15. Census in "Soviet Union" 1959

[In this census the people could define themselves the nationality. The number of Jews is the number of Jews who chose themselves to be of Jewish nationality. Many did not chose this nationality because they were afraid of prosecution or discrimination. By this the real numbers of Jews in the "Soviet Union" have to be twice or three times as much].

1959

Azerbaijan with 6,255 Yiddish mother tongue Jews

from: Azerbaijan; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 3

<The census of 1926 recorded 19,000 European Jews and 7,500 Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan, and that of 1959 showed 40,204 Jews in Azerbaijan (1.1 % of the total population); of the 38,917 living in urban communities, 29,197 were settled in Baku and its environs; 8,357 declared Tat their mother tongue, and 6,255 Yiddish. A religious congregation was reported to exist in Baku in 1955, and a congregation of Mountain Jews was active in Kuba in 1964, but the synagogue was then under threat of closure.> (col. 1006)

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1959

Armenia with 10,000 Jews

from: Armenia; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 3

<The Jewish population in Soviet Armenia numbered 10,000 in 1959.> (col. 475)

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1959

Georgia with 51,582 Jews - or 80,000 Jews estimated

from: Georgia; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 7

<According to the 1926 census, there were 21,105 Jewish inhabitants (0.8% of the population) in the Soviet Georgian Republic though in fact the number was greater; it has been estimated at 30,000.> (col. 425)

<According to the 1959 census the Jewish population of Georgia numbered 51,582 (1.3% of the population) of whom 36,745 spoke Georgian and the remainder were Russian and Yiddish-speaking ("Ashkenazim"). One third of the Jews of Georgia lived in Tbilisi. An estimate based on unofficial local sources puts the number of Jews in Georgia in the 1960s much higher, is one estimate even at 80,000.>

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1959

Latvia: Officially 36,592 Jews

from: Latvia; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 10

1944: <In Latvia itself, several hundred Jews had somehow managed to survive. [...] Some of the Jews who had found refuge in the Soviet Union came back. [...] According to the population census taken in the Soviet Union in 1959 there were 36,592 Jews (17,096 men and 19,496 women; 1.75% of the total population) in the Latvian S.S.R. It may be assumed that about 10,000 of them were natives, including Jewish refugees who returned to their former residences from the interior of Russia, while the remainder came from other parts of the Soviet Union. About 48% of the Jews declared Yiddish as their mother tongue. The others mainly declared Russian as their language, while only a few hundred described themselves as Lettish-speaking. [...] According to private estimates, the Jews of Latvia in 1970 numbered about 50,000.> (col. 1469)

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1959

Lithuania: Officially 24,672 Jews

from: Lithuania; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 11

<The 1959 Soviet census report indicated the Jewish population of Lithuania at 24,672 (11,478 men and 13,194 women), constituting less than 1% of the total population (2,880,000). Of these, 16,354 Jews lived in Vilna, 4,792 in Kovno, and the rest in other urban areas. At the time the census was taken, 17,025 declared Yiddish as their native tongue (the highest percentage in all the areas where the census was taken), 6,912 Russian, 640 Lithuanian, and 95 specified other languages. In the academic year 1960/61 there were 413 Jewish students at institutions of higher learning (1.67% of the total Jewish population of Lithuania). Lithuania was one of the centers from which pressure came to establish a revival of Jewish cultural life after the war. The Soviet authorities eventually agreed to establish an amateur Yiddish theater group there.> (col. 390)

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1959

Russia: Official 2,267,814 Jews

from: Russia; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 14

<In the Soviet population census of 1959 2,267,814 persons were registered as of "Jewish nationality".> (col. 482)

<The census date indicate several facts: hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews declared themselves to be of non-Jewish nationalities; the majority of Russian-speaking Jews declared their attachment to the Jewish people ("nationality"), among them certainly the vast majority of its younger generation; Yiddish-speaking Jews, of whom there were approximately 500,000, were mostly members of the older generation and inhabitants of the western regions of the Soviet Union (Lithuania, Latvia, Moldavia, the districts of Chernovtsy, Lvov, Volhynia, western Belorussia); there were oriental (i.e., non-Ashkenazi) Jews, who, according to the census, numbered about 100,000, belonging to the Georgian, Tat, and Bukharan communities. The latter preserved their Jewish way of life, maintained traditional family life and ties with the Jewish community and synagogues, and observed the dietary laws and the Sabbath to a far greater extent than did Ashkenazi Jews.> (col. 483)

<However, since the census figures were gathered through the subject's personal declaration, without checking of official documents, a differentiation is made by experts between "passport Jews" and "census Jews", whereby it is generally assumed that the number of "passport Jews" is much greater than the number of Jews reflected in the census because many Jews may have declared themselves to be members of another nationality to the census taker.> (col. 484)

Table: Jews in the Soviet provinces according to the census of 1959
Province	number of Jews
Armenia	1,024
Azerbaijan	40,204
Belorussia	150,084
Estonia	5,436
Georgia	51,582
Kazakhstan	28,048
Kirghizia	8,610
Latvia	36,592
Lithuania	24,672
Moldavia	95,107
Tadzhikistan	12,415
Turkmenia	4,078
Ukraine	840,311
Uzbekistan	94,344
R.S.F.S.R.	875,307
	(Russia, Vol. 14, col. 485, 486)

Siberia: Official 57,654 Jews

from: Siberia; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 14

<The census which did not cover the whole of Siberia, registered a total of 57,654 Jews (i.e., those declaring themselves as Jews). Some 53,266 (92.4%) lived in towns; 9,970 (17.3%) declared Yiddish as their mother tongue (excluding Birobidzhan - only 4,373, or 10%). In Novosibirsk, which became the capital of Siberia, the Jewish population (with a synagogue and an old Jewish cemetery) numbered in the late 1960s about 25-30,000, consisting of a small nucleus of Siberian Jews who had been there from czarist times - and their descendants - and mostly of Jews who had been evacuated from the western Soviet Union during World War II.> (col. 1488)

Table: Jews in Siberia according to the census of 1959
Districts in Siberia	number of Jews
Birobidzhan	14,269
Buryat-Mongol republic	2,691
Irkutsk	10,313
Khabarovsk territory	8,494
Novosibirsk oblast	12,429
Omsk oblast	9,458
	(Siberia, Vol. 14, col. 1488)

1959

Caucasus: 125,000 Jews

<In 1959, 125,000 Jews (approximately 1% of the total population) were recorded in the Caucasus (including those in the republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, and the autonomous republics of Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkar, North Ossetia, and Chechen-Ingush). Of these approximately 35,000 were registered as belonging to the Georgian community, and over 25,000 to the community of Mountain Jews, while the remainder were mostly of Russian origin. The two largest Jewish centers were Baku (26,623 Jewish inhabitants) and Tbilisi (17,311). Later information from the Caucasus indicates that a warm national Jewish feeling exists among Georgian and Mountain Jews, observance of religion within a patriarchal family framework, the existence of synagogues and rabbis (hakhamim), and a yearning for the land of Israel. When in the 1960s a yeshivah was established in the Moscow synagogue, the majority of its few students came from Georgia.> (col. 259)a

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1959

Uzbekistan

<The census of 1959 registered 94,344 Jews (1.2% of the total population) in Uzbekistan; 50,445 of them lived in the capital of the republic, Tashkent. Only 19,266 of them declared Tajiki to be their native language; about 27,560 Yiddish; and the remainder Russian. The 1970 Soviet census showed 103,000 Jews in Uzbekistan.> (col. 41)

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