History of the Jews in Russia

Russian Jews

יהדות רוסיה (Hebrew) Русские евреи (Russian) רוסישע ייִדן (Yiddish)
The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, the largest Jewish museum in the world.
Regions with significant populations
Israel	1,200,000[1]
United States	350,000[2]
Germany	178,500[3]
Russia	83,896 according to the 2021 census[4]
Australia	10,000–11,000[5]
Languages
Hebrew, Russian, Yiddish
Religion
Judaism (31%), Jewish atheism (27%),[6] Non-religious (25%), Christianity (17%)[7][8]
Related ethnic groups
Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, Ukrainian Jews, Belarusian Jews, Lithuanian Jews, Latvian Jews, Czech Jews, Hungarian Jews, Polish Jews, Slovak Jews, Jews in Siberia, Serbian Jews, Romanian Jews, Turkish Jews, Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, Georgian Jews, Mountain Jews, Bukharan Jews, American Jews

The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest population of Jews in the world.^[9] 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 antisemitic discriminatory policies and persecution, including violent pogroms. Some have described a "renaissance" in the Jewish community inside Russia since the beginning of the 21st century;^[10] however, the Russian Jewish population has experienced precipitous decline since the dissolution of the USSR which continues to this day, although it is still among the largest in Europe.^[11]