russian Jews are well represented in the fields of medicine, law,
science and education. Henri Reznik, the head of Moscow Bar
Association, as well as three out of five wealthiest oligarchs in
Russia, are Jewish: Roman Abramovich tops the list, Mikhail Fridman is
in the third position and Viktor Vekselberg in fifth. Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, a former oil tycoon and outspoken critic of president
Vladimir Putin who has been jailed on tax evasion charges, is also
Jewish. Exiled oligarchs Boris Berezovsky, fugutive Leonid Nevzlin and
Vladimir Gusinsky are likewise Jewish.

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.

Perhaps stemming from the now obsolete Soviet nationality policy, a
linguistic distinction remains to this day in the Russian language
where there are two terms for "Jew". The word Еврей ("Yevrey" -
Hebrew) typically denotes a Jewish ethnicity, while the world Иудей
("Iudey" - Judean) is reserved for denoting a follower of the Jewish
religion, although the latter term has mostly fallen out of use.

[edit] Post-Soviet countries and antisemitism

[edit] Russia

A demonstration in Russia. The antisemitic slogans cite Henry Ford and
Empress ElizabethDespite stipulations against fomenting hatred based
on ethnic or religious grounds (Article 282 of Russian Federation
Penal Code),[17] anti-Semitic pronouncements, speeches and articles
are not uncommon in Russia, and there are a large number of anti-
Semitic neo-Nazi groups in the republics of the former Soviet Union,
leading Pravda to declare in 2002 that "Anti-Semitism is booming in
Russia".[18] Over the past few years there have also been bombs
attached to antisemitic signs, apparently aimed at Jews, and other
violent incidents, including stabbings, have been recorded.

The government of Vladimir Putin takes an official stand against
antisemitism, while some movements parties and groups are explicitly
antisemitic. In January 2005, a group of 15 Duma members demanded that
Judaism and Jewish organizations be banned from Russia.[19] In June,
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.[20][21]

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 anti-Semitic titles was recently
published, including Mein Kampf translated to Russian (2002), The Myth
of Holocaust by Jürgen Graf, a title by Douglas Reed, Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, and others.

Antisemitic incidents have ranged from random acts of violence against
Jews to the detonation of explosives in Jewish communities, to high-
profile cases such as the stabbing of eight Russian Jews in a Moscow
synagogue on January 11, 2006 by a man with neo-Nazi ties. See also:
Pamyat, Neo-Nazism in Russia.

[edit] Ukraine
In Ukraine, renewed nationalist sentiment has fueled antisemitism.
Jewish schools and synagogues have been firebombed and assaulted, and
Jewish cemeteries vandalized.

Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP), the largest non-
governmental university in the country, hosted white supremacist David
Duke in June of 2005, as part of his European and Middle East tour for
the promotion of his book, Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening on the
Jewish Question. Duke co-hosted a conference named "Zionism As the
Biggest Threat to Modern Civilization" during his stay and received an
honorary doctorate from the university in September of 2005.

[edit] Belarus
In Belarus, anti-Jewish incidents are considerably less frequent than
in Russia or Ukraine, due to the fact that President Lukashenko
represses all movements that can become a threat to the regime,
including local neo-Nazi parties and organizations. Nonetheless,
antisemitic incidents, such as vandalization of Jewish Holocaust
memorials, cemeteries, and synagogues do occur.

[edit] Tajikistan
In Tajikistan, the government began demolition on the Dushanbe
synagogue on February 22, 2006 to make way for a new presidential
palace. The synagogue was the last remaining synagogue in Tajikistan,
and was actively being used for worship until the time of its
destruction. The government completed demolition of the Jewish
community's kosher butcher, mikveh, and classroom earlier in 2006. In
late March, 2006, the government reversed its decision and will allow
the community to rebuild the synagogue on its current site.

[edit] Assimilation trends
In the Tsarist Russia, assimilation, russification and conversion to
the state religion of Orthodox Christianity were official policies.
After coming to power and dealing severe blows to all religions, the
Bolsheviks undertook efforts to form a new nation of the Soviet people
(Советский народ).

The Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union, one of the world's most
ethnically diverse nations, with hundreds of distinct nationalities,
was also home to a Jewish population of about two million before its
disintegration in 1991, making Jews the eleventh largest Soviet
nationality (the USSR classified Jews as a nationality). Despite such
diversity, Jews were a unique minority in the ideological state.
Before and after the Bolshevik Revolution many of the Russian,
Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Baltic Jews embraced secular education and
culture, thereby becoming a minority that had adapted the Russian
language and culture.

Jews, in that sense, were not "foreigners" within Soviet Russia but
instead a distinct, cohesive group bounded by a common value system,
Yiddish language, exclusive cultural institutions, synagogues, and
Zionist nationalism, despite the absence of a territorial unit or a
single locale. This existence is thus alien to Marxism-Leninism as
espoused by the Soviet state, which viewed Jewish cohesiveness as
resulting from class struggle, binding proletariat Jews to Jews in
oppressor classes. Marxist egalitarianism and universality suggested
that it would be ideal to see the assimilation of Jews and the
renunciation of Judaism, in a sense contradicting the elements that
allowed Jews to be distinct members of society. All Soviet ethnic
groups, such as Russians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Tatars, were encouraged
to look at class over nationality, but did not face assimilation and
cultural annihilation because of their individual locales and common
languages. While Jews had been bound together in the past by Yiddish,
most by the end of the Stalinist era had already adapted the Russian
language and culture, and tended to live alongside Slavic gentiles.

Certain Marxists predicted such a sociological trend, but
miscalculated the extent to which this trend would erode the
cohesiveness of the Jewish community. Karl Marx and some later
Marxists assumed that the Jewish identity would cease to exist after
the demise of capitalism since man can only be free when he
transcended the confines of individuality and locality and recognized
a shared humanity, "a universal existence", free of antagonism and
divisiveness, which, he believed, only existed due to class struggle.
Although the Jewish community went from being one of the most isolated
in Europe to one of its most assimilated from the time of the
Bolshevik Revolution to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the
identity has not faded away.

Law throughout Soviet history, however, listed Jews as one of the
Union's "basic nations", with their own language (Yiddish), and their
own autonomous region, a failed, inhospitable settlement in the
Russian Far East that was nonetheless symbolic. The word
"Еврей" (Yevrei, "Jew") was also listed in the
"национальность" ("nationality") section (the infamous "Пятая
графа" (pyataya grafa, "the fifth record") of the obligatory internal
passport document, which stated the ethnic or national background of
all Soviet citizens. Such treatment of Jews as a nationality is
somewhat alien to Jewish law, but reminiscent of Zionism. In May 1976,
the Soviet journal Party Life prominently displayed Jews as a distinct
"nationality."

While Soviet socialism clearly did not destroy the Jewish identity, it
nevertheless weakened a degree of cultural cohesiveness. Hebrew and
Yiddish languages, Jewish theaters, Jewish schools, religion and
Zionism bounded the Soviet Jewish population together despite the
absence of a common locale; but these were the very elements
restricted by a Soviet Union promoting secularism among all its
citizens. The closings of synagogues and other important Jewish
cultural institutions, such as theaters, schools and periodicals, were
conducted under this ideological context of egalitarianism. While
threatening to Judaism and the Jewish culture, the regime enforced the
same policies on other religions, leading to the development of a
modern, secular state. However, after the end of the Second World War,
the restrictions against Christians and Muslims were gradually
reduced, while the persecution of Judaism remained in force. The rise
of Jewish secularism thus paralleled social trends among Soviet non-
Jews, but had threatening overtones to Jewish existence. Soviet
secularism, the discouragement of Yiddish, and the restriction of
other elements that forged an exclusive, Jewish identity, caused
assimilation to be a foreboding threat to Jewish existence. Soviet
rule can be characterized by a rise in intermarriages and abandonment
of Jewish identities by those who were eager to prove their loyalty to
the Communist Party's atheism and proletarian internationalism, and
committed to stamp out any sign of "Jewish cultural particularism",
such as Leon Trotsky, Maxim Litvinov or Lazar Kaganovich.

