Native, but unique: Jews of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and their neighbours revealed through their twentieth century demographic profiles

Zeev Levin and Viacheslav Konstantinov

Central Asian Survey, 2025, vol. 44, issue 2, 162-182

Abstract: In the course of seven decades of Soviet rule, the republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia underwent tremendous transformations: civil wars, class purges, religious persecutions, liberation of the women of the East, accelerated urbanization and industrialization, collectivization, cultural revolution and language reforms, the turmoil of World War-II, Russification, and Sovietization. All of these combined with numerous waves of internal migrations and forced deportations.This article aims to examine the main demographic developments that took place during this era in three Soviet republics: Georgia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. The article focuses on demographic data published in the all-Union Soviet Censuses of 1926, 1939, 1959, 1970, 1979 and 1989. It presents the statistical data with regard to the Jewish population of those republics (local/native and Ashkenazi) and compares it to the titular populations (i.e., Georgians, Azeris and Uzbeks) and to other major minorities of those republics: Russians, Armenians and the Tajiks. The demographic review is limited to five main sections: changes in national composition; urbanization; population composition (according to age and family size); and literacy rates and levels of education. By doing so, the article makes an effort to draw a broad picture of major demographic developments and to trace social similarities and differences of the groups under discussion.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2025.2481571

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