Metadata: USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Cults’ Plenipotentiary for the Nikolaev Region; Nikolaev
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of the Nikolaev Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Державний архів Миколаївської області; Государственный архив Николаевской области
- Postal address:
- 54001, Украина, г. Николаев ул. Московская, 1, тел./факс: +380 (512) 37-0065 e-mail: mail@mk.archives.gov.ua http://mk.archives.gov.ua
- Reference number:
- F. R-4758
- Title:
- USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Cults’ Plenipotentiary for the Nikolaev Region; Nikolaev
- Title (official language):
- Уполномоченный Совета по делам религиозных культов при Совете Министров СССР по Николаевской области, г. Николаев; Уповноважений Ради у справах релігійних культів при Раді Міністрів СРСР по Миколаївській області, м. Миколаїв
- Creator/accumulator:
- USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Cults’ Plenipotentiary for the Nikolaev Region; Nikolaev
- Date(s):
- 1944/1965
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- (41 files)
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Included are communiques and informational reports of the plenipotentiary on compliance with religious legislation on the part of organisations and associations of various confessions, including Jewish ones, and in particular, during the Jewish high holidays; on the growing activity on the part of underground minyans in connection with events in the Middle East; on fundraising for aid to the needy; on the state of unregistered Jewish congregations; etc. (1951-64); letters of the plenipotentiary regarding violations of legislation governing religion on the part of Jewish believers of Voznesensk (1954); on cases of looting in connection with the closing of Nikolaev’s Jewish cemetery (due to the city’s reconstruction); on denying believers permission to bake matzah for Passover (1956).
Files on postwar religious life in the Nikolaev region include documents on opening a synagogue in the city of Nikolaev and transferring religious accommodations to it on a perpetual-use basis (1944-47); on the organisation of a “burial group” at the synagogue (1955); on the registration of the Jewish religious community, and the synagogue’s clergymen and members of its board, including these persons’ questionnaire forms and autobiographies; an evaluation of N. U. Raikhel’gauz, chair of the board of the Nikolaev Jewish religious community (1955); lists of members of the Jewish religious community of the city of Nikolaev, and information on it (a property inventory of the Nikolaev synagogue; documents pertaining to audits of its financial activities; minutes of sessions and lists of the Jewish congregation’s executive body, the “twenty,” and of its audit commission (1947-60); etc.
Central authorities’ directive materials include instructions and letters of the USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Cults (on Religious Affairs) and of the plenipotentiary for the Ukrainian SSR permitting believers to hold a “third repast” [the seuda shlishit or third Shabbat meal] on Saturdays in registered synagogues (1951); permitting believers to bake matzah in their homes for their personal use (1952); permitting an unregistered group of Jewish believers of the city of Pervomaisk to assemble for prayer meetings in private homes, with the proviso that notifying local authorities of such meetings was mandatory (1956).
Circulars, correspondence, and decrees of Local authorities include a letter of the Nikolaev Regional Executive Committee barring Jews from holding prayer meetings in the city of Pervomaisk on the grounds that there was no registered congregation there (1954); a ruling of the Nikolaev Regional Executive Committee that, in light of its dangerous disrepair, the synagogue building was to be demolished (1962), and a proposal to deregister the Nikolaev Jewish religious community “due to its deterioration” (1962).
There are also appeals, applications, and complaints filed by Jewish believers of the city of Nikolaev regarding the ban on making biers (1951); applications for assistance in making matzah (1956), and for permission to organise a watch for the Jewish cemetery and maintain a watchman at the congregation’s expense (1958); an inventory of books held by the Nikolaev Jewish community’s library (1959); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The office of plenipotentiary of the USSR Council of Peoples’ Commissars’ (from 1946 on, Council of Ministers’) Council on Religious Cults was established by the Nikolaev Regional Executive Committee in July 1944 pursuant to a regional executive committee decree of 28 July 1944. The plenipotentiary was transferred to the jurisdiction of the regional executive committee in 1953. Upon this official’s transfer to the jurisdiction of the USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Cults in 1963, the collection creator started to be called the USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Cults’ plenipotentiary for the Nikolaev region. From December 1965 on, after the reorganisation and merger of the Council on Religious Cults and the Council on the Russian Orthodox Church into a single USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs, the official was called the USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs’ Plenipotentiary for the Nikolaev Region; and from 1975 on, the Ukrainian SSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs’ Plenipotentiary for the Nikolaev Region. The office of plenipotentiary was dissolved upon the formation in 1992 of the Nikolaev Regional State Administration’s department of religious affairs.
Plenipotentiaries were charged with enforcing local-level compliance with legislation governing the practice of religion. Formally independent of local party and Soviet authorities, in reality they worked closely with these, strictly administering and controlling activities of religious organisations and associations, including Jewish ones.
- Access points: locations:
- Nikolaev
- Pervomaisk
- Ukraine
- Voznesensk
- Access points: persons/families:
- Raikhel’gauz, N. U.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds' inventories are systematised chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
