Metadata: Headquarters of the Educational District of Vilnius
Collection
- Country:
- Lithuania
- Holding institution:
- Lithuanian State Historical Archives
- Holding institution (official language):
- Lietuvos valstybės istorijos archyvas
- Postal address:
- Gerosios Vilties g. 10, 03134 Vilnius
- Phone number:
- (8 5) 213 74 82
- Web address:
- http://www.archyvai.lt/lt/lvia_naujienos.html
- Email:
- istorijos.archyvas@lvia.lt
- Reference number:
- f. 567
- Title:
- Headquarters of the Educational District of Vilnius
- Title (official language):
- Vilniaus švietimo apygardos valdyba
- Creator/accumulator:
- Headquarters of the Educational District of Vilnius
- Date(s):
- 1775/1918
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 66,591 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The Educational District of Vilnius was a territorial administrative unit of the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment which supervised elementary, secondary and higher education in the approximate area of modern Lithuania and northern Belarus. In the complex multi-ethnic and multinational context of the region, the educational district became an important instrument for implementing Russian imperial policies. The archival collection of the educational district's headquarters contains a multitude of Jewish-related materials.
Files from the first decades of the 19th century include documents and reports concerning plans to establish a Jewish elementary school and a Jewish teachers' institute in Vilnius (1808 and 1818). Many other materials mention Jewish elementary schools throughout the region: schools of Russian grammar; private and state-run schools (including the first private modern Jewish schools in Vilnius, established by local adherents of Haskalah); Jewish boys’ and girls’ schools and coeducational schools; specialized schools, such as the school for Jewish deaf-mute children, which functioned in late 19th-century Minsk; and Saturday schools for Jewish labourers, such as a school for artisans in Minsk in 1862 and a school for workers in Vilnius in 1898. The schools' files include documents on the appointment of teachers, lists and data on pupils and data on the funding and management of various institutions. These files also include papers and correspondence on requests to allow for the establishment of new schools (including a request by Pauline Vengerov to open a grammar school for Jewish girls in Minsk in 1888 and a request by Faivel Getz to establish a commercial school in Minsk in 1890) and information relating to the appointment of honorary trustees from various institutions (such as Afanasii Vengerov and Mark Shabad, who are mentioned as honorary trustees of a Jewish school in Minsk, also in 1888).
Other papers include data and reports concerning traditional Jewish education, from the chadarim and melamdim (the traditional schools and their teachers) in various localities to such institutions as the Yeshiva (institution of advanced religious study) of Volozhin. The Yeshiva of Volozhin is mentioned in a variety of documents, especially from the second half of the 19th century, including reports on donations to the Yeshiva, information on a fire which occurred there in 1886 and information on the curriculum at the Yeshiva. Some documents also refer to other yeshivot, such as those of Mir and Lida.
Documents from the early 20th century also refer to "modern chadarim" and schools of the Hebrew language in various localities.
The collection also includes papers relating to the government's policies in the field of Jewish education, including documents which refer to the so-called “compulsory education” episode: the establishment of a system of state-run schools in the 1840s as part of an effort to "enlighten" Russia's Jews. These documents include directives, regulations and correspondence, data on Jewish schools in various periods and localities and data on the collection of the candle tax, which was imposed on the Jews in order to support the new schooling system.
The papers also include extensive data on the rabbinical seminary in Vilnius, which was established as part of the compulsory education plan in 1847 (in 1873 the seminary was transformed into a Jewish teachers' institute, which functioned until 1914): minutes of teachers' meetings, records on the curriculum and pupils' examinations and data on other educational and disciplinary issues – scholarships granted to students, records on breaches of discipline (including a report on pupils reprimanded for drinking alcoholic beverages in 1871-72) and data on expelled pupils (such as the expulsion of the poet and future literary critic and writer Avraham Paperna in the mid-1860s and expulsions of politically engaged pupils in subsequent years).
The collection also contains data on Jewish book publishing and censorship, including records of the appointment of Jewish censors, and papers which refer to the publishing of various books (such as correspondence concerning the printing of "Beyt Yehuda" by Yitshak Ber Levinzon and its distribution among Jewish schools in the late 1850s and a report from 1866 concerning Iakov Brafman and his translation of Jewish community records, a translation which was later published as "The Book of the Kahal").
