The success of the October Revolution was not a complete surprise to Petrograd's Jews. They interpreted the victory of the Bolsheviks as the worst, but predictable, variant of the events' development. On November 19, 1917, "Yevreyskaya Gazeta" ("Jewish Newspaper") wrote: "The event everybody feared has taken place. Russia, poised on the edge of the abyss, has fallen." However, a belief that the trouble would pass helped to lessen the shock. On November 9, the new house of the Jewish Club (Jewish Community Assembly) was celebrated (M.I. Sheftel was the chairman). The celebration took place shortly after the funeral of Jewish cadets who were killed as they defended the Vladimirskoe Academy and the telephone exchange from the rebels. All in all, 50 victims of the Revolution were buried at the Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery, including 35 cadets. A thousand people attended the funeral. Thus did the brief "days of freedom" come to an end for the city's Jews.
On the eve of the First World War, Jews were almost 2% of the two-million population of the Russian capital. According to the population census of 1920, they were already the second largest ethnic group (after Russian): they were 3.53%; however, the population had dropped to 722,000. During the Civil War, the Petrograd population fell to nearly a third because of famine, epidemics, the deaths on the fronts and during the Red Terror, because of emigration and moving to the countryside. The absolute number of the Jewish population also decreased. The same troubles affected the Jewish population, but the Jews had no place to escape from foodless Petrograd. Their relatives in the towns found themselves in a terrible situation among pogroms and warfare remarkable for their large scale and cruelty.
During the Civil War, Jewish refugees, the victims of pogroms, came to Petrograd as well as to other big cities. Orphaned children were especially numerous. The numbers affirm that: the percentage of Jewish schoolchildren was greater by a 1/3 than that of the Jewish population in Petrograd. Such Jewish organizations as the EKOPO, OZE and JCS helped Jewish refugees to survive. The organizations were established during the last pre-war years and they co-operated with such popular organizations as the OPE and ORT. In 1918, representatives of Joint also began helping Jewish refugees. Simultaneously, the Jewish Department of the Narkomnats (People's Commissariat of Nationalities) tended to problems of the refugees and helped all Jews to organize their life.
The Bolsheviks could not yet refuse the aid of Jewish voluntary organizations because they could not cope with the famine and devastation by themselves. However, the authorities did not leave these organizations alone. In June, 1918, the Jewish Department of the Komnats SKSO warned JCS men "under danger of revolutionary punishment as for the treason against the Fatherland" that representatives of any foreign mission could by no means receive any information or certificate. The activity of Joint (distribution of personal aid parcels sent by Jewish relatives from foreign countries) annoyed the authorities especially because there were "social strangers" among those who got the parcels.
In 1922, a representative of VTsIK issued a circular where he noted: "The Joint is a bourgeois organization that is eager to get in touch with clerics, Zionists and the intelligentsia..." The circular forbade allowing representatives of any religious organizations to work in commissions distributing aid.
Representatives of the Joint were busy not only in aiding orphan children and those without food. It was necessary to find jobs for employable adults. Most Jewish refugees - craftsmen and merchants - were qualified as "lishenets" (deprived). The Joint provided the craftsmen with tools and it organized labor artels (co-operative associations of workmen).
When the NEP began, the co-operative movement began developing rapidly. Many Petrograd Jews entered the co-operatives. Young people began mastering labor professions to be admitted to education. Those who succeeded in hiding their social origin found that government offices needed many literate employees. In those years, many Jews were freelancers. So, Jews constituted 13% of all practicing Petrograd physicians; and 52% of the dentists. By 1925, the Jewish segment of the Leningrad population was renewed substantially. Jewish newcomers found themselves in a city with strong communal traditions; however, those traditions were being ruined and destroyed before their eyes.