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Jews in Almaty, Kazakhstan

Almaty is the regional center of Kazakhstan. Until 1997 - the capital of the republic. The city was founded in 1867 on the site of the military fortress Verniy. From 1921 to 1991 it was called Alma-Ata.

Ashkenazi Jews have settled in the city since its foundation. The first settlers were retired soldiers. Then Jews arrived in Verniy, who, according to the laws of the Russian Empire, had the right to settle outside the Pale of Settlement: doctors and pharmacists, artisans and merchants.

Since 1884 a synagogue has functioned in the city. Since 1908, a Jewish prayer society has been registered.

According to the 1897 census, 99 Jews lived in Verniy. After 11 years, their number increased to 206 people.

The growth of the Jewish population of Alma-Ata began in the Soviet years. Jewish Komsomol members arrived in the city to work on construction sites for five-year plans, as well as exiled Jews. During the Second World War, the Jewish community of Alma-Ata increased due to those evacuated from the central regions of the USSR, engulfed in the war. Some of the Jews who came during the war years remained in the city after the end of the war.

In 1948-1953, the Stalinist leadership carried out a campaign to combat cosmopolitanism, which resulted in the arrival of a new wave of repressed Jews in Alma-Ata. In the 1950s, as a result of the Stalinist policy of deportation, Iranian Jews expelled from the territory of Georgia ended up in the city. In Alma-Ata itself, in 1950, the authorities demolished a synagogue under the pretext of building a Central Department Store.

Nevertheless, the republic's leadership pursued a more liberal policy towards Jews than the Moscow center. Jews came to Kazakhstan, who were limited in their right to work in their specialty in other republics, and Jewish youth from Ukraine, for whom it was easier to enter the universities of the republic, since the admission of Jews to educational institutions of other union republics was limited.

In 1979, more than 8.5 thousand Jews lived in Alma-Ata. Since the late 1980s, Jewish organizations have been reviving in the city. In 1989 the Jewish cultural center "Shalom" was opened, a year later the first Jewish newspaper began to appear. In 1992, a Jewish Sunday school was opened. A Jewish high school has been operating in the city since the late 1990s.

The revival of communal life proceeded in parallel with the waves of Jewish emigration. So, if in 1989 7.6 thousand Jews lived in Alma-Ata, then three years later their number decreased to 4.6 thousand people.