THE collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union initiated a new period in the history of the Jews in the area. Poland was now a fully sovereign country, and Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Moldova also became independent states (Map 23). Post-imperial Russia faced the task of creating a new form of national identity. This was to prove more difficult than in other postimperial states since, unlike Britain and France, the tsarist empire and its successor, the Soviet Union, had not so much been the ruler of a colonial empire as an empire itself. All of these countries now embarked, with differing degrees of enthusiasm, on the difficult task of creating liberal democratic states with market economies. For the Jews of the area, the new political situation allowed both the creation and development of Jewish institutions and the fostering of Jewish cultural life in much freer conditions, but also facilitated emigration to Israel, North America, and western Europe on a much larger scale.

JEWS IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION: SOME COMMON FEATURES

It is very difficult to provide an accurate estimate of the number of Jews in the countries that emerged from the break-up of the Soviet Union. According to a survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in 2005, the estimated core Jewish population of the former USSR in 2005 was 379,800, of whom 20,300 lived in Asia. By 2007 this had fallen to 322,000. At least as many non- Jewish family members were part of the respective enlarged households. This should be compared with the figure of 1,450,500 in the last Soviet census of January 1989, at a time when ‘nationality’ was still recorded in internal passports.

The survey assessed the core Jewish population of the Russian Federation in 2005 as 235,000, the sixth largest in the world. By 2012 this had fallen to 194,000. It estimated the Jewish population of Moscow as 95,000, the nineteenth largest Jewish conurbation in the world. Because of both Jewish migration to the Russian Federation from other republics and lower emigration, this was a more stable community than those in other former Soviet republics.