Assimilated Jews significantly contributed to Russian and Soviet multi-
ethnic culture, science and technology. It is hard to imagine Russian
art without Isaac Levitan and Léon Bakst; Russian literature—Isaac
Babel, Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak; Russian ballet—Ida
Rubinstein and Maya Plisetskaya; Soviet cinematography— Sergei
Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Mikhail Romm, Grigori Chukhrai; Russian and
Soviet music—Anton Rubinstein and Isaak Dunayevsky; comedy—Faina
Ranevskaya, Arkady Raikin and Mikhail Zhvanetsky; science—Lev Landau,
Abram Ioffe and Yakov Zel'dovich; defense industry—Boris Vannikov,
Mikhail Gurevich (of MiG) and Semyon Lavochkin.

[edit] Demographic data
The official census data on Jewish population of Imperial Russia and
the Soviet Union.[22] The number of Jews has fallen from about 2.15
million in 1970 (the third largest population in the world, after the
USA and Israel, and the fourth largest ethnic group in the Soviet
Union) to 1.45 million in 1989 (less than 600,000 in Russia itself)
and to some 250,000 in Russia, according to the 2002 census. The
decline is mostly due to emigration to Israel, but close to one
million Jews living on former Soviet territory other than Russia do
not appear in the most recent census.

Year Jewish population, millions Note
1914 More than 5.25 Russian Empire
1939 3 A result of border change, emigration, assimilation and
repressions
Early 1941 5.4 A result of the annexation of Western Ukraine and
Belarus, Baltic republics, and inflow of Jewish refugees from Poland
1959 2.26 See the Shoah (Holocaust)
1970 2.15
1979 1.81
1989 1.45
End of 1993 Less than 0.4 A result of mass emigration and
assimilation. Militaryov calls this number "especially funny". By his
estimate, the real number should be 2-3 million. See also Jewish
Virtual Library

The Jewish population in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of the Russian
Far East as of 2002 is 2,327 (1.22%).

The Bukharan Jews, self-designating as Yahudi, Isroel or Banei Isroel,
live mainly in Uzbek cities. The number of Central Asian Jews was
around 20,800 in 1959. Before mass emigration, they spoke a dialect of
the Tajik language. [1]

The Georgian Jews numbered about 35,700 in 1964, most of them living
in Georgia. [2]

The Caucasian Mountain Jews, also known as Tats or Dagchufuts, live
mostly in Dagestan, with a scattered population in Azerbaijan. In
1959, they numbered around 15,000 in Dagestan and 10,000 in
Azerbaijan. Their Tat language is a dialect of Persian. [3]

The Crimean Jews, self-designating as Krymchaks, traditionally lived
in the Crimea, numbering around 5,700 in 1897. Due to a famine, a
number emigrated to Turkey and the USA in the 1920. The remaining
population was virtually annihilated in the Holocaust during the Nazi
occupation of the Crimea, but Krymchaks re-settled the Crimea after
the war, and in 1959, between 1,000 and 1,800 had returned. [4]

