Repatriation from Kazakhstan to Israel and family ties after 1991

Personal ties preceded diplomatic relations

Kazakhstan and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1992. Large-scale migration of Jews and their families from the late Soviet Union to Israel began earlier, in the late 1980s, and increased after Soviet restrictions on emigration were lifted.

Migration continued after Kazakhstan became independent, and the families who moved became one of the human connections between the countries.

In 2022, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry explicitly described people of Jewish ethnicity from Kazakhstan who had repatriated to Israel as a “bridge of friendship” between the countries.

The ministry’s phrase describes people’s role, but provides no estimate of the number of people from Kazakhstan in Israel.

21 269 people moved from Kazakhstan to Israel between 1989 and 2017

In a study of Jewish emigration from the former USSR, demographer Mark Tolts compiled Israeli migration statistics by republic. For Kazakhstan, the table gives 21 269 emigrants to Israel between 1989 and 2017.

The flow was most pronounced in the mid- and late 1990s. Figures for selected years are shown below.

Migration from Kazakhstan to Israel was considerably higher in the 1990s than in later years, but did not cease.

The 21 269 moves therefore cannot be treated as the number of all Kazakhstan-born people who have ever lived, or currently live, in Israel. The table describes a migration flow during a specific period within the Israeli statistical system used.

Repatriates and ethnic Jews are counted differently

Israel’s Law of Return extends rights not only to a person defined as Jewish under the law, but also to their spouse, child and grandchild, and the spouses of children and grandchildren, subject to the statutory exceptions.

A person can therefore be eligible for repatriation and receive new immigrant status without belonging to the “Jewish” category in Kazakhstan’s census or the religious category of “Judaism”.

Sources use different categories for different legal, census, religious and biographical groups.

• Aliyah / new immigrant describes a legal and migration status in Israel.
• Jewish by ethnic self-identification is a category in Kazakhstan’s census.
• Judaism describes religious self-identification.
• Born in Kazakhstan identifies the place of birth.
• Arrived from Kazakhstan identifies a former place of residence or a country of origin in a migration flow.
• A person from Kazakhstan is a broader biographical term that may include a family’s next generation.

Census data show migration and its demographic consequences

Drawing on Soviet and post-Soviet censuses, Tolts’s study gives Kazakhstan’s Jewish population as approximately 19.9 thousand in 1989, 6.8 thousand in the 1999 census and 3.6 thousand in 2009.

Kazakhstan’s official census table gives 3 485 people in 2009 and 4 064 in 2021 for the “Jews” category.

The censuses show that the Jewish population declined after the late Soviet period. This change cannot be attributed entirely to repatriation to Israel. People also emigrated elsewhere; births, deaths, internal migration and changes in self-identification occurred; and migration and census categories are defined differently.

The difference between 3 485 and 4 064 in the 2009 and 2021 censuses does not, by itself, establish large-scale return migration. It reflects two results for the ethnic category “Jews”; these tables do not establish the reasons for the change.

Repatriation continued after the large wave of the 1990s

Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration and the Jewish Agency reported that 105 new immigrants from Kazakhstan arrived in Israel between 16 September 2023 and 19 September 2024.

This is a small number compared with the waves of the 1990s, but shows that the route did not end with the first post-Soviet decade.

According to its published 2025 report, the Jewish Agency helped 22 270 people from 105 countries make aliyah. The public report does not give a separate figure for Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan-specific numbers for 2025 and 2026 cannot be derived from it.

Repatriation infrastructure operates in Kazakhstan today

Israel’s state Nativ bureau, which works with applicants from former Soviet countries and verifies eligibility for repatriation, retains a representative of its repatriation department in Almaty.

The official page requires an appointment and completion of an immigrant visa application. To establish eligibility, applicants present birth and marriage records, documents concerning parents and grandparents, and other evidence of entitlement under the Law of Return.

The current procedure divides responsibilities between organisations.

The Jewish Agency provides information, support and programmes. In former Soviet countries, Nativ verifies eligibility for aliyah and participates in the visa procedure. Subsequent status and assistance within Israel fall under Israeli state authorities.

Sokhnut supports education and repatriation

The Jewish Agency works with potential and new immigrants before and after moving through educational, youth and integration programmes.

One Kazakhstan example concerns Indira’s family. In 2020, her children Milana and Erik were selected for Naale, a programme enabling teenagers from Jewish families to attend Israeli high school. In December, they arrived in Israel on an aliyah flight from Kazakhstan and continued their education there.

This is one family’s route, rather than an estimate of aliyah from Kazakhstan as a whole.

According to the Jewish Agency, more than 90% of Naale participants make aliyah after completing school.

Boris Belilovsky’s story within repatriation statistics

The memoirs of Boris Vladimirovich Belilovsky describe migration within one family.

His son Yuri left Alma-Ata for Israel with his wife and young son on 14 April 1993. Boris and his wife Antonina decided to follow later, arriving on 20 April 1994. In his own account, Boris rarely described the move as an ideological “return to the historic homeland”. It was a family decision. His son was struggling to settle, and the parents could provide financial help and share responsibility for their grandson. He wrote explicitly that he would have followed his son elsewhere too.

In the Belilovsky family, the legal status of repatriates coexisted with different ethnic self-identifications. Boris considered himself Jewish; his wife was Russian, and his sons came from a mixed family and were married to Russian women. The Law of Return allowed a family to move whose own understanding of identity was far more complex than a single category. In Israel, Belilovsky expressed this shift in the words “I, who had been a Jew there, had to move to Israel to become Russian”.

In Alma-Ata, the family had their own flat, a car, a dacha, professional standing and longstanding social ties. In Israel, the older former lieutenant colonel and schoolteacher lived in a rented flat and for a time earned money cleaning a building’s stairwell. He suffered from homesickness and gave no unequivocal answer about whether moving had been the right decision. Yet his concluding notes returned to the central reason. Being close to his son and grandson outweighed many losses.

Boris Belilovsky died in Israel on 13 November 2009. The date and principal stages of his biography are also confirmed by the Aleksin Centralised Library System.

Family ties with Kazakhstan survive the move to Israel

Repatriation changes a person’s country of residence, legal status and daily surroundings. Family and biographical ties with Kazakhstan may nevertheless persist for decades.

Israel is home to people born in Kazakhstan, people who left as children, families divided between the countries, and children and grandchildren of former Kazakhstan residents. For the latter, Kazakhstan remains part of family history even if they have never lived there themselves.

The concept of “people from Kazakhstan in Israel” extends beyond statistics on aliyah from Kazakhstan during one period.

The sources used contain no single current official figure covering Kazakhstan-born residents of Israel, relatives who moved with them and subsequent generations. These groups cannot be combined into an unsupported total.

Family ties and changing travel routes

Family visits depend on transport networks and entry rules, which change independently of repatriation itself. Air Astana opened a scheduled Almaty–Tel Aviv route on 7 September 2023. That historic launch does not establish uninterrupted operation or a timetable for autumn 2026.

Moving through the repatriation procedure and making a short visit to relatives are governed by different legal rules. A memorandum expressing an intention to prepare a visa exemption for holders of national passports does not, by itself, change entry requirements.

“From Kazakhstan” and “Kazakhstani” have different meanings

Someone may have been born in the Kazakh SSR, left for Israel in 1990 and never held citizenship of the independent Republic of Kazakhstan. Another person may have repatriated with a Kazakhstani passport after 1991. A third may have been born in Israel to a family from Almaty or Karaganda.

Public discussion may describe all three as people “of Kazakhstani origin”, but legally and statistically these are three different histories.

Their biographies differ in birthplace, citizenship, country of residence before moving, year of repatriation and subsequent relationship with Kazakhstan.

Repatriation changed the structure of Jewish life in Kazakhstan

The large outflow of the 1990s coincided with an institutional development within the country that moved in the opposite direction.

The community became numerically much smaller than in the late Soviet period. Yet those same years saw the emergence or formal establishment of Mitsva, Heseds, new community centres, Chabad, offices of international Jewish organisations and new religious infrastructure.

Some people left, others stayed, and some continued supporting relatives and institutions from Israel. International organisations both assisted repatriation and supported local community life. A transnational environment emerged, connecting Kazakhstan and Israel through diplomacy, family contacts, education, charity, pilgrimage and personal memory.

What the migration figures cover

The migration compilation covers moves from Kazakhstan to Israel between 1989 and 2017. The later figure concerns only September 2023 to September 2024. Kazakhstan’s censuses count the ethnic category “Jews”, rather than everyone who moved under the Law of Return. The sources used provide no separate current figure for all people from Kazakhstan living in Israel and their descendants.

In brief

• 1989 to 2017. A research compilation based on Israeli migration statistics counts 21 269 moves from Kazakhstan to Israel.
• 1995 to 1999. During one of the most pronounced waves, annual migration amounted to approximately 1.9 to 2.7 thousand people in the statistics used.
• The 1989, 1999 and 2009 censuses. Tolts’s study shows Kazakhstan’s Jewish population declining from approximately 19.9 thousand to 6.8 thousand and then 3.6 thousand. Aliyah to Israel alone cannot explain this change.
• The 2009 and 2021 censuses. Kazakhstan’s official census records 3 485 and 4 064 people respectively in the ethnic category “Jews”.
• 16 September 2023 to 19 September 2024. 105 new immigrants arrived in Israel from Kazakhstan.
• In 2026. An Israeli Nativ representative continues working in Almaty, checking eligibility for repatriation among residents of former Soviet countries.
• According to Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry. People from Kazakhstan who have repatriated to Israel form one of the human “bridges of friendship” between the countries.