Metadata: Administration of the Kiev Educational District
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. 707
- Title:
- Administration of the Kiev Educational District
- Title (official language):
- Управление Киевского учебного округа
- Creator/accumulator:
- Administration of the Kiev Educational District
- Date(s):
- 1802/1919
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Yiddish
- Ukrainian
- German
- Extent:
- 68,574 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
The bulk of Jewish-related materials contained in the fond comprise files on the opening, functioning, reorganizing, and closing of state, private, and community Jewish educational institutions in the cities and towns of the Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia, Poltava, and Chernigov provinces, including the Zhitomir Rabbinical Seminary and the Jewish Teachers’ Institute formed on its basis, high schools, primary and professional schools, Talmud-Torahs, cheders, and yeshivas.
Housed therein are applications by founders of Jewish educational institutions and accompanying correspondence; charters and curricula; reports confirming class schedules; annual reports; Jewish educational institutions’ expense budgets; files on building or renting accommodations for same; files on their sources of financing, and on equipping them with literature and textbooks; documents on the hiring and transfer of teachers, on their salaries and pension provision, and on savings and loan banks at Jewish educational institutions; official lists of teachers of state Jewish schools, and correspondence on allowing them to marry; lists of Jewish students; information on melameds, and lists thereof; statistical data on the issuance of melamed certification; correspondence on measures to prevent the unlawful education of Jewish children by persons not certified to do so; files on the involvement of charitable structures in the activities of Jewish high schools, schools, academies, and Talmud-Torahs, and on approving candidates for the position of heads and honorary trustees of these institutions. In particular, there is correspondence on the acceptance of G. M. Barats (future historian and Jewish public figure) on a state-funded scholarship at the Zhitomir Rabbinical Seminary; on the organizing of a chapel for school-wide religious services at the Zhitomir Jewish Teachers’ Institute; documents of the S. I. Brodskii Kiev Jewish School with Vocational Department; these include materials on granting its students stipends named after Jewish philanthropists, and on opening electrician courses at the school; materials on Jewish educational institutions opened in Kiev after the proclamation of Ukrainian independence in 1918 (the Jewish People’s University and the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary); a file on the opening of a school at the Kiev Karaite House of Worship (1887); etc.
There are also government orders, legislative acts, instructions and clarifications of the Ministry of Education, circulars, and correspondence with administrative entities on issues pertaining to Jewish education; the text of the imperially-approved order “On the principle bases of the education of Jews” (1844) and the Statute on Jewish Primary Schools (1873); a copy of the Statute on Jewish Publishing Houses (1845); the opinion of minister of internal affairs V. K. Plehve that cheders should not be allowed to be opened outside the Pale of Settlement; documents on the adoption and subsequent compliance with the “percentage norm” for Jewish children studying at general educational institutions; a report of Kiev Rabbi E. A. Tsukkerman on introducing instruction in Jewish law at high schools (1881); a proposal to establish the post of “learned Jew” under the superintendent of the Kiev Educational District; a file on exempting crown rabbis from inspecting Jewish schools and melameds (1888); correspondence of the Administration of the Kiev Educational District with provincial and county Jewish school commissions and files on appointing these commissions’ chairs and members; and a circular of the People’s Ministry of Education of the Ukrainian People’s Republic on switching to Yiddish- and Hebrew-language teaching in Jewish primary schools (1918).
Also included are numerous documents on the relations of Jewish communities in cities and towns with educational structures; files on the exaction of the candle tax from the Jewish population to maintain state Jewish schools; Jewish communities’ and private individuals’ petitions for candle tax breaks and statements of refusal to pay this tax in connection with abuses on the part of persons commissioned to collect it; and Jewish community representatives’ proposals on allocating korobka [kosher meat tax] funds to benefit educational institutions.
Other materials pertaining to Jewish education and culture include a file on the opening of the Kiev branch of the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia (OPE); documents shedding light on the activities of the Jewish cultural-educational societies Tarbut and the Kultur-Lige; an order prohibiting the opening of Jewish reading-rooms and libraries; correspondence with the Ministry of Education on allowing the publication of the Zhitomir journal Dobraia nauka [Good Science] in Hebrew; information on the operation of the Zhitomir Jewish Publishing House, its owners the Shapiro brothers (in particular, an 1846 contract between them and the Ministry of Education), and the censorship of Jewish books by the Kiev Censorship Committee; copies of Russian-language Jewish periodicals (Rassvet [Dawn], Russkii evrei [The Russian Jew]); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Kiev Educational District was established on 14 December 1832; at the time it held jurisdiction over educational institutions of the Kiev, Chernigov, Volhynia, and Podolia provinces. In 1839, the Podolia province was transferred to it from the Khar’kov Educational District, and in 1912, educational institutions of the Kholm province came under its jurisdiction as well. The educational district was headed by a superintendent, who was immediately subordinate to the Ministry of Education. The superintendent held administrative power; executive functions were carried out by the district’s administration, whose record-keeping was divided into desks, with the functions of these latter repeatedly changing. Pursuant to an imperial edict of 1844, a network of state Jewish educational institutions was established. These were subordinate to their respective educational districts; all melameds and cheder-keepers were required to be certified by district Jewish school commissions to teach Jewish children. Two rabbinical seminaries (one of them in Zhitomir) were established to train rabbis and teachers of Jewish law. All legal Jewish education in the district’s territory was therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the Administration of the Kiev Educational District; unlicensed Jewish teachers faced administrative prosecution. Until the 1850s, state Jewish educational institutions were funded by special taxes on Jewish ritual Sabbath and holiday candles (the “candle tax”), collection of which was also supervised by the Administration of the Kiev Educational District. Per the Statute on Jewish Primary Schools (1873), most state Jewish educational institutions were reorganized as Jewish primary schools, and the Zhitomir Rabbinical Seminary became the Zhitomir Jewish Teachers’ Institute. The so-called “percentage norm” was introduced in 1887 for general secondary and higher educational institutions; within the Pale of Settlement, this limited the number of Jewish students to ten percent of the total; outside the Pale (in particular, in Kiev), to five. The early twentieth century saw a liberalization of Jewish education; a network of Jewish professional educational institutions was developed, and in the 1910s, Jewish secondary schools [gimnazii] appeared in the territory of the Kiev Educational District. A significant number of new Jewish educational institutions were organized when, after the February Revolution of 1917, all restrictions on Jewish education were abolished. In December 1917, the government of the Ukrainian Central Rada proposed liquidating educational districts; under Soviet power, the Administration of the Kiev Educational District was renamed the Commissariat on Kiev Educational District Affairs by decree (18 February 1918) of V. P. Zatonskii, Ukraine’s secretary of education; under the Denikin regime (August-December 1919), the Administration of the Kiev Educational District was temporarily restored, then finally dissolved by decree (26 December 1919) of the Kiev Provincial Department of Education.
- Access points: locations:
- Chernigov province
- Kiev
- Kiev province
- Podolia province
- Poltava province
- Volhynia province
- Zhitomir
- Access points: persons/families:
- Barats, G.
- Plehve, V. K.
- Tsukkerman, E. A.
- Subject terms:
- Aid and relief
- Aid and relief--Philanthropy and charity
- Censorship
- Correspondence
- Education
- Education--Cheders
- Education--Melamdim
- Education--Schools and universities
- Education--Students
- Education--Talmud Torah
- Education--Teachers and professors
- Education--Vocational training
- Education--Yeshivot
- Financial matters
- Financial matters--Banks, banking, and bankers
- Financial records
- Genealogy
- Jewish languages
- Jewish languages--Hebrew
- Jewish languages--Yiddish
- Jewish press
- Jewish quota
- Karaite Judaism
- Legal matters
- Libraries
- Pale of Settlement
- Publishing
- Taxation
- Taxation--Candle tax
- Taxation--Korobka
- System of arrangement:
- The fond includes 233 inventories numbered 1 to 318. (Several numbers are missing, and some are indicated by letter). Files therein are systematised chronologically. The inventories are arranged by desk, with a group of inventories corresponding to each desk. As pertains to desk four, in a number of instances, two inventories correspond to the same year, one with general files (indicated the usual way, by a number) and one with Jewish-related files (indicated by a letter). There are also inventories combining files for several years, with consecutive numbering by year or with new numbering for each year. In the latter, within each year, files are typically ordered by subject.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary