- MOSCOW -- When she fled the
Soviet Union for Israel with her family as a teenager, the last place Irina
Azanyan expected to end up 15 years later was in Moscow.
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- "My parents were desperate to get away and we went
as soon as we could," she says. "I loved Israel, even before
I'd ever been there. I don't know why, maybe it was in my
genes."
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- Yet here she sits in her fifth-floor office at the Moscow
Jewish Community Centre, switching effortlessly between Russian and Hebrew
as she fields calls for Russia's chief rabbi, Berl Lazar.
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- Two floors down, a cleaning woman is sweeping out the
massive banquet hall in preparation for this weekend's dinner marking the
end of Passover.
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- The chorus of a group of pensioners studying Hebrew
emanates
from a nearby classroom as bearded young men in broad-rimmed black hats
stroll the halls with books under their arms.
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- Azanyan and her family fled the repressive Soviet regime
at the tail end of a massive wave of emigration that saw about 1 million
Soviet Jews settle in Israel by the mid-1990s. But now she is among the
estimated 100,000 who have come back - the strongest sign yet of a
startling
revival of Jewish life in a country that has one of the worst records of
Jewish persecution in history.
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- "It's absolutely extraordinary how many people are
returning," says Lazar, who has been Russia's chief rabbi since
2000.
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- "When they left, there was no community, no Jewish
life. People felt that being Jewish was an historical mistake that happened
to their family. Now, they know they can live in Russia as part of a
community."
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- Last week also marked a turning point for Russian Jews
with President Vladimir Putin's historic visit to Israel, the first by
a Russian or Soviet head of state. Asked if he thought five years ago that
he would ever accompany a Russian president on a trip to Israel, Lazar
laughs.
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- "Honestly, I didn't think two months ago that this
would have been possible," he says. "There has been a sincere
change in the official attitude to Israel and the Jewish community in
Russia."
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- During his visit, Putin paid tribute to the Jewish
community's
contributions to Russia and spoke out against anti-Semitism while touring
Jerusalem's Holocaust History Museum.
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- "Today, we must state clearly that there can be
no place in the 21st century for xenophobia, anti-Semitism or any other
manifestations of ethnic and religious intolerance," said
Putin.
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- "This is not only our duty before the memory of
the millions of people killed by bullets or in the gas chambers, it is
also our obligation to future generations."
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- Lazar says the visit was a testament to how far Russia
has come since the days when Jews were largely barred from public worship
and faced open discrimination in jobs and education.
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- Russia has a long history of anti-Semitism, dating back
to the establishment of the Pale of Jewish Settlement when the country
absorbed large populations of Polish and Ukrainian Jews in the late 18th
century.
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- For nearly 150 years, Jews required special permission
to live in Russia proper and faced a host of other restrictions.
Anti-Jewish
riots were common and a wave of pogroms in southern Russia in the early
1880s prompted about 2 million Russian Jews to immigrate to North
America.
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- By the early 20th century - radicalized by generations
of repression - Jews were at the forefront of revolutionary activity in
Russia. Jewish activists played a prominent role in the Russian Revolution
and actually outnumbered ethnic Russians in the first Communist Central
Committee.
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- One of Lenin's first actions as Soviet leader was to
abolish the Pale of Settlement and grant freedom of worship. In the next
few years, 40 per cent of Soviet Jews left the Pale and settled in large
Russian cities. But early hopes for emancipation were dashed by the rise
of Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid and anti-Semitic during his
rule.
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- Many of the most prominent victims of his purges -
including
Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev - were Jewish. Many
historians
contend that, at the time of his death in 1953, Stalin was preparing for
a mass deportation of Soviet Jews to the so-called Jewish Autonomous Zone
in the Siberian wastelands north of China.
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- For the remainder of the Soviet period, Jews - their
ethnicity clearly marked on internal passports - faced a range of
state-sponsored
and unofficial anti-Semitism. Universities were allowed to accept only
a small number of Jewish students and many jobs, especially government
positions, were closed to them.
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- In the years after its founding in 1948, Israel's
emergence
as a close Western ally led to the persecution of many Soviet Jews as
alleged
Zionist sympathizers. The few token synagogues still in operation were
under open police surveillance.
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- Azanyan's experiences were typical. Growing up in the
Ukrainian capital Kyiv, she knew little of her Jewish heritage, except
for a few words of Yiddish and the names of important holidays.
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- Fearful of persecution, her grandfather had changed his
last name from Eisenberg to the Armenian-sounding Azanyan after World War
II.
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- This would come back to haunt the family when Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev opened the doors for Soviet Jews to immigrate
to Israel in the 1980s. Without an obvious Jewish name, the family was
repeatedly denied the right to leave the Soviet Union. Thirteen-year-old
Azanyan nonetheless began studying Hebrew and learning all she could about
Israel.
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- The Azanyans were finally able to emigrate as the Soviet
Union was disintegrating in 1990. They touched down in Israel on Azanyan's
16th birthday.
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- "It was like a dream come true," she
recalls.
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- After finishing high school and her two years of
mandatory
military service, Azanyan studied history and archaeology at the Tel Aviv
University. In 1998, she followed a Russian Jewish boyfriend back to the
former Soviet Union and found a job at the Israeli embassy in
Moscow.
