History of the Jews in Russia and Soviet Union
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Israel | 900,000 |
| United States | 350,000 |
| Russia | Different estimates have been given: 157,763–194,000 self-identifying core Jewish population out of perhaps 200,000/500,000 people of Jewish descent (2010 Census) |
| Germany | 119,000 |
| Canada | 69,000 |
| Australia | 20,000 |
| Languages | |
| Hebrew, Russian, English, Yiddish | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism (31%), Atheist (27%), Non-religious (25%), Christianity (17%) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Ashkenazi Jews, Ukrainian Jews, Belarusian Jews, Lithuanian Jews, Latvian Jews, Polish Jews, Czech Jews, Mountain Jews, Bukharan Jews, Georgian Jews | |
The vast territories of the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest population of Jews in the world. Within these territories the primarily Ashkenazi Jewish communities of many different areas flourished and developed many of modern Judaism's most distinctive theological and cultural traditions, while also facing periods of anti-Semitic discriminatory policies and persecutions. The largest group among Russian Jews are Ashkenazi Jews but the community also includes a significant number of other Diasporan Jewish groups, such as Mountain Jews, Sephardic Jews (of Iberian ancestry), Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, Bukharan Jews, and Georgian Jews.
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 Kiev, in present-day Ukraine, was restricted to a separate quarter. Evidence of the presence of Jewish people in Muscovite Russia is first documented in the chronicles of 1471. During the reign of Catherine II in the 18th century, Jewish people were restricted to the Pale of Settlement within Russia, the territory where they could live or immigrate to. Alexander III escalated anti-Jewish policies. Beginning in the 1880s, waves of 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.
Before 1917 there were 300,000 Zionists in Russia, while the main Jewish socialist organization, the Bund, had 33,000 members. Only 958 Jews had joined the Bolshevik Party before 1917; thousands joined after the Revolution. The chaotic years of World War I, the February and October Revolutions, and the Russian Civil War had created social disruption that led to anti-Semitism. Some 150,000 Jews were killed in the pogroms of 1918–1922, 125,000 of them in Ukraine, 25,000 in Belarus. These were probably the largest-scale European massacres of Jews to date. The pogroms were mostly perpetrated by anti-communist forces; sometimes, Red Army units engaged in pogroms as well. 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, mainly by Ukrainian units of the Red Army during its retreat from Poland (1920), 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, and also strengthened the desire for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people.
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