Some files include data on Jewish libraries and reading rooms, including a library which was established in Minsk in 1862. Other files mention Jewish contractors who supplied books and other materials to state-run schools (one such file refers to a conflict between the Jewish merchants Yudel Opatov and Chaim Anglin from Vilnius and the Russian merchant Egor Nikiforov in 1841 about the supply of books to the medical academy in Kiev).
Naturally, the records of the educational district include various administrative data: information on appointment of teachers, on teaching permits and teaching exams (including exams of Jewish women wishing to receive a private teacher's licence in the last decades of the 19th century) and on the examination of apprentice pharmacists. The administrative records also include data on permits granted to individuals to attend university admission exams (including a permit granted in 1839 to Leib (later Leon) Mandelshtam and numerous permits granted to graduates of the rabbinical seminary from the 1850s onward).
Jewish-related materials can be also found in the archival collections of high schools and other non-Jewish educational institutions; these often contain statistical data and other information concerning Jewish students. Some records refer to Jewish apostates who studied in the state-run educational system, including a directive from 1843 concerning the free admission of such students.
Data from the late 19th and early 20th centuries often refer to political and social activities in various institutions: some reports mention cases of revolutionary propaganda among and by students; other records list students expelled due to political activity.
- Archival history:
- Prior to the 1917 revolution, the records of the Russian administration in Vilnius, including the materials of the educational district, were kept in a separate government depository. In the early 1920s they were transferred to the newly established Vilnius State Archive, which became part of the Central State Archive of the Lithuanian SSR in 1940. In 1957, together with other pre-revolutionary documentation, these materials were included in the Central State Historical Archive of the Lithuanian SSR, predecessor of the modern State Historical Archive.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- In imperial Russia, educational districts were territorial administrative units of the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment, which supervised elementary, secondary and higher education in a given region. The educational district of Vilnius was one of the first six districts to be established in 1803. In the first decades of its existence, the district included the area between Lithuania and southern Ukraine (the governorates of Hrodna, Kaunas, Kiev, Minsk, Mogilev, Podolia, Vilnius, Vitebsk and Volhynia and the oblast of Bialystok). In 1818 the governorate of Kiev was transferred to the control of the educational district of Kharkov, and in 1826 the Governorates of Mogilev and Vitebsk were transferred to the jurisdiction of the educational district of St. Petersburg. In 1831 the governorates of Podolia and Volhynia were included in the educational district of Kharkov, and in 1832 the educational district of Vilnius was abolished and replaced by the educational district of Belorussia, established in Vitebsk in 1829. In 1836 the headquarters of the educational district of Belorussia were moved to Vilnius, and in 1850 this district was named again as the educational district of Vilnius. In 1850 it included the governorates of Hrodna, Kaunas, Minsk and Vilnius. In 1864 the governorates of Mogilev and Vitebsk were also included in the district's area of jurisdiction (in 1850-64 these governorates were under the authority of the educational district of St. Petersburg).
- Access points: persons/families:
- Brafman, Ia. A.
- Mandel'shtam, L. N.
- System of arrangement:
- The collection is arranged in chronological/thematic sections. Some sections contain documents which refer to specific issues in a given period (such as inventory no. 6, which includes documents on Jewish schools from 1851 to 1867, or inventory no. 26, which lists the documents of the "Secret Board" of the Chancellery from 1865 to 1914); others include a wide range of documents from different periods.
- Access, restrictions:
- The collection is open for reference at LVIA.
- Finding aids:
- A basic inventory is available online in Lithuanian. More detailed inventories in Russian, as well as thematic and alphabetical indexes, are available at LVIA. Records and descriptions of the Jewish-related materials of the collection are also available at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.
- Links to finding aids:
- https://eais-pub.archyvai.lt/eais/faces/pages/forms/search/F3001.jspx?_afPfm=-7dec7f9e.6
- Yerusha Network member:
- Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
- Author of the description:
- Alex Valdman, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, 2014