[edit] See also
Jewish history and Jewish diaspora
Timeline of Jewish History
History of the Jews in Poland
History of the Jews in Carpathian Ruthenia
History of the Jews in Bessarabia
Ashkenazi Jews - Lithuanian Jews - Georgian Jews - Bukharan Jews -
Mountain Jews
History of antisemitism
Sect of Skhariya the Jew
Regional history
History of the Soviet Union
History of Russia
History of Ukraine
History of Belarus
History of Poland
History of Latvia
History of Lithuania
Jewish Autonomous Oblast
Other
List of Jews from the Soviet Union
Russification
Rootless cosmopolitan
[edit] Footnotes
^ Duffy, James P., Vincent L. Ricci, Czars: Russia's Rulers for Over
One Thousand Years, p. 324
^ History of the national question in Russia at Russian Committee in
defense of the human rights (in Russian), also in AXT: Russia and in
Studies in Comparative Genocide by Levon Chorbajian (p.237)
^ A History of Russia by Nicholas Riasanovsky, p.395
^ 1904 Chromolithograph (Library of Congress
^ But Were They Good for the Jews? by Elliot Rosenberg, p.183
^ Age 10 and up. Comparative literacy rates in Russian Empire in 1897
at Beyond the Pale
^ The newest history of the Jewish people, 1789-1914 by Simon Dubnow,
vol.3, Russian ed., p.152
^ Jewish Emigration from Russia: 1880 - 1928 (Beyond the Pale)
^ Lenin's March 1919 speech On Anti-Jewish Pogroms («О погромной
травле евреев»: text, audio (help·info))
^ Joseph Stalin. Works, Vol. 13, July 1930-January 1934, Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955, p. 30
^ Draft report by the Commission for Crimes Committed by the Nazis in
Kiev from February 1944. The page 14 shows changes made by G.F.
Aleksandrov, head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the
Party's Central Committee
^ According to historian Gennady Kostyrchenko, recently opened Soviet
archives contain evidence that the assassination was organized by L.M.
Tsanava and S. Ogoltsov of the MVD
^ Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-
Fascist Committee (introduction) by Joshua Rubenstein
^ A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson, London, 1987, p.527
^ UN Debate Regarding the Special Committee on Palestine: Gromyko
Statement. 14 May 1947 77th Plenary Meeting Document A/2/PV.77
^ History of Dissident Movement in the USSR by Ludmila Alekseyeva.
Vilnius, 1992 (in Russian)
^ International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination. Russian Federation. 28/07/97. CERD/C/299/Add.15
^ Explosion of anti-Semitism in Russia Pravda, 2002-07-30, retrieved
17 Oct 2005.
^ Deputies Urge Ban on Jewish Organizations, Then Retract - Bigotry
Monitor. Volume 5, Number 4. January 28, 2005. Published by UCSJ.
Editor: Charles Fenyvesi
^ Prosecutor Drops Charges of Antisemitism Against Duma Deputies -
Bigotry Monitor. Volume 5, Number 24. June 17, 2005. Published by
UCSJ. Editor: Charles Fenyvesi
^ Russia to Drop Probe of Jewish Law Code Accused of Stoking Ethnic
Hatred - Bigotry Monitor. Volume 5, Number 26. July 1, 2005. Published
by UCSJ. Editor: Charles Fenyvesi
^ Implemented Myth (Russian ed.: Воплощённый миф) 2003, p. 46) by Dr.
Alexander Militaryov, director of Moscow Jewish University ISBN
5-8062-0068-X
[edit] References
Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century. Princeton: Princeton University
Press 2004. ISBN 0-691-11995-3
S. Ansky, Enemy At His Pleasure: A Journey Through The Jewish Pale Of
Settlement During World War I, 2004. ISBN 0-8050-5945-8
Joshua Rubenstein, Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of
the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee ISBN 0-300-08486-2
Jeffrey Veidlinger, The Moscow State Yiddish Theater ISBN
0-253-33784-4
Joseph Schechtmann, Star in Eclipse: Russian Jewry Revisited
Brent Jonathan and Vladimir P. Naumov, Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot
against the Jewish Doctor's, 1948-1953, Harper Collins Publishers, New
York, 2003.
Ch. Hoffman, Red Shtetl. The Survival of a Jewish Town under Soviet
Communism, AJJDC, New York, 2002.
Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainian and Jews in
Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920, Harvard University Press, 1999, pp.
109-141. DS135 R93 U3722.
Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust, A
Social and Demographic Profile, Jerusalem, 1998.
Dov Levin, Baltic Jews under the Soviets: 1940-1946, Jerusalem, 1994.
Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a
National Minority, Cambridge, 1988.
M. Altshuler, Soviet Jewry since the Second World War. Population and
Social Structure, Greenwood Press, New York etc., 1987.
Michael Beizer, Our Legacy: The CIS Synagogues, Past and Present,
Jerusalem-Moscow, 2002.
Hilel Butman, From Leningrad to Jerusalem, The Gulag Way, Berkeley,
1990.
Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, its Roots and Consequences,
proceedings of a seminar held in Jerusalem, April 7-8, 1978, The
Hebrew University, Center for Research and Documentation of East
European Jewry, 1979.
Alfred Avraham Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship and Scholarly
Institutions in Soviet Russia, 1918-1953, Jerusalem, 1978.
Zvi Halevy, Jewish University Students and Professionals in Tsarist
and Soviet Russia, Tel Aviv, 1976.
Zvi Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish
Sections of the CPSU, Princeton, 1972.
The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917, Oxford, 1972.
Eduard Kuznetsov, Prison Diaries, New York, 1975.
L. Schroeter, The Last Exodus, New York, 1974.
J.B. Schechtman, The U.S.S.R., Zionism, and Israel, The Jews in Soviet
Russia since 1917, Oxford, 1972, pp. 99-124.
E. Schulman, A History of Jewish Education in the Soviet Union, N. Y.,
1971.
Protest against the suppression of Hebrew in the Soviet Union
1930-1931 signed by Albert Einstein, among others
Natan Sharansky, Fear No Evil. The Classic Memoir of One Man's Triumph
over a Police State. ISBN 1-891620-02-9.
Wistrich, Robert S. , Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred, Pantheon
Books, 1992
—, "Anti-Semitism", article in The Encyclopedia Judaica, Keter
Publishing
Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland from the
earliest times until the present day in three volumes, updated by
author in 1938.
Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath, A Grin without a Cat, vol. 1: Adversus
Iudaeos Texts in the Literature of Medieval Russia (988-1504), Lund
University, 2002. ISBN 91-970201-0-9.
Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath, A Grin without a Cat, vol. 2: Jews and
Christians in Medieval Russia: Assessing the Sources, Lund University,
2002. ISBN 91-970201-1-7.
Löwe, Heinz-Dietrich, "The Tsar and the Jews. Reform, Reaction and
Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia", Chur 1993
Duffy, James P., and Vincent L. Ricci, Czars: Russia's Rulers for Over
One Thousand Years, ISBN 0-8160-2873-7. New York: Facts on File,
1995.
[edit] In Russian
Кандель, Феликс. Книга времен и событий, Т. 3. История евреев
Советского Союза (1917-1939). Иерусалим-Москва, Мосты культуры, 2002.
Kandel, Felix. History of the Soviet Jews (1917-1939)
Дубнов, Семён Маркович. Новейшая история еврейского народа (1789-1914)
в 3х томах. (С эпилогом 1938 г.). Иерусалим-Москва, Мосты культуры,
2002. ISBN 5-93273-104-4
Dubnow, Simon. The Newest History of the Jewish People (1789-1914)
Костырченко, Геннадий. Тайная политика Сталина. Власть и антисемитизм.
Москва, 2001.
Kostyrchenko, Gennady. Stalin's Secret Politics. Power and
Antisemitism
Книга о русском еврействе, 1917-1967, Под редакцией Фрумкина Я.Г.,
Аронсона Г.Я. и Гольденвейзера А.А. Нью-Йорк, 1968 (или Иерусалим-
Москва, Мосты культуры, 2002).
Book on Russian Jewry, 1917-1967, ed. by Frumkin, Ya. et.al
Альтман, И. Жертвы ненависти. Холокост в СССР 1941-1945 гг. Москва,
Фонд "Ковчег", Коллекция "Совершенно секретно", 2002.
Altman, I. Victims of Hatred. The Holocaust in the USSR 1941-1945
Бейзер, М. Евреи Ленинграда, 1917-1939: Советизация и национальная
жизнь. Иерусалим-Москва, Мосты культуры, 1999.
Beizer, M. Jews of Leningrad
Еврейский антифашистский комитет 1941-1948. Редакторы Редлих Ш. и
Костырченко Г. Москва, "Международные отношения", 1996.
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. 1941-1948, ed. by Redlikh, Sh.,
Kostyrchenko, G. et.al
Морозов, Б. Еврейская эмиграция в свете новых документов. Тель-Авив,
Центр Каммингса, Тель-Авивский университет, 1998.
Morozov, B. Jewish Emigration in Light of New Documents
Евреи в Советской России (1917-1967). Иерусалим, Библиотека-Алия,
1975.
Jews in the Soviet Russia (1917-1967)
Чёрная Книга, Редакторы Эренбург, Илья и Гроссман, Василий. Иерусалим:
Тарбут, 1970. Киев: Оберiг, 1991
The Black Book Compiled and Edited by Vasily Grossman, Ilya Ehrenburg
Амитин-Шапиро З.Л. Очерк правового быта Среднеазиатских евреев. -
Ташкент - Самарканд: Узбекское государственное изд-во, 1931.
Amitin-Shapiro, Z. An Essay on the Laws of the Bukharan Jews

