Kiev Province Committee on Prisons

Collection

Title (official language):: Киевский губернский попечительный о тюрьмах комитет

Scope and content:: Documents housed include instructions on collecting voluntary donations for imprisoned Jews, and lists of Jewish donors; correspondence with the county police chief [ispravnik] on recruiting wealthy Jews to serve as members of the committee (albeit with limited session-participation rights); on conditions under which Jewish prisoners were to be maintained; on the organisation of a chapel for them; on the need to provide them with prayer paraphernalia (tefillin), and on the involvement of the Kiev rabbi in organising prison prayer services; on preparing kosher food; on substituting food items with money to buy kosher meat, and issuing independent-sustenance money to “persons of the Judaic confession” from privileged estates [sosloviia]; on providing material aid to family members of incarcerated Jews; on the education of children “of the Judaic confession” in prison schools; on the committee’s providing of books and stationery to schools; on Jewish prisoners wishing to convert from Judaism to Russian Orthodoxy; on an 1875 census of male Jews employed in provincial institutions; etc.

Administrative/biographical history:: Established by a Senate edict of 20 April 1835, the Kiev Province Committee on Prisons was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice. The committee was tasked with oversight of prison maintenance and the quartering of inmates, and of the arrangement of prison labour; it also collected and allocated donations. Serving on it were the governor, vice-governor, provincial marshal of the nobility [predvoditel’ dvorianstva], conscience judge [sovestnyi sud’ia], provincial public prosecutor, medical administration inspector, and mayor. It was liquidated by Soviet power in April 1919.

Subject terms:: Aid and relief; Aid and relief--Philanthropy and charity; Census; Children; Conversion to Christianity; Correspondence; Education; Jewish daily life and religious practices; Law enforcement; Law enforcement--Police; Prisoners; Rabbis

System of arrangement:: The fond includes a single inventory systematised according to the structural-chronological principle.