By 1987, hundreds of thousands of Jews were streaming out of the crumbling Soviet Union; yet, equal numbers still remained. Chabad yeshivah students began to travel to the USSR in greater numbers, and in 1990 the first permanent Chabad emissaries arrived in the Soviet Union; Rabbi Berel and Chanie Lazar and their family settled in Moscow, Rabbi Shmuel and Chana Kaminezki headed to Dnepropetrovsk, and Rabbi Moshe and Miriam Moskovitz landed in Kharkov. That same year, the first Jewish summer camp for children, Camp Gan Israel, opened its doors in Moscow, with camps opening the next year in Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov. Emissaries arrived in St. Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa and Minsk shortly thereafter, and the Ohr Avner educational network was founded in 1993, with the goal of opening Jewish schools throughout the newly-independent ex-Soviet states.

By 1994, Chabad maintained the largest network of Jewish communal life in the region, with permanent emissary couples in eight cities throughout the former Soviet Union. Today, it is the largest Jewish organization in the former Soviet Union, with representatives in 100 cities (35 of them in Ukraine), and centers in each of the former Soviet republics, including Kyrgyzstan. Moscow alone is home to more than 30 Chabad Jewish centers, and Dnipro, Ukraine, is home to the largest Jewish center in the world.

Building on a century of underground work, Lubavitch was able to successfully replant its roots in the crumbling Soviet Union, and flourish in the post-Soviet era.