The 1905 edition of Brockhous and Efron encyclopedic dictionary includes an entry for Repki, a mestechko of Chernigov gubernia. According to it, the 1897 All-Russian censuses reported a population of 3,336 in Repki. The surprise came with the nationality breakdown. Censors accounted the Jews to be 91.3% (3,049) of the entire mestechko. This was unusual. The Jews would typically amount to ~25% of the population in the rural townships of Imperial Russia. On a first glance it appeared to be success story. In reality this demographics represented much darker and more sinister dynamics. It was a story of nearly 250 years of atrocities, government prosecution and deliberate eviction. Still the Jews of Repki survived multiple wars, numerous governments, and deep-rooted religious hatred.