Jews have lived in Central Asia, including the modern countries of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, for centuries.
Joseph Stalin forcibly relocated thousands of Jews from other parts of the Soviet Union to the Kazakh SSR.
During the Second World War, more than 20,000 Ashkenazi Jews fled to Kyrgyzstan from the Nazi-occupied western parts of the Soviet Union.
Jews first arrived in the eastern part of the Emirate of Bukhara, in what is today Tajikistan, in the 2nd century BC[citation needed].
In an effort to develop Tajikistan, Soviet authorities encouraged migration, including thousands of Jews, from neighboring Uzbekistan.