Legend
National Boundaries, 1930
National Boundaries, 1991
Soviet Boundaries, 1991
(1945)
Year territory was annexed to USSR
+
100%
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Saint Petersburg
Founded by Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) in 1703, Saint Petersburg is located at the northwest periphery of Russia, on the Gulf of Finland. In 1712, it replaced Moscow as the capital of the Russian Empire. Over the course of the next two centuries, Saint Petersburg was ...
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Daugavpils
(Rus. and Yid., Dvinsk; Ger., Dünaburg; among Jews, also called Dinaburg), largest town in southeastern Latvia. Daugavpils, founded in the thirteenth century, became a district capital in the nineteenth century. Jews settled in the town in the mid-1770s. Throughout the ...
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Tallinn
(Ger., Reval; Rus., Revel, later Tallin), historical capital of the Province of Estonia. Christianized in 1219 by Danish crusaders and then a member of the Hanseatic League, Tallinn was under Swedish rule from 1561 to 1710 and Russian from 1710 to 1918. Beginning in 191 ...
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Riga
capital of Latvia. Founded at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Riga was a member of the Hanseatic League. Jewish merchants became active in the city from the mid-sixteenth century, although opposition from local merchants forced them to live on the outskirts of ...
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Klaipėda
port city on Lithuania’s western border with Germany. After World War I, Klaipėda (Ger., Memel) and its surrounding district were severed from Prussia by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1923, Lithuania annexed the entire area, most of whose population (141,000 persons) was ...
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Kaliningrad
(Ger., Königsberg, Rus., Kenigsberg, Pol., Królewiec, Yid., Kenigsberg), former capital of the Prussian province of East Prussia, and today capital of the Russian-administered Kaliningrad District (Kaliningradskaia Oblast’). Its geographic proximity to Poland and Russia ...
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Hrodna
city now in Belarus; also known in Polish and Russian as Grodno and in Yiddish as Horodno or Grodne. Grodno’s Jewish community, one of the oldest in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, existed as early as the fourteenth century. Its privilege, allegedly obtained in 1389 from ...
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Brest
(also Brest Litovsk; Pol., Brześć nad Bugiem; Yid., Brisk or Brisk de-Lita [Brisk of Lithuania]), city now in Belarus. Located at the confluence of the Bug and Mukhavets Rivers, Brest was a district capital and a large commercial center. Jews settled in Brest at the ...
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L’viv
(Yid., Lemberg; Ger., Lemberg; Pol., Lwów; Rus., Lvov; Latin, Leopolis), city in contemporary western Ukraine, about 65 km (40 miles) from the border with Poland. Jews lived in the city from the time of its establishment in the mid-thirteenth century; some, mostly ...
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Chernivtsi
city in southwestern Ukraine, lying on the Prut River. Chernivtsi (Rom., Cernăuți; Ger., Czernowitz; Yid., Tshernovits) is the current capital of the Chernivtsi region. The presence of Jews there was first mentioned in 1408. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ...
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Kishinev
(capital city of the Republic of Moldova. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, Kishinev (officially, Chişinău; Yid., Keshenev) was in the principality of Moldova, which was annexed to the Russian Emp re in 1818 and called Bessarabia. In 1918–1940 and 1941–1944 it ...
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Odessa
Founded in 1794 on land conquered from the Turks on the site of the Black Sea fortress town of Khadzhibei, Odessa received its name the following year. Within a few decades it was already a sizable city and soon commanded an international reputation as the preeminent ...
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Kiev
(Ukr., Kyiv; classical Heb., Kiyov), capital of Ukraine. Jewish settlement in Kiev dates to the first years of the city, in the ninth century, when it was the capital of Kievan Rus’ and an important stop on the trading route between Europe and Central Asia. Although ...
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Khar’kiv
In 1734, the Russian state permitted Jewish merchants to visit Kharkov (more properly Khar’kov; Ukr., Khar’kiv) to engage in retail and wholesale trade. Jewish residence in this city outside the Pale of Settlement, however, remained under strict control throughout the ...
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Zhytomyr
city on the Teterev River (a tributary of the Dnieper); administrative center of Ukraine’s Zhytomyr oblast. In existence since the ninth century, Zhytomyr (Rus., Zhitomir; Pol., Żytomierz) was from the 1330s attached to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and from 1569 it was ...
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Donets’k
Founded in 1869 as a coal and steel center by the Welsh engineer John Hughes, Donets’k was originally named Iuzovka (Hughes’ Town), but took on the name Stalino between 1924 and 1962. The city is the capital of the Donets’k Oblast’ (region) in southeastern Ukraine ...
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Rostov-on-Don
town on the Don River; administrative center of the Rostov province of Russia. In 1761, the Rostov fortress and settlement were founded, and the town gained official status in 1796. By 1811, there were 20 Jewish families living in Rostov, a number that rose ...
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Homel’
city in southeastern Belarus on the right bank of the Sozh River. The origins of Jewish settlement in Homel’ (Rus., Gomel’; sometimes Homiyah in Jewish sources) are obscure but date after the annexation of the town to Lithuania in 1537. Contemporary chroniclers first ...
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Dnipropetrovs’k
industrial city in eastern Ukraine. The Jewish community of Dnipropetrovs’k, a city with a population of more than 1,000,000, was in decline at the end of the twentieth century, but remained one of the largest in Ukraine. According to the 2001 population census, the ...
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Vilnius
(Pol., Wilno; Rus., Vilna; Yid., Vilne), capital of the republic of Lithuania. In 1323, Gediminas made Vilnius the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The city became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. It fell under the domination of the Russian ...
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Minsk
capital of the Republic of Belarus since 1991. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, Minsk was part of Lithuania; from the mid-sixteenth century it belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1793, the city was annexed to the Russian Empire and became the ...
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Vitsyebsk
city in Belarus. The first reference to Jews in Vitsyebsk (more commonly known to Jews as Vitebsk) dates from the mid-sixteenth century. In 1627 a synagogue was built and in 1634, Jews received permission to engage in com-merce, have their own cemetery and synagogue ...
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Moscow
Present-day capital of the Russian Federation, Moscow was capital of the Russian state from the end of the fifteenth century until 1712, and capital of the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1991. Jews were first mentioned in connection with Moscow in the fifteenth century ...
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Daugavpils
(Rus. and Yid., Dvinsk; Ger., Dünaburg; among Jews, also called Dinaburg), largest town in southeastern Latvia. Daugavpils, founded in the thirteenth century, became a district capital in the nineteenth century. Jews settled in the town in the mid-1770s. Throughout the ...
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Map
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1922–1991 (European regions).