Most Russian speakers outside the FSU are Jews?
by Habitus · 03/02/10
If you are wondering what you are going to do in November, 2011, Harvard will be hosting a very interesting conference on the Russian-Jewish Diaspora. Not exactly timely information yet, but this statistic from the program description is quite remarkable:
Almost two million Russian-speaking people, most of them Jews, live outside the former Soviet Union (FSU). In January 1989, when the last Soviet census was taken, 1,449,000 people identified themselves as Jews.
Such a an amazing statistic doesn’t necessarily reflect the inherent challenges of defining a Jew. For example, the contention that all 1.1 million Russian speakers in Israel are in fact Jewish is, to say the least, subject to debate. Would also be interesting to know what defines a Russian speaker (i.e. second generation?). All the same, it helps to illustrate the remarkable imprint of Jews on the Russian-speaking world.
The organizers are accepting paper proposals through May, 2010.