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- While there, she was stunned to be dealing with hundreds
of other Israelis who were returning to Russia.
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- "People were coming back for many different
reasons,"
she says.
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- "Some people saw economic opportunities in Russia.
Some people were worried about security in Israel. And some people came
back because they weren't ready to go to Israel.
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- "They expected too much and didn't realize how much
work it would be to start a new life in a different country."
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- After leaving the embassy in 2001, she decided to stay
in Russia and took the job as Lazar's assistant.
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- "I still love Israel and I'd like to go back some
day," she says. "But for now, I'm happy here."
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- Like Azanyan, most of those who've returned have kept
their Israeli passports and, in some cases, maintain homes in both
countries.
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- Rabbi Lazar says it's irrelevant whether returning Jews
are planning to stay in Russia permanently or some day go back to
Israel.
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- "They don't know how long they're going to stay.
Two years, a year, six months, what's the difference? The fact that they're
coming back at all is a strong statement."
-
- Which isn't to say that anti-Semitism is no longer a
problem in Russia. In fact, some observers believe that the community's
increasing profile has sparked a backlash from nationalist Russians.
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- In January, 19 nationalist lawmakers sent a letter to
Russia's prosecutor-general, asking him to outlaw all Jewish organizations
on the grounds that they foster ethnic hatred against Russians.
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- Two months later, several Russian cultural figures,
including
former world chess champion Boris Spassky, sent a similar letter backed
by a petition signed by 5,000 Russians. Among other accusations, the letter
accused Jews of being "anti-Christian and inhumane" and of
"committing
ritual murders."
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- Nationalist politicians - a growing force in Russian
politics - rant openly about Jewish conspiracies to control the Russian
economy, pointing out that many of Russia's billionaire oligarchs are
Jewish,
including former Yukos oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is in jail
awaiting a verdict in his long-running tax-evasion and fraud trial.
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- Defending the letter in a February appearance on one
of Russia's most popular political talk shows, State Duma deputy Albert
Makashov spoke for nearly an hour about the allegedly illegal
privatizations
that left much of the country's wealth in the oligarchs' hands.
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- "All I am saying is that most oligarchs come from
one diaspora: Jewish," he said. "They stole everything God gave
us."
-
- Asked to call in their support for either Makashov or
his opponent in the debate, more than 53,000 of about 100,000 callers chose
Makashov.
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- Attacks on Jews also remain a problem. The Moscow Bureau
of Human Rights reported this month that 27 anti-Semitic attacks occurred
in Moscow in 2004 and the first three months of 2005.
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- In January, six thugs shouting anti-Semitic slurs
attacked
a group of Orthodox Jews in a Moscow underpass. Two young boys and one
man escaped, but Rabbi Alexander Lakshin was left beaten and
bloodied.
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- When he tried to ask employees at a local shop to use
their phone to call the police, they refused and told him to leave.
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- Yet even Lakshin is encouraged by recent developments
in Russia. In the weeks since the attack, police arrested three suspects,
two of whom are now facing charges that could land them in jail for
years.
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- "No country in the world can boast of having no
anti-Semites," he says. "It's how a society reacts to these kinds
of attacks that's important.
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- "Yes, it was a sad thing that happened. But when
I think about how much tremendous change there has been in Russia since
I was a boy, when I see groups of young people walking about unafraid,
it makes me so happy."
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- At the seven-storey, $25 million Moscow Jewish Community
Centre built five years ago, there's a growing sense that the Jewish
renaissance
is irreversible.
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- Stretching over two city blocks, the centre includes
a synagogue, library, fitness centre and kosher restaurant, all built with
donations from abroad and the local community. Record numbers of Jewish
families are signing up for its free services and this year's Passover
celebrations have been the biggest in memory.
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- Down the street, a $125 million complex - which will
include Russia's first Jewish museum, a medical centre and a school - is
being built on land donated by the city of Moscow. Smaller centres, most
featuring the first local Jewish schools in decades, are being built across
the country.
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- In the past five years, the number of distinct Jewish
communities in Russia has swelled from 87 to more than 200. Fifteen years
ago, there was not a single Jewish school in all of Russia. Today, more
than 15,000 students attend such schools.
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- Lazar says that of the estimated 1 million Jews who
remained
in Russia following the exodus to Israel, very few were once prepared to
even identify themselves as Jewish. But today, about 120,000 Jews are fully
involved in the community.
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- "Nowhere in the world have we ever seen a Jewish
community of this size reviving from essentially nothing."
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- Avraham Berkowitz, executive director of the Federation
of Jewish Communities in the former Soviet Union, says he felt the change
most acutely during Passover this year.
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- Every year, the FJC co-ordinates a campaign to send
kosher
food products used in making Passover dishes to Jewish communities across
the country.
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- This year's campaign was the largest ever, with 1.2
million
pounds of matzo and 250,000 bottles of wine distributed nationwide.
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- "More and more Jews are coming out of the woodwork
and they're not afraid to say so," muses Berkowitz.
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- "The change in Russia from 15 years ago to today
is nothing short of a miracle."
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- Michael Mainville is a Canadian journalist based in
Moscow.
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- In the past five years, the number of distinct Jewish
communities in Russia has swelled from 87 to more than 200. Fifteen years
ago, there was not a single Jewish school in all of Russia. Today, more
than 15,000 students attend such schools
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