Metadata: Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party
Collection
- Country:
- Estonia
- Holding institution:
- National Archives of Estonia
- Holding institution (official language):
- Rahvusarhiiv
- Postal address:
- Nooruse 3, 50411 Tartu
- Phone number:
- (+372) 738 7521
- Web address:
- www.ra.ee
- Email:
- tartu@ra.ee
- Reference number:
- ERAF.1
- Title:
- Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party
- Title (official language):
- Eestimaa Kommunistliku Partei Keskkomitee
- Creator/accumulator:
- Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party
- Date(s):
- 1917/1994
- Language:
- Estonian
- Russian
- Extent:
- 54,141 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The collection contains Jewish-related materials identified in 23 inventories from 1940-1980:
Inventory 6 (Organisational department) contains 296 files with information on Jewish classified workers from 1940-1989 including: L Aizenstadt, L Vseviov, J Gabovich, C Delsky, I Kaminsky, S Kaplan, R Levin, L Lentsman, M Murshak, V Narodnitsky, R Sotsilovsky, V Zucker and others.
Inventories 2, 4a, 5, 72, 113, 146, 163 and 228 (Special department) include secret decrees, correspondence, reports, static data, reviews on ideology, culture and personnel policy, minutes of party commissions and meetings, etc; materials and resolutions of the Central Committee's Bureau of the Estonian Communist Party with the stamp "Top Secret. Special Folder" 1945-1989 (139 records); statistics and collections, correspondence on the dispatch of checklists by classified personnel, secret certificates of KGB's verification in alphabetical order, including A Bukht, L Lenzman, A Liebman, Yu Menkov, A Slutsk, V Sharay, N Minsky, G Sapozhnikov, M Sturm; secret correspondence on personnel matters, incriminating materials from 1951-1955; inquiries, presentations, memos, opinions on the KGB checking for incriminating materials against the communists and correspondence on personal affairs, about non-partisan behaviour; health correspondence of 1960.
Inventory 14 (Administrative department) contains correspondence on establishing a section for former prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp.
Inventory 59 (Department of education, science and culture) contains materials on general questions, references on ideological issues; correspondence from 1951-1953 on deficiencies in teaching in higher schools, on the behaviour of students and teachers at Tartu University and the Conservatory; the case of M B Turovsk, a teacher at Tallinn Technical University.
Inventories 10, 13 and 50a (Department of trade and public catering) contain correspondence, reports, instructions, certificates, investigations, including the case of mass poisoning in public canteens in Tallinn in 1972; correspondence, consideration of complaints in 1946-1949; materials on the organisation of trade, fights against speculation, supplies, etc. in 1945.
Inventory 49a (Military department) includes correspondence on registration and supplying families of military personnel in 1945-1946.
Inventory 7 (Party commission) contains 295 Jewish-related records of communists who incurred penalties from the Communist Party (in Russian alphabetical order).
Inventories 48a and 307 (Personnel accounting department) include materials that indicate compromise by the Party towards Soviet workers, certificates and correspondence on the verification of persons recommended for classified positions in 1945-1948; classified lists from 1941-1966.
Inventory 115 (Sector of united party-membership cards) contains Communist Party membership cards from 1940-1941, including the cards for 28 Jewish Communists: Xenia and Leo Aisenstadt, Zemakh Delsky, Leo Epstein, Ruben Kamenovsky, Lazar and Zoya Vseviov and others, who were penalised by the Party between 1940-1960's.
- Archival history:
-
The Party Archives was established in 1948, with documents from the Military Department of the Estonian Communist Party's Central Committee. New documents were constantly received. According to the rules of procedure of the Party Archives, the materials were obtained together with inventories based on annual divisions and structural units. The annual breakdown did not always include all the files released during a given year. Sometimes they were included in the following year's list and sometimes a new inventory was created. The number of inventories was also increased by the division of documents into ordinary, secret and top secret.
The administration of the Central Committee and archival inventories (307 total) was constantly restructured between 1948 and 1989. A classification system based primarily on structural units was created for the entry of records in AIS in 2000. During the relocation of the Party Archives from Tallinn to Tartu in 2019, unexplored inventories 308 and 309 were compiled, and unregistered archives were discovered.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
After the end of the First World War, the Estonian Communist Party (ECP) operated illegally in Estonia. The first ECB Congress was held in Tallinn on 5 November 1920. The Congress established the Central Committee of the ECB, which chaired the work of the ECB between the Congresses. It was decided to join the Comintern, or Communist International. After the coup attempt on 1 December 1924, the governing bodies of the ECB and the activities of the ECB in Estonia were terminated by the Political Police in Estonia. Following the coup d'état in June 1940, legal activities of the ECB were restored in the Estonian Socialist Republic.
The Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party, abbreviated ECB KK (from 1940 to 1954 the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist (Bolshevik) Party, abbreviated EK (b) P KK) was the highest collective governing body of the Estonian Communist Party and a structural unit within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bureau of the ECB's Central Committee included 9-11 members and 3-4 candidate members. The office of the Central Committee consisted of representatives of the party apparatus, which included the Secretariat and the departments of the Central Committee.
The structure of the administrative apparatus of the Central Committee was formed in 1945, when 10 departments and two sections were established. It was constantly restructured from 1948 to 1989. Most recently, it operated six departments and the Central Administrative Board. The last heads of the ECB's Central Committee were elected at the XX ECB Congress in 1990. The institute was dissolved in 1991.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Turovsk, M B
- System of arrangement:
- The collection is arranged thematically and chronologically within the sub-archives, series and sub-series. Jewish-related materials are found in the series “Instructions, regulations, directives, information”, “Correspondence”, “Secret and top-secret papers”.
- Finding aids:
- General data on the collection is available on the web page of the National Archives of Estonia. The collection is also described in the Archives Portal Europe.
- Links to finding aids:
- https://www.archivesportaleurope.net/ead-display/-/ead/pl/aicode/EE-RA/type/fa/id/ERAF.1
- Yerusha Network member:
- Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
- Author of the description:
- Tatjana Shor; edited by Aviva Katourkina, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
