Metadata: Zvenigorod City Municipality
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Kyiv
- Holding institution (official language):
- Центральний державний історичний архів України, м. Київ
- Postal address:
- 03110, м. Київ-110, вул. Солом'янська, 24
- Phone number:
- 380 (044) 275-30-02
- Web address:
- cdiak.archives.gov.ua
- Email:
- mail.cdiak@arch.gov.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 46
- Title:
- Zvenigorod City Municipality
- Title (official language):
- Звенигородский городовой магистрат
- Creator/accumulator:
- Zvenigorod City Municipality
- Date(s):
- 1791/1860
- Language:
- Polish
- Hebrew
- Latin
- Russian
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- 48 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
The description below is based on a single catalogue entry that describes in general terms a group of 31 institutionally related fonds, which are listed individually in the Yerusha database. The description covers material from the municipalities of Berdichev, Berestechko, Boguslav, Vasil’kov, Vinnitsa, Vladimir, Dubno, Zhitomir, Zvenigorod, Kamenets, Kanev, Kovel’, Kremenets, Letichev, Lipovets, Litin, Lutsk, Milianov, Mogilev, Novograd-Volhynskii, Ovruch, Olyka, Proskurov, Radomysl’, Satanov, Skvira, Tarashcha, Cherkassy and Chigirin. Information known to refer to the Zvenigorod fond in particular is mentioned in the final paragraph.
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The fonds contain materials pertaining to the activities of municipalities, and after the annexation of Right-Bank Ukraine to Russia, of city municipalities. They include: kings’ and sejms’ decrees [uniwersały], letters, and privileges [przywileje]; boundary decrees; clauses of laws granting cities the Magdeburg Rights, and granting rights and liberties to cities, towns, and particular guilds and population categories; edicts, orders, resolutions, and instructions of bodies and representatives of civil and military authorities; decrees of assessors’ and other higher courts regarding city administration and legal procedure; documents on cities’ disputes over land with adjacent proprietors; inventories and descriptions of cities and of population centres belonging to them; population lists and tax registers; documents and files on fires and epidemics, and on their consequences; on the collection of state taxes and tax arrears; on carrying out poll-tax and other censuses and conscription, etc.
Materials pertaining in one way or another to the Jewish population constitute particular document registers, files, and fragments that include the following sorts of documents, in Polish (with Latin elements), Hebrew, Latin, Russian and Old Ukrainian:
1. Edicts and orders of the Polish and Russian authorities; fragments of legislative statutes; court decrees on the rights and obligations of the Jewish population of cities and towns, and on the expansion or restriction of these rights and obligations; in particular, a royal decree [uniwersał] on the liquidation of kahal debts by King Stanisław Augustus (this register also contains complaints by individual Jews regarding damages caused by Cossacks during the use of their home as a military hospital).
2. Inventories, including land inventories, of cities; registers of taxes and of income and expenses containing lists of Jews and information on their taxable property (including community property) and on amounts of taxes paid by Jews, as well as on exemptions and privileges they enjoyed; other lists of the Jewish population.
3. Deeds and documents on Jews’ acquisition, ownership, and use of land plots, houses, estates, and other real estate in cities and their environs: petitions to municipalities, and municipality permits [konsensy] and confirmation documents for the allocation of land plots and for their purchase and sale, including from auction; contracts on the purchase and sale of real estate; deeds of sale, of donation/settlement, of surety, and of exchange, and agreements with owners; documents on investigations undertaken by city authorities at the request of parties; documents on surveys of land plots, and reports on their livery; court rulings in cases of land disputes and nonpayment of land taxes and excises; certificates of inspection, survey, and appraisal (визии and statutory prices [taksy]) performed by representatives of the authorities as pertained to various property: items pawned to Jews, not redeemed by their owners and left as debt repayment; and inferior goods purchased by Jews, including spirits designated for sale in taverns.
