Metadata: The Office of the Local Publications Censor 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. 1241
- Title:
- The Office of the Local Publications Censor of Vilnius
- Title (official language):
- Vilniaus vidaus cenzūros atskirojo cenzoriaus kanceliarija
- Creator/accumulator:
- Office of the Local Publications Censor of Vilnius
- Date(s):
- 1865/1907
- Language:
- Russian
- Lithuanian
- Yiddish
- Polish
- Hebrew
- Extent:
- 133 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The Local Publications Censor was in charge of the appraisal of publications printed in Vilnius and the region. The archival collection of the censor's office comprises lists of publications, correspondence and other documents related to the office's activity: letters from authors and publishers, records of communications with libraries and governmental institutions and various administrative documents including papers referring to the censors' employment and the performance of their duties.
The Jewish-related parts of the collection include materials on Jewish publications and their reviewing process, as well as data on Jewish censors employed at the office.
Papers from the late 1860s include data on Jewish censors including Rosen and Steinberg; some documents mention Ya'akov Brafman, author of the notorious "Book of the Kahal", who served as a censor for Jewish books in Vilnius between 1866 and 1870.
Several files include the censors' reports on various Jewish publications (these include the censors' conclusions; in certain cases the pages or paragraphs to be omitted are also mentioned). One of the reports refers to correspondence with Moses Montefiore published in the Vilnius-based Hebrew/Russian periodical Ha-Carmel; this periodical and its publisher S.Y. Fuenn are also mentioned in correspondence from 1878-79).
Files from the early 20th century include data on the monitoring and censorship of the Jewish press in Hebrew and Yiddish, including data on issues confiscated by the police and legal pursuit of newspaper editors (Ben-Tsion Katz, editor of Ha-Zman, and the editors of Der Wecker, Folkszeitung, Der Nayer Veg, Der Proletarishen Gedank and Di Yudishe Virklikhkeit are mentioned). Translations into Russian of the forbidden texts are also included in the files.
- Archival history:
- Prior to the 1917 revolution, the records of the Russian administration in Vilnius were kept in a separate government depository. Under Polish rule 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 modern State Historical Archive.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The separate office of the Local Publications Censor in Vilnius was established as a product of the Russia-wide censorship reorganisation of 1863-65. The separate censorship offices for local and foreign publications took the place of the censorship committee of Vilnius, which had existed between 1801 and 1865 (see f. 1240 at LVIA). The office existed through the second half of the 19th century until 1901, when the censorship of local publications was handled over to the censors of foreign publications. In 1907 the separate censorship offices in Vilnius were officially reorganised into the Temporary Committee for Publishing Affairs.
- Access points: locations:
- Vilnius
- Access points: persons/families:
- Brafman, Ia. A.
- Montefiore, Moses Haim
- System of arrangement:
- The collection consists of one inventory, which is arranged in chronological order.
- 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 the Lithuanian State Historical Archives. An inventory in Russian, as well as descriptions of the Jewish-related materials of the collection, is also available at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.
- 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
