Metadata: USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs’ 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-5028
- Title:
- USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs’ Plenipotentiary for the Nikolaev Region; Nikolaev
- Title (official language):
- Уполномоченный Совета по делам религий при Совете Министров СССР по Николаевской области, г. Николаев; Уповноважений Ради у справах релігій при Раді Міністрів СРСР по Миколаївській області, м. Миколаїв
- Creator/accumulator:
- USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs’ Plenipotentiary for the Nikolaev Region; Nikolaev
- Date(s):
- 1964/1990
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- (99 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. (1968, 1971-72); letters of the plenipotentiary regarding violations of legislation governing religion on the part of Jewish believers of Nikolaev (1969); on cases of looting in connection with the closing of Nikolaev’s Jewish cemetery (due to the city’s reconstruction); on the absence of registered Jewish congregations in the territory of the Nikolaev region, and rejecting the renewal of the Nikolaev Jewish community’s registration (1971); and statements on deregistering groups and minyans in the cities of Nikolaev, Voznesensk, and Pervomaisk (1980).
Directive materials of Central authorities include instructions and letters on the organisation of operations to uncover illegal meetings of Jewish believers in Nikolaev, Ochakov, and Voznesensk after the synagogues in these locations had been closed (1971). Local authorities’ circulars, correspondence, and decrees include instructions of the deputy chair of the Nikolaev Regional Executive Committee that timely measures be taken to uncover and suppress activities of nationalist elements and underground minyans in light of the upcoming Jewish high holidays (1971); a report of the commission on compliance with religious legislation of the Zavod District Executive Committee (city of Nikolaev) of 13 July 1972 to the effect that illegal Zionist gatherings had been discovered in the settlement of Shirokaia Balka; a notification by the Snigirevka District Executive Committee (24 September 1971) that Jews had come to visit sites where relatives of theirs who had been shot in the early stages of the Second World War were buried (in mass graves), and that “no demonstrations or speeches had taken place there.”
There is also a letter of the USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs’ plenipotentiary for the Ukrainian SSR permitting the transfer of Torah scrolls and prayer books to the Odessa synagogue, and a deed conveying religious property to a representative of the Odessa Jewish community (1970); 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
- Ochakov
- Odessa
- Pervomaisk
- Ukraine
- Voznesensk
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds' inventories are systematised chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary