Mark Tolts

Mass Aliyah and Jewish emigration from Russia: Dynamics and factors

Between 1989 and 2002 more than 1,500,000 (ex-)Soviet Jews and their relatives emigrated to countries outside the former Soviet Union (FSU). Much of this movement (about 940,000, or 62 per cent) was directed towards Israel; the rest was divided mainly between the US and Germany. In 1991-94, and again in 1999, immigrants from the Russian Federation were the most numerous group to arrive in Israel. As in 1990-91, at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the financial crash in Russia in August 1998 caused a dramatic increase in emigration from this country to Israel. To understand this migration better we compared the more recent movement with that of previous years. The first stage of such an analysis should be the evaluation of existing statistical data. Based on this evaluation we comprehensively analysed Jewish emigration from the Russian Federation to outside the FSU using combined statistical data from Russian and Israeli sources. In this analysis special attention will be given to detailed monthly data on migration in the period before and after the August 1998 financial crash in Russia. Emigration from the Russian Federation to Israel was examined by region of origin in relation to the regional socio-economic situation. The contemporary decrease of emigration was also studied. Finally, we also examined aspects of out-migration from Israel of FSU immigrants as a whole, and return migration from Israel to Russia in particular.

Jewish marriages in the USSR: a demographic analysis.

Marriage trends among Jews in the former Soviet Union are examined for the period 1979-1989. Consideration is given to intermarriage, the percentage of the population that is currently married by sex, and marriage age. Data are presented for the whole country and for selected republics.

Sources for the Demographic Study of the Jews in the Former Soviet Union

The article shows that demographic study of the Jews in the Former Soviet Union has a long and well established tradition based on the very rich amount of data: i.e., vital and migration statistics, and census results. The analysis started from an overview of the Tsarist and Soviet statistical legacies. However, most of the attention is focused on findings of the last quarter century. The study examines both the role of the Soviet internal passport which, because it listed ethnicity, was the basis for Jewish statistics, and the consequences of the elimination of compulsory ethnic identification in the post-Soviet Slavic countries.

Ethnic composition of Kazakhstan on the eve of the Second World War: re-evaluation of the 1939 Soviet census results

For the Communist regime in the Soviet Union, population statistics as well as other kinds of statistics served propaganda purposes. However, demographic catastrophes were an integral part of USSR history and the Soviet authorities frequently and blatantly interfered in the collection and publication of population data. In the early 1930s, Kazakh population losses, which were caused by the Soviet policy of forced collectivization accompanied by famine, were extremely severe. This resulted in the statistics for Kazakhstan becoming one of the most striking examples of distortion in the results of the 1939 Soviet census, as will be seen in our analysis. Re-evaluation of these census results shows us what are apparently unintentional consequences of manipulations made in an attempt to conceal Kazakh population losses. We shall establish that there were very serious distortions in the data of the ethnic composition of Kazakhstan, which resulted from the inflation of the real census figures in this Soviet republic.