Metadata: Assistant Head of the Kherson Provincial Gendarmerie Administration in the City of Kherson
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. 350
- Title:
- Assistant Head of the Kherson Provincial Gendarmerie Administration in the City of Kherson
- Title (official language):
- Помощник начальника Херсонского губернского жандармского управления в г. Херсоне
- Creator/accumulator:
- Assistant Head of the Kherson Provincial Gendarmerie Administration in the City of Kherson
- Date(s):
- 1906/1917
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 15 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
- Included are lists of persons located in Kherson, including Jews, who were under special police surveillance; information on Jewish associations active in Kherson (Gomle Chesed and Ezras Holim); informational bulletins on the activities in Kherson in 1913-14 of Jewish political parties (the Bund, Po’ale Tsiyon, the Zionist Socialist Workers’ Party) and their activists; data on increased Zionist activity in Kherson, and on the arrest of members of a Kherson Zionist group (January 1914); on the sale of stamps depicting Palestine and Theodore Herzl, and of Jewish-themed donation-boxes, to benefit the Jewish National Fund; on fundraising to found the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and plant trees commemorating Theodore Herzl; on the sale of shares of the Jewish Colonial Bank; a report of a lecture by V. Jabotinsky titled “Jews in the Near East”; etc. There are also copies of anonymous denunciations to the Odessa governor-general on behalf of “the Secret Party of Russia’s Salvation” regarding illegal meetings of the Bund and the dissemination of Jewish publications; data on the resonance in the city of the “Beilis affair,” on the pre-pogrom mood on the eve of Easter 1914, etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
A separate gendarmerie corps was established in Russia per a statute of 28 April 1827, according to which the empire was divided into gendarmerie areas; these were in turn divided into corresponding provincial departments headed by field officers [shtab-ofitsery]. Pursuant to the statute “On the Corps of Gendarmes” (9 September 1867), most of the gendarmerie areas were liquidated, replaced by gendarmerie administrations, which were in charge of political investigations and inquests regarding state crimes. In the territory of Ukraine, these bodies functioned, in particular, in the Volhynia, Ekaterinoslav, Poltava, Khar’kov, Kherson, and Chernigov provinces; and there was a separate gendarmerie in the city of Odessa.
At the same time, the post of assistant to the head of provincial gendarmerie administration was introduced. This official held jurisdiction over two to four counties; answering to him were non-commissioned officers at gendarmerie points in a number of cities and towns. The assistant heads also conducted inquests in political cases and monitored the activities of political parties and organizations, including Jewish ones, in the territory under their jurisdiction. Heads of provincial gendarmerie administrations were also in charge of fortress and port gendarmerie detachments, border gendarmerie points and temporary registration bureaus. In administrative terms, the gendarmerie administrations answered to the headquarters of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes, and as pertained to political investigations, originally to the Third Department of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancery, and from 1881 on, to the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Department of the Police.
Beginning in 1902, political-investigative functions in the provinces, including the conduct of surveillance and supervision of secret intelligence agents, were transferred to the investigation departments set up at this time (some cities also had investigation stations); in 1903 these were renamed secret political police departments [okhrannye otdeleniia]. In this arrangement, gendarmerie administrations, aside from their other duties (monitoring the local population and political-ideological tendencies in society; informing higher-up authorities of disturbances and abuses; secret police surveillance; monitoring persons crossing the border; etc.), remained in charge of conducting inquests. Later, in connection with the growth of the revolutionary movement, a network of district secret political police departments was established to combine political investigation efforts and coordinate activities of local secret political police departments and gendarmerie entities; these district secret political police departments answered to the head of the Department of the Police, and each held jurisdiction over five to ten provinces. In particular, the Southwestern District Secret Political Police Department, based in Kiev, held jurisdiction over the Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia, Poltava, and Chernigov provinces; the Southeastern, based in Odessa, held jurisdiction over the Kherson, Tavriia, and Bessarabia provinces (and was also in charge of the intelligence network on the Black Sea coast and the Balkan peninsula).
However, in practice, these district secret political police departments failed to meet expectations, and were dissolved pursuant to a circular of the Department of the Police of 1 March 1914; their functions were transferred to the investigative departments of provincial gendarmerie administrations. Gendarme and police functions were carried out on railroads and railroad rights-of-way by railroad gendarmerie police administrations (the Kiev, Odessa, Khar’kov, etc. administrations), established in late 1866 and having departments every 200 km, as well as non-commissioned officers at all major stations. At first immediately subordinate to the chief of gendarmes, and subsequently to the Department of the Police, these answered to the directors of local provincial gendarmerie administrations in carrying out inquests. Gendarmerie entities were liquidated by decree of the Provisional Government on 10 March 1917.
- Access points: locations:
- Kherson
- Kherson province
- Odessa
- Access points: persons/families:
- Herzl
- Jabotinsky, V.
- System of arrangement:
- The fond includes a single inventory systematised chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
