Metadata: Kremenchug 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. 955
- Title:
- Kremenchug City Municipality
- Title (official language):
- Кременчугский городовой магистрат
- Creator/accumulator:
- Kremenchug City Municipality
- Date(s):
- 1777/1800
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Extent:
- 11,454 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 institutionally related fonds, which are listed individually in the Yerusha database. The description covers material from the municipalities of Borzna, Bakhmut, Valki, Gadiach, Glukhov, Izium, Kozelets, Konotop, Kremenchug, Mglin, Mirgorod, Novoe Mesto, Romny, Starodub and Chernigov. Information known to refer to the Kremenchug fond in particular is mentioned in the final paragraphs.
***
Materials contained in the fond (individual files, scattered documents and fragments) reflect to some extent or another certain elements of the process by which Jews became Russian subjects in the territories of Left-Bank and Sloboda Ukraine and so-called Novorossiia [New Russia], the legal status they received in doing so, and various aspects of their relations with the local population. Especially significant among these are materials on the assignment of Jews from regions annexed from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the merchant and townspeople’s [meshchanskoe] estates per a Senate edict of 23 June 1794, and on solving the various conflicts arising in this process; as well as similar materials from an earlier period. Among these are viceroyalty [namestnichestvo] administration edicts accepting Jews as local townspeople, or rejecting them in cases in which some obstruction for this existed, for instance, the absence of documentation of their being free of state or private arrears, or if they had been in debt in their previous place of residence; a certificate on the registering of Jewish townspeople of Khar’kov to Cossack regiments of the Khar’kov province, and on not including them, after the disbanding of these regiments, in the townsperson estate [meshchanstvo] due to an imperial edict forbidding this; files on individual Jews’ petitions for acceptance into the ranks of townspeople and merchants; and analogous materials on Jewish converts to Christianity who were accepted into these estates pursuant to imperial orders. There are files and individual documents on the establishment of kahals in places where a significant number of Jews resided. These contain references to Senate edicts of 23 June 1794 and 29 December 1796 granting Jews who had come from the Mogilev province to the Malorossiia [Little Russia] provinces, particularly to Novgorod-Severskii, the right to reside there; an edict of the Malorossiia Provincial Administration establishing kahals in all of the county seats of the province (or in settlements, in cases of counties in which Jews lived outside the main city), and stipulating that all Jews should be reregistered and allowed to vote in city elections and, with the consent of communities, to run for office; comments on the main goals of establishing kahals: to provide for the payment of taxes to the treasury, and allow Jews to “engage in legal proceedings according to Jewish law”; information on the kinds and amounts of exactions collected from Jews; and an enumeration of cities of the Chernigov province to which Jews wished to be assigned pursuant to the edict of 23 June 1794.
***
Particular to Kremenchug are a file on the establishment of the Jewish kahal in Kremenchug contains an excerpt from documentation of the Mogilev Viceroyalty Administration on statutes warranting the establishment of kahals in the Mogilev province, and a copy of a report of the Chernigov Revenue Chamber pertaining to the foundation of kahals in the Chernigov province; information on how, as of 1795, there were still officially no Jews in the Chernigov province, and on the fact that, in reality, Jews were residing in Chernigov, Nezhin, Lokhvitsa, and Priluki; on an edict (13 April 1793) applied to these Jews exempting inhabitants of annexed Polish regions from taxation for 1793-94 and a “placard” on procedures for the administration of justice, tax collection, and the apportionment of kahal income for Jews of Belorussia; an inquiry on these issues from the Mogilev provincial kahal including an account of certain privileges that had been granted to Jews by Polish kings beginning in 1588, and in particular, Mogilev and Vil’na Jews’ immunity from all courts except the castellan’s.
Also included is information on craftsmen’s status of not being subject to guilds, and their privileges in the payment of taxes; and the right of Belorussian Jews, along with other subjects, to take part in elections of judicial and other merchants’ and townspeople’s officials, with citations of edicts, legislative statutes, and other information. There are also materials on the apportionment and collection of taxes and arrears of the Kremenchug kahal; on ensuring Jews’ payment of debts, and on providing for their resettlement; and on conducting poll-tax censuses; documents on the election of kahal parnasim [wardens or board-members], and on the Jewish population’s participation in city self-government, serving in city municipalities, “oral” courts, and craftsmen’s administrations (there is reference to the fact that in 1797 in Kremenchug, Jews were not allowed to be members of the municipality or duma, but only to vote in elections for these institutions).
There are also instructions on procedures for collecting, in lieu of deliveries of actual conscripts, “recruit” money from Jews; accounts of economic competition between Jews and local non-Jews, and in particular, a file on the barring of Jews from exchanging money in Kremenchug as a result of the complaint of local merchants; on competition among hatters; on Jews from Poland allegedly violating the rights of local merchants at the Romny fair; poll-tax censuses of and records on the number of Jewish merchants and townspeople in cities; assessment registries [okladnye knigi] with lists of names and data on peoples’ age, family makeup, place of previous residence, and amount of taxes paid; a sample Jewish oath excerpted from pt. 3 of the Procedural Law [Pravo poriadkovoe] with a reference to the Justinian Code, which contains the requirement that oaths be taken by Jews while standing barefoot on the pelt of a freshly-skinned lion; and materials concerning the collection of debts, breaches of contracts, criminal matters, etc.
- Access points: locations:
- Belorussiya
- Chernigov
- Chernigov province
- Khar’kov
- Kremenchug
- Lokhvitsa
- Mogilev province
- Nezhin
- Novgorod-Severskii
- Priluki
- Vil’na
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary