Metadata: Kiev State Yiddish Theater of the Ukrainian SSR Council of People’s Commissars’ Committee on Artistic Affairs
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- Central State Archive and Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine
- Holding institution (official language):
- Центральний державний архів-музей літератури і мистецтва України
- Postal address:
- 01001, м. Київ-01, вул. Володимирська, 22-a
- Phone number:
- 380 (044) 278-44-81
- Web address:
- csam.archives.gov.ua
- Email:
- cdamlm@arch.gov.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 649
- Title:
- Kiev State Yiddish Theater of the Ukrainian SSR Council of People’s Commissars’ Committee on Artistic Affairs
- Title (official language):
- Киевский государственный еврейский театр Комитета по делам искусств при Совете народных комиссаров УССР
- Creator/accumulator:
- Kiev State Yiddish Theater of the Ukrainian SSR Council of People’s Commissars’ Committee on Artistic Affairs
- Date(s):
- 1928/1936
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- 23 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
- Included are personnel-related materials: lists of theatre actors, directors, and employees; job applications; orders pertaining to the theatre; minutes of labour union assemblies; accounts of conflicts at rehearsals and during performances; a staff list and a salary scale extracted from orders of higher-up organisations; and financial and economic documents. Documents shedding light on the arts side of the theatre’s operations include materials on discussions regarding the repertoire; texts of plays; and copies of press reviews of performances. There is also information on the industrial enterprises for which the troupe performed, and letters thereto requesting assistance in furnishing performances with the requisite costuming and stage props; conclusions of the commission charged with surveying the theatre’s old building (1932); a draft on and cost estimate for equipping a new building (construction was not completed); materials regarding preparations for the Kiev State Yiddish Theater’s jubilee (1930), including a list of members of the jubilee committee and minutes of its sessions; etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Kiev State Yiddish Theater (GOSET) was established in the fall of 1928. The core of its troupe was a group of actors of the previously-closed Kunst Vinkl Kiev Jewish Theater, and its first artistic director was Z. Vin. The theatre, which for a time in the early 1930s bore the name of Abraham Goldfaden, staged plays in Yiddish from the repertoire of classics (Yiddish and translated), as well as contemporary plays by David Hofshtein, D. R. Bergel’son, Leyb Kvitko, Lipe Reznik, and other authors. Working at the theatre were the well-known actors D. M. Dneprov, D. M. Zhabotinskii, L. Kalmonovich, Sh. Sh. Fingerova, and others. In 1934, after the transfer of the capital from Khar’kov to Kiev, the Khar’kov Yiddish State Theater (which had operated in that city since 1925) was moved as well, and both collectives were merged into a single theatre with All-Ukrainian status. In July 1941, on the eve of the occupation of Kiev, the theatre was evacuated to Central Asia, where beginning in 1942 it continued operations, first in the city of Dzhambul, then in Kokand and Fergana. Returning from evacuation in December 1944 upon Ukraine’s liberation, the theatre was quartered in the city of Chernovtsy (its former building in Kiev had been destroyed), where it continued to function until it was closed in February 1950. (The official reason was that it was unprofitable and not self-sufficient.) Earlier, in October 1945, the name of Sholom Aleichem was added to the theatre’s title.
- Access points: locations:
- Kiev
- System of arrangement:
- The fond includes a single inventory systematised chronologically (with certain exceptions).
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
