Metadata: Vasil’kov City Munipality
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of the Kyiv Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Державний архів Київської області
- Postal address:
- 04119, м.Київ, вул.Мельникова, 38, 40.
- Phone number:
- 380 (44)206-74-99
- Web address:
- http://dako.gov.ua/
- Email:
- dako@archives.kiev.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 185
- Title:
- Vasil’kov City Munipality
- Title (official language):
- Васильковский городовой магистрат
- Creator/accumulator:
- Vasil’kov City Munipality
- Date(s):
- 1800/1965
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Polish
- Extent:
- 1,250 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
The fond houses a significant quantity of documents that shed light on the history of Jews in Ukraine. Among these are records on the number of Jewish kahals of the Kiev province as a whole. The description below refers to four fond in general, with the specific pertaining to each fond at the end of the description.
Included in the fond are materials on the election of kahal parnasim [wardens or board-members] and Jewish guild administrations; complaints regarding election results; “spiritual admonitions” [dukhovnye uveshchaniia] that were read by Jewish witnesses being sworn in, and oaths of allegiance [prisiazhnye listy] in Russian and Hebrew; lists of the Jewish population of several population centres.
A considerable number of files pertain to poll tax censuses; among these are documents on the issuance of authorisation for Jews to carry out census-work; lists of persons omitted in latest censuses; poll tax censuses of Jews of Lipovets and nearby towns (1795); and documents on the assignment of Jews to townspeople’s [meshchanskie] societies, the inclusion of Jews in supplemental poll tax censuses, etc.
The fond also houses municipality proceedings, which include records of hearings of various conflicts involving Jewish residents: reports on draft-related abuses by Jewish elected representatives (in the course of disbursing community funds, levying taxes and obligations, wrongfully delivering persons as recruits, etc.); and hearings of conflicts within Jewish communities themselves (complaints lodged by M. Z. Leverberg, townsman of the town of Volodarka, regarding harassment on the part of the local Jewish community, which suspected him of intending to change faiths; by F. Eliovich, townsman of Lipovets, who accused the kahal parnas F. Gershkovich of improprieties; etc.).
There are also temporary rules dividing Jews into ranks [razriady] (1853); correspondence on Jewish community members reporting, per an imperial manifesto, to join the land militia [landmilitsiia] (1806); on instituting legal proceedings against persons found in possession of Jewish books not authorised by the censors, lists of permitted Jewish books, and lists of banned ones; a file on three Jewish persons accused of sacrilege; on two Jewish townspeople of the town of Tetiev refusing to take an oath (1853); etc.
Specific to this fond are records on the number of Jewish kahals of Vasil’kov county; and family lists of Jews who had been deprived of Kiev residency rights per an imperial edict of 1827 and resettled from there to the town of Vasil’kov.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
In the territory of Right-Bank Ukraine, municipalities [magistraty] were bodies of city self-government established when cities were granted the Magdeburg Rights. Most of the cities of Ukraine received these rights from Lithuanian princes and Polish kings in the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries. Pursuant to the Magdeburg Rights, a city was exempt from all forms of judicial and administrative dependency and from feudal obligations (aside from the transport obligation), and established self-government, having its own court; the city also received the right to own land, and professional and trade privileges.
However, in the cities of Right-Bank Ukraine, as in other Slavic lands, the Magdeburg Rights underwent more or less substantive changes depending on local conditions and customs. In practice, the degree of self-government and judiciary and tax immunity varied; cities were to some extent or other subordinate to a starosta or other representative of royal administration. Municipalities consisted of two collegia, a rada (council) and a ława. The municipality was headed by a wójt, who held supreme power in the city, including judicial power, although he could not pronounce sentence without consultation with the jurymen [ławnicy or ława councilmen]. Some cities purchased the wójtship for themselves, in which case all the rights of the wójt were transferred to the city commune [obshchina], and here of primary importance was the rada, not so strictly delineated from the ława as in cities with the classical form of the Magdeburg Rights. In general, the ława held judicial power, and the rada was in charge of day-to-day affairs of city governance. Rada members were called radcy (rajcy, radni, ratmany, consuls) and were headed by mayors (burmistrze, proconculs, presidents).
In cities without full Magdeburg Rights – and most of the cities in the area under discussion fall into this category – judicial and administrative power could remain un-separated, in which case judicial matters were heard by a unitary governing body – by the landwójt (appointed by the wójt as a middleman between himself and the commune), the mayors, and rada and ława councilmen; while ława councilmen in turn took part in administrative matters.
City municipalities [gorodovye magistraty] were bodies of city self-government introduced in Russia by order of Peter I in 1723-24. They were to have jurisdiction over the whole administration of the city: the criminal and civil court; the police; finances and economic matters. These were collegial institutions whose makeup depended on a given city’s size and population; correspondingly, the municipality consisted of two or several mayors [burmistry, burgomistry] and several councilmen [ratmany]; in larger cities, a president was elected. In small cities, city halls [ratushy] were established with a simpler structure and a more local competence. This system was reorganised after the death of Peter I; municipalities were for a time renamed city halls and lost their administrative functions, retaining only their judicial and some of their financial functions. The municipality structure was partially restored in 1743. Upon the annexation of Right-Bank Ukraine to Russia, municipalities in this territory continued to function as city municipalities [gorodovye magistraty] or city halls [gorodovye ratushy].
Interacting with the municipality on behalf of the local Jewish community were individuals (Jewish councilmen) as well as a legal entity – the kahal or Jewish community [evreiskaia obshchina]. In particular, the municipality relied on the kahal to see to Jews’ fulfilment of conscription and tax farming and taxpaying requirements. Municipalities began to be gradually liquidated in the latter half of the nineteenth century; in 1866, in connection with the commencing of the judicial reform and pursuant to the Rules on the Abolition of Municipalities and City Halls, city municipalities and city halls were dissolved throughout the whole territory of European Russia.
- Access points: locations:
- Kiev province
- Lipovets
- Tetiev
- Vasil’kov
- Vasil’kov county
- Volodarka
- Access points: persons/families:
- Eliovich, F.
- Gershkovich , F.
- Leverberg, M. Z.
- System of arrangement:
- Inventories are systematised chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary