In his memoirs, Marco Polo mentions the existence of Jewish traders along the Silk Road which passed through modern-day Kyrgyzstan, who built synagogues and spoke Aramaic.
During the beginning of the 20th century, numerous Jewish Businessmen owned businesses in the Kyrgyz area − among them Yuri Davidov, who owned cotton factories in the Fergana valley, Boris Kagan who established a network of bookshops, and the Polyakov brothers who founded a branch of the Azov-Don Commercial Bank.
Due to the need in doctors, teachers and engineers, many Ashkenazi Jews began to emigrate to Kyrgyzstan from European Russia.
Among them many representatives of different political parties who were exiled to central Asia, or government officials who were asked to work in rural areas such as Kyrgyzstan.
With the outbreak of the bolshevic revolution, many political activists were sent to Kyrgyzstan to promote the communist ideas, and bolshevic rule − many of whom were Jews or of Jewish origin (from far western part of former Russian Empire), such as G. Broido who was chairman of the Bishkek city soviet, and Pinchasov, Lifschitz and Frei who were members of the local city soviets of Osh, Dzhalal-Abad, and Tokmak.
In 1920, the local ministry of education initiated a Jewish institute run by Simon Dimanshtein meant for alphabetization of Sephardic Jews.
In 1929, Alexander Volodarsky, a former Yeshiva student from Vitebsk, became the leader of the Ashkenazi Jewish community of Osh, after being exiled from Belarus due to his religious practices.
During the Second World War, more than 20,000 Ashkenazi Jews fled to Kyrgyzstan from the Nazi-occupied western parts of the Soviet Union.
The Jewish Theater Company of Warsaw with the renowned actress Jewish-Polish Ida Kamińska (1899−1980) was evacuated to Bishkek until it was moved back to Europe after the war.