MOSCOW – When she fled the Soviet Union for Israel with her family as a teenager, the last place Irina Azanyan expected to end up 15 years later was in Moscow.

“My parents were desperate to get away, and we went as soon as we could,” she said. “I loved Israel, even before I’d ever been there. I don’t know why, maybe it was in my genes.”

Yet here she sits in her fifth-floor office at the Moscow Jewish Community Center, alternating effortlessly between Russian and Hebrew as she fields calls for Russia’s chief rabbi, Berl Lazar. The chorus of a group of pensioners studying Hebrew emanates from a nearby classroom as bearded young men in broad brimmed black hats stroll the halls with books tucked under their arms.

Ms. Azanyan and her family fled the Soviet regime at the tail end of a massive wave of emigration that saw about 1 million Soviet Jews settle in Israel by the mid-1990s. But now she is among the estimated 100,000 who have come back – the strongest sign yet of a startling revival of Jewish life in a country that has one of the worst records of Jewish persecution in history.

“It’s absolutely extraordinary how many people are returning,” said Rabbi Lazar, who has been Russia’s chief rabbi since 2000. “When they left, there was no community, no Jewish life. People felt that being Jewish was a historical mistake that happened to their family. Now they know they can live in Russia as part of a community.”

During the Soviet period, Jews – their religion clearly marked on internal passports – faced a range of state sponsored and unofficial anti-Semitism. Universities were allowed to accept only a small number of Jewish students, and many jobs, especially in government, were closed to them. Israel’s emergence as a close Western ally led to the persecution of many Soviet Jews as alleged Zionist sympathizers. The few token synagogues in operation were under open police surveillance.

Ms. Azanyan’s family was typical. Growing up in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, she knew little of her Jewish heritage, except for a few words in Yiddish and the names of important holidays. Fearful of persecution, her grandfather had changed his last name to the Armenian-sounding Azanyan from Eisenberg after World War II. This would come back to haunt the family when Mikhail Gorbachev opened the doors for Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel in the 1980s. Without a Jewish surname, the family was repeatedly denied the right to depart. Ms. Azanyan nonetheless began studying Hebrew at the age of 13 and learning all she could about Israel.

Her family were finally able to leave in 1990 as the Soviet Union was disintegrating. They touched down in Israel on Ms. Azanyan’s 16th birthday. “It was like a dream come true,” she said. After finishing high school and her two years of compulsory military service, Ms. Azanyan studied history and archaeology at the University of Tel Aviv. In 1998, she followed a boyfriend to Russia and found a job at the Israeli Embassy in Moscow. While there, she was stunned to encounter hundreds of other returning Israelis.

“People were coming back for many different reasons,” she said. “Some people saw economic opportunities in Russia. Some people were worried about security in Israel. And some people came back because they weren’t ready to go to Israel. They expected too much and didn’t realize how much work it would be to start a new life in a different country.”

After leaving the embassy in 2001, she decided to stay in Russia and took the job as Rabbi Lazar’s assistant.

“I still love Israel, and I’d like to go back someday. But, for now, I’m happy here,” she said.

Like Ms. Azanyan, most of those who’ve returned have kept their Israeli passports and, in some cases, keep homes in both countries. Rabbi Lazar says it’s irrelevant whether returning Jews are planning to stay in Russia permanently or one day go back to Israel.

“They don’t know how long they’re going to stay. Two years, a year, six months, what’s the difference? The fact that they’re coming back at all is a strong statement.”

Which isn’t to say anti-Semitism is no longer a problem in Russia. In fact, some believe that the community’s increasing profile has sparked a backlash from nationalist Russians.

In January, 19 nationalist lawmakers sent a letter to Russia’s prosecutor-general, asking him to outlaw all Jewish organizations, and saying they fostered ethnic hatred against Russians. Two months later, several Russian cultural figures, including the former world chess champion Boris Spassky, sent a similar letter backed by a petition signed by 5,000 Russians. Among other accusations, the letter accused Jews of being “anti-Christian and inhumane” and of “committing ritual murders.”

Nationalist politicians – a growing force in Russian politics – rant openly about Jewish conspiracies to control the Russian economy, pointing out that many of Russia’s billionaire oligarchs, including a former Yukos chief executive now in prison, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, are Jewish.

Defending the letter in a February appearance on one of Russia’s most popular political talk shows, a State Duma deputy, Albert Makashov, spoke for an hour about the allegedly illegal privatizations that left much of the country’s wealth in the oligarchs’ hands.

“All I am saying is that most oligarchs come from one diaspora: Jewish,” he said. “They stole everything God gave us.” Asked to call in their support for either Mr. Makashov or his opponent in the debate, more than 53,000 of about 100,000 callers chose Mr. Makashov.

Racist attacks on Jews are a problem. The Moscow Bureau of Human Rights reported last month that 27 anti-Semitic attacks took place in Moscow in 2004 and the first three months of 2005. In January, six thugs shouting anti-Semitic slurs attacked a group of Orthodox Jews in a Moscow underpass. Two young boys and one man escaped, but a rabbi, Alexander Lakshin, was left beaten and bloodied. When he tried to ask employees at a local shop to use their phone to call the police, they refused and told him to leave.

Yet even Rabbi Lakshin is encouraged by recent developments in Russia. In the weeks since the attack, police arrested three suspects, two of whom are now facing serious charges that could land them in jail for years.

“No country in the world can boast of having no anti-Semites; it’s how a society reacts to these kinds of attacks that’s important,” he said. “Yes, it was a sad thing that happened. But when I think about how much tremendous change there has been in Russia since I was a boy, when I see groups of young people walking about unafraid, it makes me so happy.”

At the seven-story, $20 million Moscow Jewish Community Center built five years ago, there’s a growing sense that the Jewish renaissance is irreversible. Stretching across two city blocks, the center includes a synagogue, library, fitness center, and kosher restaurant, all built with donations from abroad and the local community. Record numbers of Jewish families are signing up for its free services, and this year’s Passover celebrations were the biggest in memory. Down the street, a bigger, $100 million complex with Russia’s first Jewish museum, a medical center, and a school is being built on land donated by the city of Moscow.

Similar centers, most featuring the first Jewish schools to operate locally in decades, are being built across the country. In the last five years, the number of distinct Jewish communities in Russia has swelled to more than 200 from 87. Fifteen years ago, there was not a single Jewish school in all of Russia. Today, more than 15,000 students attend them.

Mr. Lazar said that of the estimated 1 million Jews who remained in Russia following the exodus to Israel, very few were in the recent past prepared to even identify themselves as Jewish. Today, about 120,000 are involved in the Jewish community, he said.

“Nowhere in the world have we ever seen a Jewish community of this size reviving from essentially nothing,” he said.

The executive director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the former Soviet Union, Avraham Berkowitz, said he felt the change most acutely during Passover this year.

Every year, the FJC coordinates a campaign to send kosher food products used in making Passover dishes to Jewish communities across the country. This year’s campaign was the largest ever, with 1.2 million pounds of matzo and 250,000 bottles of kosher wine distributed nationwide.

“More and more Jews are coming out of the woodwork, and they’re not afraid to say so,” Mr. Berkowitz said. “The change in Russia from 15 years ago to today is nothing short of a miracle.”