[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Judaism in RussiaBeyond the Pale: The history of Jews in Russia
Charity for Russian Jews
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism
Jews in Russia, 1906 article at the Jewish Encyclopedia
History of Berdychiv
Jews in the Soviet Army
Jews of Russia (USSR), Russia, USSR in The Jewish Encyclopedia in
Russian on the Web
Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of
Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism
The Harsh Plight of the Soviet Jews Time
FSU Monitor, News, opinion, and advocacy on Jews and human rights in
the former Soviet Union. A project of UCSJ (Union of Councils for Jews
in the Former Soviet Union)
Chabad-Lubavitch Centers in Russia
v • d • eHistory of the Jews in Asia[hide]
Afghanistan · Armenia · Azerbaijan1 · Bahrain · Bangladesh · Bhutan ·
Brunei · Cambodia · China (People's Republic of China (Hong Kong •
Macau) · Republic of China (Taiwan)) · Cyprus · East Timor · Georgia1
· India · Indonesia · Iran · Iraq · Israel · Japan · Jordan ·
Kazakhstan1 · Korea (North Korea · South Korea) · Kuwait · Kyrgyzstan
· Laos · Lebanon · Malaysia · Maldives · Mongolia · Myanmar · Nepal ·
Oman · Pakistan · Palestinian territories · Philippines · Qatar ·
Russia1 · Saudi Arabia · Singapore · Sri Lanka · Syria · Tajikistan ·
Thailand · Turkey1 · Turkmenistan · United Arab Emirates · Uzbekistan
· Vietnam · Yemen

