OVERVIEW

About 710,000 Jews remain in the former Soviet Union. Eighty-five percent, some 600,000 people, live in Russia, Ukraine or Belarus, while 50,000 reside in the six Muslim states of the former Soviet Union, 25,000 in the three Baltic states and the rest in Moldova and Georgia.

The population is rapidly diminishing, both because of emigration to Israel (about 67,000 in 1999) and to Western countries (about 30,000 in 1999), and because of the negative birth rate, which accounted for about 15,000 in 1999. This figure of over 110,000 people in 1999 represents a decrease of 13.4 percent of the population from the previous year.

Although there are significant differences from country to country, in all the republics of the former Soviet Union, Jews have the right to organize and to engage in any activity, including the right to emigrate.

There are 560 Jewish organizations and religious foundations which undertake a variety of activities, most groups receiving support from Israel and Jewish organizations in the West. These include Jewish education (about 20,000 children and young people study in 230 educational institutions), aid to the needy, support for Jewish traditional and cultural activities and preserving the memory of the Holocaust. They publish about 60 newspapers and periodicals which are distributed among the entire Jewish population.

No country of the former Soviet Union includes anti-Semitism in its official policy or state ideology. Jews continue to be prominent in economic, cultural and political life, some serving in leadership positions in Jewish organizations as well. However, in Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and particularly in Russia, widespread anti-Semitic activity, which differed according to the political configuration in each country, continued in 1999.