Metadata: Southwestern Committee of the All-Russian Union of Cities
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. 721
- Title:
- Southwestern Committee of the All-Russian Union of Cities
- Title (official language):
- Юго-Западный комитет Всероссийского союза городов
- Creator/accumulator:
- Southwestern Committee of the All-Russian Union of Cities
- Date(s):
- 1914/1919
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 11,992 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Materials housed include information on the number and ethnic makeup of refugees from Galicia in Kremenchug county (Poltava province) and on employment among Jews; information from a log of sessions of the Ternopol’ Provincial Health Commission on unfavourable living conditions among Jewish evacuees, and on the need to arrange operational assistance for them; a report on the nature of aid provided by the Committee of the Russian Society for the Defence of Women, including its organizing of a shelter for fifty Jewish women; materials on the involvement of public organizations, including the Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Victims (EKOPO), in aiding refugees; a draft regulation on the activities of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union and other public organizations forbidding the hiring of people “of the Judaic confession” to top management posts in institutions of the All-Russian Union of Cities, and to lower-ranking posts in the All-Russian Zemstvo Union; correspondence with the Rovno Jewish Charitable Hospital on compensation for property lost during the quartering in that hospital of the All-Russian Union of Cities’ infectious diseases infirmary for the Galician front; materials on the activities of the Cherkassy branch of the Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Victims (EKOPO); minutes of sessions of the Kiev Provincial Council on Refugees, which included representatives of public organizations, among them the Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Victims (EKOPO); a secret letter to the chair of the All-Russian Union of Cities’ Committee on the Southwestern Front from the chief inspector of medical facilities of the Kiev area to the effect that there was no need to provide materials on Jews as “a combat force and their attitude toward military interests,” and a secret order that tendentious information on Jews be provided from hospitals (i.e., information that would characterise them as cowards, malingerers, physically underdeveloped, unpatriotic, etc.).
There are also manuscripts sent to the editorial offices of the newspaper Kievskie vesti (items on cases of everyday anti-Semitism; on the arrival in Zhitomir of H.-N. Bialik; memoirs on Count N. P. Iganet’ev and his attitude toward Jews in everyday life; anti-Semitic letters; etc.); materials on the discussion of a project to annex Galicia to Russia, including statements on the necessity of granting full civil rights to Jews; etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The All-Russian Union of Cities to Aid Sick and Wounded Warriors was established in 1914 at a Moscow congress of mayors in connection with the outbreak of the First World War; its purpose was to provide medical, food, and other aid to the army in the field and to the population suffering due to the war. In certain locations, particularly in the Southwestern territory and Galicia (a part of Austro-Hungary that was occupied by Russian forces after the military operations of 1914-16), and also on particular fronts and with certain armies, plenipotentiaries of the All-Russian Union of Cities functioned to organize the army’s sanitary and medical services; set up advance detachments to provide food and epidemic control; evacuate refugees; allocate humanitarian aid to the population of cities and towns in the frontline zone; etc. In carrying out these tasks in areas where troops were stationed, they worked together with bodies of city self-government.
Structures of these plenipotentiaries’ administrations (ambulance detachments, dental offices, hospitals, etc.) included a considerable number of Jews, among them student volunteers. The All-Russian Union of Cities was disbanded by decree of the RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars in January 1918; operations of the All-Russian Union of Cities’ plenipotentiary in Galicia were curtailed even earlier, in 1916, due to the Russian Army’s loss of most of the territory it had occupied.
- Access points: locations:
- Cherkassy
- Galicia
- Kiev
- Poltava province
- Zhitomir
- Access points: persons/families:
- Bialik, C N
- Iganet’ev, N. P.
- System of arrangement:
- The fond includes four inventories; files are systematised according to the thematic-chronological principle (in op. 3, t. 2, alphabetically).
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary