Metadata: Khar’kov Department of the Khar’kov Gendarmerie Police Administration of Railroads
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. 310
- Title:
- Khar’kov Department of the Khar’kov Gendarmerie Police Administration of Railroads
- Title (official language):
- Харьковское отделение Харьковского жандармского полицейского управления железных дорог
- Creator/accumulator:
- Khar’kov Department of the Khar’kov Gendarmerie Police Administration of Railroads
- Date(s):
- 1882/1917
- Language:
- Russian
- German
- Extent:
- 179 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 Kiev Gendarmerie Police Administration of Railroads of the departments of Berdichev, Volhynia, Kazatin, Kiev, Kovel’, Korosten’, Proskurov and Fastov, of the Dnepr Department of the Moscow-Kiev Gendarmerie Police Administration of Railroads, Odessa Gendarmerie Police Administration of Railroads, Khar’kov Department of the Khar’kov Gendarmerie Police Administration of Railroads and the Chuguev Department of the Khar’kov Gendarmerie Police Administration of Railroads.
***
The fond comprises documents on surveillance of persons (including Jews) travelling by rail and suspected of belonging to anti-government organizations, of committing crimes, being spies, abetting covert emigration, etc. These include circulars on wanted Bund members (with photographs); informational reports and agents’ dispatches on the activities of the Bund and other Jewish political parties (Po’ale Tsiyon, the Zionist Socialist Workers’ Party, the Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party [SERP]); on changes in these parties’ leadership structures; on methods by which they distributed illegal literature; on their congresses, conferences, and underground meetings; on increased activity of Zionist organizations in the Southwestern territory; on the Zionist-Socialists’ plans to put out a newspaper titled Edinstvo [Unity] and expand the activities of the Jewish National Fund within the Russian Empire; on the intention of a number of parties to raise the issue of the struggle for Jewish civil equality and against anti-Semitism in the State Duma (1908); on a conference taking place in the US devoted to Russian Jewry’s lack of civil rights (1916); etc.; brief overviews of the activities of the Bund (1914), and of items published in its press organs and in German newspapers on “the Jewish question” (1915); informational materials on the organizing of a group to aid the Bund in Paris; on the ideology of the Zionist movement; on the Chicago branch of the Jewish Socialist Federation in America; circular orders that a number of Jewish periodical publications be seized and shipped to the office of the Kiev governor, and that the Jewish newspapers Die Zeit (St. Petersburg), Unser Lebn (Odessa), Die Volksstimme (Berdichev), Der Shtern (Vil’no), and Minsker Tog (Minsk) be detained at post offices; that the anti-Semitic pamphlet “A Commemorative Booklet about the Boy Andrei Iushinskii, Martyred by Yids,” devoted to the “Beilis affair,” be confiscated; copies of circulars of the Main Administration for Press Affairs on procedures for staging Jewish-themed dramatic works, in particular, allowing public readings (but “without stage decorations, and on the condition that stage costumes not be worn”) of the drama King of the Jews; etc. There are also wartime circulars on the demands of supreme commander-in-chief Grand Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich that the alleged subversive activities of Jews in military units, supposedly funded by “German money,” be rooted out (1914); that covert surveillance be arranged for Jews suspected of gathering information for the enemy at railway stations, Jews who were Russian subjects returning from Germany and appearing in railroad rights-of-way, and Jewish merchants suspected of secretly shipping foodstuffs and industrial goods to Germany; materials on the expulsion of Jewish residents from locations occupied by Russian forces; information on the detaining of the Jews S. and M. Gol’dberg “for spreading false rumours about the war”; and a secret order for the Southwestern front not to engage Jews for service at cooperative societies. Other discriminatory acts include circulars making Jews criminally liable if they used Christian names differing from their names as recorded in vital records; barring Jews from tutoring Christian children; forbidding Jews to rent land outside of cities and towns; 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: persons/families:
- Gol’dberg, S.
- M. Gol’dberg, M.
- Nikolaevich, Nikolai
- Subject terms:
- Beilis affair
- Bund movement
- Censorship
- Civil rights
- Education
- Expulsion
- Jewish political activity
- Jewish press
- Jewish Question
- Military
- Photographs
- Residency issues of Jews
- Socialism
- Socialism--Socialist parties and organisations
- Trade and commerce
- Vital records
- Zionism
- Zionism--Zionist Congress
- Zionism--Zionist organisations and parties
- System of arrangement:
- Inventories are systematised mainly chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary