UFA

UFA, capital of Bashkortostan, Russia. Under the czars, Ufa was beyond the pale of settlement . Its Jewish community was established by veteran Jewish soldiers. In 1855 a synagogue was built. In 1897 the Jews in Ufa numbered 376 (0.8% of the total population). In World War I about 1,000 Jewish refugees came to Ufa from areas near the front. The Jewish community suffered from the battles between the Red Army and the White Army in 1918. In 1923 there were 1,588 Jews (1.8% of the total population). In the entire Bashkir Republic there were 7,167 Jews in 1959. In 1971 some thousands of Jews were thought to be still living in Ufa, but there was no information available about Jewish communal or religious life in the town. When the community re-emerged in the post-Communist period, a full range of communal services developed, a chief rabbi was installed, and the Jewish population was estimated at as much as 10,000. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: E. Tcherikower (ed.), In der Tkufe fun Revolutsie (1924), 101–16, 126–9. (Yehuda Slutsky)