Who are the Soviet Jews?

Question

Were they all originally from the Russian Empire, or were they from anywhere in Europe and moved to Russia after the Holocaust?

Why did they wait for the Soviet Union to break up to immigrate out of Europe (i.e. to Israel or the US)? And why did they stay in Europe after WWII?

What do you know about the current Jewish community in Russia/the Ukraine? Do they practice their religion freely? Do they identify more with Russian culture or old Yiddish culture?

My family immigrated in the late 1800s and lost all connection with that region. For some reason, my great-grandparents did not pass on stories of "old country". They wanted to be American.

I know this is not a history section, but I wanted people who are familiar with this topic to answer.

Answer 1

I'm sure you knew that the Jews in the Soviet Union weren't allowed to leave.



You asked: "And why did they stay in Europe after WWII?"

I see your confusion. They're not all Holocaust victims. They're not from various parts of Europe who decided to stay in the Soviet Union after the Holocaust. Because many of the Jews in Russia were spared to join the Soviet army, the Jewish population in Russia remained large.



Don't mind the several arrogant people in this section. And no, many American public schools don't teach much about the Soviet Union. Not your fault. Nobody should bluntly scold you for lacking knowledge. We are open to any questions.



Nothing wrong with random spurts of curiosity. Most American universities are in between sessions, so you're obviously not cheating. Why read through long articles if people can answer your questions directly? Isn't that the point of Y!A? If it's not a homework assignment, what does it matter?



Many people ask such questions on this site all the time...no big deal. But the Hanukkah section isn't used to history questions like this.



If you wanted to find personal stories instead of getting rude answers, perhaps you should have worded your question differently. Perhaps you should have left out the part about why the Jews didn't leave until after the SU broke up. I think some people took that a little too personally. People tend to focus on the sensitive parts, and fire it back on you if it really bothers them.



I'm sorry, but my family is not from Russia, so I can't help you. All I know is that the Jews living in Russia today are for the most part integrated in Russian society, unlike the times when your ancestors were living there.

Answer 2

Jews who are from the Soviet Union or those who are descended from Jews who are from the Soviet Union



Soviet law made it almost impossible for Jews (or almost anyone else for that matter) to leave the country



The Jewish community in the former USSR has shrink dramatically in the last 20 years, most o f them moving to Israel, b ut some going to the USA and other countries as well



I do belive they are allowed to practice thier reliion freely in Russia, Judaism is recognized by Russian law as a legitimate religion, though ther eis anti-Semitism there



My family left Russia a little over 100 years ago. My Great Grandfather was drafted in the Russian army, had a month to comply and instead moved to America

Answer 3

The Russians have been genuine to egalitarianism. They persecuted ALL with equivalent fervor. The Nazi's did have faith the Soviet Union became right into a creature of world Jewry. Now. look at at present's US Liberals. some think of each little thing is a Jewish plot. Others are the comparable genuine egalitarians as Soviets. Persecuting ALL who disagree with equivalent fervor.

Answer 4

Soviet Jews: The Jews who were trapped in the Soviet Union, which didn't allow ANYONE to practice religion for almost 100 years. @ Punk Rock. No. They were NOT allowed to practice, nor were they allowed to leave, so that they could practice.



Anyone who has made it to university and doesn't know "anything about the Soviet Union", clearly has cheated her way through school, or managed to MISS some of the most important parts of their schooling.



Better catch up. Do a little research.

Answer 5

No, not all Jewish people living in the Soviet Russia were from the Russian Empire. Some moved from Russia to Europe because Russia had pogroms that were either killing Jews or sending them to Siberia, never to be heard from again. It was never easy to leave Russia your great-grandparents were very fortunate to immigrate.

Answer 6

Soviet Jews refers to the Jews who were forced, during the SOVIET UNION, to leave their religion, or go underground, so that they wouldn't be arrested for practicing religion.



They waited until the Soviet Union broke up to emigrate (you Emigrate OUT of a place, not IMmigrate), because the Soviet Union wouldn't allow them to leave. Do you know ANYTHING about the Soviet Union? Most people didn't want to stay, but the government wouldn't allow them to leave, because if they did, there wouldn't have been any people there.



Again, they stayed in the Soviet Union after WWII (because, you know, the Soviet Union began in 1917, during WWI) because THE GOVERNMENT WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM TO LEAVE, AND LEAVING WOULD HAVE MEANT BEING ARRESTED, AND IMPRISONED, AT BEST, OR SHOT AND KILLED IN THE PROCESS.