1 Has some territory in Europe.

v • d • eHistory of the Jews in Europe[hide]
Albania · Andorra · Armenia2 · Austria · Azerbaijan4 · Belarus ·
Belgium · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Cyprus2 ·
Czech Republic · Denmark · Estonia · Finland · France · Georgia4 ·
Germany · Greece · Hungary · Iceland · Ireland · Italy · Kazakhstan1 ·
Latvia · Liechtenstein · Lithuania · Luxembourg · Macedonia · Malta ·
Moldova · Monaco · Montenegro · Netherlands · Norway · Poland ·
Portugal · Romania · Russia1 · San Marino · Serbia · Slovakia ·
Slovenia · Spain · Sweden · Switzerland · Turkey1 · Ukraine · United
Kingdom

Dependencies, autonomies and other territories
Abkhazia4 · Adjara2 · Åland · Azores · Akrotiri and Dhekelia · Canary
Islands · Crimea · Faroe Islands · Gibraltar · Guernsey · Isle of Man
· Jersey · Kosovo · Madeira · Nagorno-Karabakh2 · Nakhichevan2 ·
Republika Srpska · Silesia · Transnistria · Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus2, 3 ·

1 Has significant territory in Asia. 2 Entirely in West Asia, but
considered European for cultural, political and historical reasons. 3
Only recognised by Turkey. 4 Partially or entirely in Asia, depending
on the definition of the border between Europe and Asia.

.................................................
Jews had nothing to do with the Russian revolution?

They did it there...and they are now trying to bring liberlism/
communism

to America today.

love
hank
.........................

Rightwinghank

unread,

May 14, 2007, 9:17:15 AM5/14/07

Yes?

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