1990s post-Soviet aliyah

Common card · No. 288943

In the years leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and for just over a decade thereafter, a particularly large number of Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet countries. The majority of these emigrants made Aliyah to Israel, while a sizable number immigrated to various countries in the Western world. This wave of Jewish migration followed the 1970s Soviet aliyah, which began after the Soviet government gave special permission to the country's Jewish refuseniks to emigrate. Between 1989 and 2006, about 1.6 million Soviet Jews and their relatives left the country. About 979,000, or 61%, were received by Israel under the Law of Return, which allows Jews and their non-Jewish spouses to relocate to Israel and acquire Israeli citizenship. Another 325,000 and 219,000 immigrated to the United States and Germany, respectively. Many of the Ashkenazi Jews who lived in all parts of the former Soviet Union were highly secular, and notable Jewish customs went unpracticed...

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