User:OnBeyondZebrax/sandbox/History of the Jews in Russia

The presence of Jewish people in the European part of Russia can be traced back to the 7th-14th centuries CE. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Jewish population was restricted to a separate quarter in Kiev. Evidence of the presence of Jewish people in Muscovite Russia is first found in the chronicles of 1471. During the reign of Catherine II, Jewish people were restricted in where they could live or immigrate to in other parts of Russia. The beginning of the 19th century was marked by the movement of Jews to Novorossiya. Alexander III escalated anti-Jewish policies. A large-scale wave of anti-Jewish pogroms swept Ukraine in 1881. A policy of discrimination banned Jewish people from rural areas and towns of fewer than ten thousand people. In 1886, an Edict of Expulsion occurred in Kiev. Most Jews were expelled from Moscow in 1891. A larger wave of pogroms broke out in 1903–06. More than two million Jews fled Russia between 1880 and 1920, mostly to the United States

In August 1919 Jewish properties, including synagogues, were seized and many Jewish communities were dissolved. The chaotic years of World War I, the February and October Revolutions, and the Civil War were fertile ground for antisemitism. Pogroms were unleashed throughout the Russian Civil War, perpetrated by every faction. The Soviet authorities considered the use of Hebrew language "reactionary" and the teaching of Hebrew at primary and secondary schools was officially banned as early as 1919. Many Jews fell victim to the Great Purges, and there is evidence that Jews were specifically targeted by Stalin. Over two million Soviet Jews are believed to have died during the Holocaust. As a result of the persecution, both state-sponsored and unofficial, antisemitism became deeply ingrained in the society. In 1989, 71,000 Soviet Jews were granted exodus from the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev allowed unlimited Jewish emigration. The government of Vladimir Putin takes an official stand against antisemitism, while some movements parties and groups are explicitly antisemitic. Currently, Russia has the highest rate of aliyah to Israel among any other country.