4. Rulings of city, arbitration, appeals, etc. courts on cases of nonpayment of taxes; cases of local non-Jews not paying Jews for goods and vice versa; and of Jews’ failure to pay other Jews; of nonpayment by whole Jewish kahals (there are also royal decrees [uniwersały], orders, and resolutions of various commissions and other institutions regarding the final settlement of kahal debts); on cases of the incurrence of damages (in particular, a case of Jewish tenant farmers against millers they had hired whose work was unsatisfactory); on cases of affronts, attacks, and homicides (in particular, an incident in which a Jewish tavern-keeper had killed a drunken patron); cases of Jews committing theft, harbouring thieves, and buying stolen goods; cases of robbery, including of Jews robbing Jewish merchants on the roads; records of oaths and inquisitions (investigations including the calling of witnesses) on cases of this nature; and judgments of the Jewish arbitration court on civil disputes.
5. Allegations and complaints, and files and court rulings thereupon, pertaining to claims by Jews against kahal authorities, and against kahal plenipotentiaries on various matters, regarding harassment, the incurrence of damages, improper fulfilment of official duties, and fraud; and pertaining to financial conflicts between Jews and their Jewish business and commercial partners; documents on and references to elections for community offices (rabbi, parnas, treasurer): an imperial edict on elections of people to fill these posts; citations of articles of the law on electoral procedure; information on the holding of elections for kahal parnasim and on candidates (by town).
6. Records of contracts for the sale and delivery of goods and army forage; on the rental of taverns, settlements, and whole klucze [privately-owned estate lands]; and on the farming-out of collection of local and state taxes, and the collection of all manner of debt instruments; records of agreements on property matters, and on the cessation of trials; records of proxies granted to carry out judicial and commercial matters; records of bail payments for persons in jail; marriage contracts regarding monetary sums given to the bride; letters (translated from Hebrew into Polish) of Shmuel Jolles to Shmuel Eizikovich offering condolences on the passing of the latter’s father and dealing with legal matters (the letter was presented for entry in the register by Shmuel Eizikovich’s trustee).
7. Files and documents on the conduct of conscription among the Jewish population: orders and instructions of higher authorities on procedures for the delivery of Jewish recruits, and orders stipulating that rabbis be present when Jews take the military oath; correspondence of municipalities with higher authorities and with kahals; references to a special charter for conscripting Jews; information on the number of kahals required to deliver conscripts, and the number of those delivered; documents on cases of conscription evasion, on conscripts who had fled, and on finding those in hiding; lists of Jewish conscripts accepted and rejected in the 98th call-up; materials on the passport regime and on control of the migration of Jews: Jews’ requests for passports and leave warrants [uvol’nitel’nye svidetel’stva] for stays in other cities and changes of residence; kahal certificates attesting to the absence of any reason hindering Jews’ assignment to other kahals; materials on the detaining of Jews for not having written residence permits, and passports of Jews; on carrying out poll-tax censuses of the Jewish population, and on the collection of taxes, excises, and arrears from Jews; files on particular kahals failing to carry out orders that such censuses be taken; materials on incorrect records of Jews in poll-tax censuses, and on mistakes in totals.
8. Materials on the entrepreneurial activity of Jews: detailed monetary accounts of a tax-farmer [otkupshchik] (an “alms-box holder” [soderzhatel’ kruzhki]), the merchant M. Likhtenshtein; documentation on Jewish entrepreneurs’ fulfilment of duties pertaining to rent, alcohol middleman services, and deliveries to the Black Sea Admiralty; information on Jewish tavern keepers and licensed liquor merchants; and documents connected with the accounts of Jewish communal institutions.
9. Materials on the authorities’ control of the ideological and religious spheres of the life of the Jewish population. There are also applications of Jewish merchants for registration in guilds; texts of standard-form oaths for Jewish witnesses and translators. In a number of cases, the documents indicate the names of kahal parnasim and councilmen from local Jewish communities; there are also mentions of the official activities of Jews in city self-government bodies; etc.
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Particular to Zvenigorod is a record in the official document register of the Zvenigorod Municipality which contains instructions to judges elected to the Vinnitsa department sejm to enact, among other things, a ban on Jews engaging in tavern trade in the “free cities” of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Eizikovich, Shmuel
- Jolles, Shmuel
- Likhtenshtein, M.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary