TOMSK

TOMSK, main city of Tomsk district (Siberia), Russia. Before the October Revolution the district of Tomsk was beyond the pale of settlement and no Jewish settlement was allowed there until the cancellation of the Pale enactment. A Jewish community was nevertheless established in Tomsk in the first half of the 19th century by exiled prisoners and Jewish soldiers who served there (among them several Jewish cantonists who were brought to a Cantonist institute there). A number of these soldiers settled in Tomsk after their release from the army. In the second half of the 19th century, Jews of all professions who were allowed now to reside beyond the Pale began to settle in Tomsk. In 1897 the number of Jews in the entire district of Tomsk was 7,900, of whom 3,214 (6.4% of the total population) lived in the town of Tomsk proper. In October 1905 there were in Tomsk organized attacks on Jews and members of the Russian intelligentsia, fomented by the local administration. At the end of 1969 the Jewish population was estimated at about 5,000. The last synagogue was closed down by the authorities in 1959. After the mass exodus of the 1990s fewer than 1,000 Jews remained in the entire Tomsk district. However, Jewish life was revived, including an active community center and officiating rabbi. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Die Judenpogrome in Russland, 2 (1909), 524–30; G. Tsam, Istoriya vozniknoveniya v Tomske voyennoy soldatskoy shkoly (1909). (Yehuda Slutsky)