Metadata: The Provincial Board (Gubernskoe Pravlenie) 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. 381
- Title:
- The Provincial Board (Gubernskoe Pravlenie) of Vilnius
- Title (official language):
- Vilniaus gubernijos valdyba
- Creator/accumulator:
- Provincial Board (Gubernskoe Pravlenie) of Vilnius
- Date(s):
- 1796/1916
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 71,933 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The collection comprises the records of the Governorate Board (Gubernskoe Pravlenie) of Vilnius. In 19th-century Russia, provincial boards were legally designated as the main administrative bodies of the governorates. In practice, however, they were completely subordinate to the governors and had rather limited authority. The governorate boards addressed various administrative issues and were responsible, among other things, for the supervision of law enforcement throughout the governorates and for arbitration between individuals and institutions.
The files of the Vilnius governorate board cover the period between 1796 and 1916. However, the collection also includes documents that refer to earlier events, such as a conflict between the Jewish communities of Pinsk and Karlin in the second half of the 18th century and conflicts on financial grounds from 1713 and later between Jewish communities and Christian institutions.
The governorate board addressed numerous Jewish-related issues. Its archival collection contains documents that refer to various economic, social and religious topics. Among these are Jewish communal affairs in Vilnius and other localities – elections of the members of Kahal and their activities, community institutions, complaints and appeals on various issues (including information conveyed to the Russian authorities by a Jewish informer in Vilnius in 1807-08); election of Jewish representatives ("Jewish deputies" in 1817, members of the rabbinical commission in the 1840s and later) and crown rabbis; data on taxation, including the box and the candle taxes in various communities, as well as the recruit tax prior to 1827; trade and manufacturing (including data on Jewish tobacco manufacturers and fairs in various locations); Jewish printing houses in various locations (including an 1862-63 appeal by the owners of the Romm print house against a guild established by their workers); Jewish education, including teachers and traditional schools (including correspondence concerning the Yeshiva of Volozhin from 1879-80). Several files include civil records (Revizskie Skazki) from a number of communities.
Other files include data on travel, residence and settlement permits: appeals by individuals and communities against their expulsion from localities in the 50-verst zone from the western frontier; data on Jewish migration, including Jewish rural dwellers who moved to towns and cities in the 1800s and 1810s; Jewish migrants to the southern governorates in the 1840s and 1850s; and Jewish farmers in various areas, including the Vilnius governorate. Several documents from the late 1800s and early 1810s mention Jewish migrants to the governorate of Vilnius, including a resident of Galicia who moved to Russia in order to avoid conscription to the Austrian army. Records on travel permits from the late 1830s mention, among others, Leib (later Leon) Mandelshtam, who travelled to the University of Moscow, and Ber Notkin, a nephew of Nota Notkin, who wished to travel to St. Petersburg in order to inherit his uncle's property.
Some materials refer to the Napoleonic Wars: several documents mention the damage inflicted by the 1812 invasion and other documents include data on Jewish merchants and contractors of the Russian army (among others, A. Peretz and L. Nevachovich are mentioned); in a few cases, the documents mention former Jewish soldiers of the invading armies who stayed in Russia after 1812.
Several papers mention the damage and casualties inflicted by the 1830-31 Polish insurrection and other issues related to the insurrection. Other files include data on the 1863-64 uprising.
Documents from the late 1820s and later refer to the conscription of Jews to the Russian army: various appeals and complaints about cases of fraud and injustice, exemptions from service, conscription of Jewish beggars and the oath of Jewish conscripts in Vilnius in the late 1820s. Correspondence from 1830 mentions the recruitment of Jewish children who were sent to Austria in order to avoid conscription but sent back to Russia by the Austrian authorities.
Documents from various years include data on criminal activities: smuggling, espionage, illegal logging and other issues including an 1818 verdict of the Higher Court of Vilnius against a peasant woman and a Jewish man who were convicted of illegal cohabitation and correspondence from the same year that refers to the government's approval of a Cherem (ban) on smugglers.
A number of files contain data on the Karaite communities in Trakai and other localities.
- Archival history:
- Prior to the 1917 revolution, the records of the Russian administration in Vilnius, including the materials of the governorate, were kept in a separate government depository. In the early 1920s they were transferred to the newly established Vilnius State Archive, which became a 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 current State Historical Archive.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The governorate of Vilnius was formed after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. For a short period it was merged into the governorate of Lithuania, but between 1801 and 1917 it existed as a separate administrative unit. From 1801 to 1843 the governorate included the major part of modern Lithuania. As part of an administrative reform in 1843 its western areas were included in the newly established governorate of Kaunas. From 1801 to 1912 the Vilnius governorate was part of the Vilnius Governorate General.
- Access points: locations:
- Vilnius
- Access points: persons/families:
- Mandelshtam, Leon
- Nevachovich, L
- Notkin, Ber
- Peretz, A
- System of arrangement:
- The papers are arranged into subunits that partially reflect the structure of the Provincial board. The internal arrangement of the subunits is chronological.
- 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 are available at LVIA (for online data see the website of the Lithuanian Archives). 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
- 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