This sounds like your research project. Do you know how to do research? I'm going to give you a clue...asking other people to spoon-feed you the information you need is NOT doing research. Do your own homework.



*edit* if you have finished your History requirement, then you have the skills to look this very public information up yourself. In fact, if you were truly a college student, you would be able to FIGURE OUT what "Soviet Jews" MEANS.



If you have finished your history requirements then saying "I don't know anything about the Soviet Union"...displays INEXCUSABLE ignorance. Time to catch up to your required knowledge.

Answer 7

They were different Jewish groups like the Ashkenazi Jews,the Georgian Jews and the Mountain Jews,ECT.

Answer 8

asker : What do you know about the current Jewish community in Russia?



---------------

100,000 Former Soviet Jews

In Israel Return To Russia

By Michael Mainville

Special to the Star

The Toronto Star



MOSCOW -- When she fled the Soviet Union for Israel with her family as a teenager, the last place Irina Azanyan expected to end up 15 years later was in Moscow.

"My parents were desperate to get away and we went as soon as we could," she says. "I loved Israel, even before I'd ever been there. I don't know why, maybe it was in my genes."

Yet here she sits in her fifth-floor office at the Moscow Jewish Community Centre, switching effortlessly between Russian and Hebrew as she fields calls for Russia's chief rabbi, Berl Lazar.

Two floors down, a cleaning woman is sweeping out the massive banquet hall in preparation for this weekend's dinner marking the end of Passover.

The chorus of a group of pensioners studying Hebrew emanates from a nearby classroom as bearded young men in broad-rimmed black hats stroll the halls with books under their arms.

Azanyan and her family fled the repressive Soviet regime at the tail end of a massive wave of emigration that saw about 1 million Soviet Jews settle in Israel by the mid-1990s. But now she is among the estimated 100,000 who have come back - the strongest sign yet of a startling revival of Jewish life in a country that has one of the worst records of Jewish persecution in history.

"It's absolutely extraordinary how many people are returning," says Lazar, who has been Russia's chief rabbi since 2000.

"When they left, there was no community, no Jewish life. People felt that being Jewish was an historical mistake that happened to their family. Now, they know they can live in Russia as part of a community."

Russia has a long history of anti-Semitism, dating back to the establishment of the Pale of Jewish Settlement when the country absorbed large populations of Polish and Ukrainian Jews in the late 18th century.

For nearly 150 years, Jews required special permission to live in Russia proper and faced a host of other restrictions. Anti-Jewish riots were common and a wave of pogroms in southern Russia in the early 1880s prompted about 2 million Russian Jews to immigrate to North America.



By the early 20th century - radicalized by generations of repression - Jews were at the forefront of revolutionary activity in Russia. Jewish activists played a prominent role in the Russian Revolution and actually outnumbered ethnic Russians in the first Communist Central Committee.



One of Lenin's first actions as Soviet leader was to abolish the Pale of Settlement and grant freedom of worship. In the next few years, 40 per cent of Soviet Jews left the Pale and settled in large Russian cities. But early hopes for emancipation were dashed by the rise of Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid and anti-Semitic during his rule.



Many of the most prominent victims of his purges - including Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev - were Jewish.

For the remainder of the Soviet period, Jews - their ethnicity clearly marked on internal passports - faced a range of state-sponsored and unofficial anti-Semitism. Universities were allowed to accept only a small number of Jewish students and many jobs, especially government positions, were closed to them.



Azanyan's experiences were typical. Growing up in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, she knew little of her Jewish heritage, except for a few words of Yiddish and the names of important holidays.



Fearful of persecution, her grandfather had changed his last name from Eisenberg to the Armenian-sounding Azanyan after World War II.



The Azanyans were finally able to emigrate as the Soviet Union was disintegrating in 1990. They touched down in Israel on Azanyan's 16th birthday.



After finishing high school and her two years of mandatory military service, Azanyan studied history and archaeology at the Tel Aviv University. In 1998, she followed a Russian Jewish boyfriend back to the former Soviet Union and found a job at the Israeli embassy in Moscow.



While there, she was stunned to be dealing with hundreds of other Israelis who were returning to Russia.



"People were coming back for many different reasons," she says.



"Some people saw economic opportunities in Russia. Some people were worried about security in Israel. And some people came back because they weren't ready to go to Israel.

"They expected too much and didn't realize how much work it would be to start a new life in a different country."

After leaving the embassy in 2001, she decided to stay in Russia and took the job as Lazar's assistant.

"I still love Israel and I'd like to go back some day," she says. "But for now, I'm happy here."