Metadata: Odessa Municipal Duma; Odessa, Kherson Province
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of the Odessa Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Державний архів Одеської області; Государственный архив Одесской области
- Postal address:
- 65026, Украина, г. Одесcа, ул. Жуковского, 18, тел.: +380 (48) 722-9365, тел./факс: +380 (48) 722-8025, e-mail: DAOO@ukr.net http://archive.odessa.gov.ua/
- Reference number:
- F. 4
- Title:
- Odessa Municipal Duma; Odessa, Kherson Province
- Title (official language):
- Одесская городская дума, г. Одесса Херсонской губ.; Одеська міська дума, м. Одеса Херсонської губ.
- Creator/accumulator:
- Odessa Municipal Duma; Odessa, Kherson Province
- Date(s):
- 1795/1919
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- German
- Extent:
- (30,899 files)
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Jewish-related materials housed in the fonds may conventionally be divided into several thematic groups:
1) Normative documents defining the legal status of Odessa’s Jewish population. These include an imperial decree of 7 April 1859 permitting “leaving the teaching of religion in Talmud-Torahs to existing melameds for the time being” due to the impossibility of staffing these schools with otherwise-trained teachers; an edict of 17 November 1861 regarding Jews who had come to the Novorossiia territory to register as farmers, permitting these persons to “enrol” [prichisliat’sia] in townspersons’ associations of the Kherson province upon the discharging of arrears pertaining to their previous membership in other associations; and an edict of 7 December 1861 stipulating that upon the lapse of twenty-five years from the time of their settlement in this region, Jews were to gain access to “all such kinds of trade and business as are allowed to peasants” (op. 1); instructions of the Odessa city prefect (21 October 1853) that Jewish crafts classes be established in provincial and other cities (op. 107), and the same official’s clarification (16 December 1860) “on procedures for Jews filing complaints regarding rabbis’ failure to carry out the law of the faith, [specifically] that such complaints may only be submitted by communities as a whole through agents elected thereby” (op. 1); etc.
2) The internal life of the Odessa Jewish community and activities of Jewish communal institutions are reflected in documents on elections of Jewish kahal and Odessa Jewish community officials, including kahal rabbis and rabbis subordinate to them, parnasim [wardens or board-members], “learned men”, treasurers, board members of synagogues and houses of worship, and trustees of the Odessa Talmud-Torah (оp. 8, 1832, оp. 107, 1869, оp. 1, 1901, etc.); on intra-community conflicts, including financial claims on the part of Odessa city Rabbi S.-A. Schwabacher (op. 107, f. 69); on the founding of synagogues and Jewish houses of worship and schools; on delivering on a contract “to build various things for the Jewish hospital, and to deliver baked bread to it” (op. 18, 1842, op. 19, 1843); as well as on logs “for registering income and disbursements for the care of needy Jewish children,” and synagogues’ income statements and monthly records (op. 107, 1848, 1855); etc.
3) Materials on the taxation of the Jewish population and on assessing and levying the korobka [kosher meat tax] and candle tax from Jews, including information provided by the Odessa kahal on amounts of excises to be levied from “privileged” and “non-privileged” Jewish townspeople (op. 8, 1832); contracts concluded with korobka leaseholders (op. 1, 1866); informants’ reports regarding abuses discovered in the collection of the Odessa korobka (op. 107, 1864); Duma correspondence with the Novorossiia and Bessarabia governor-general and the Trustee Committee for Settlers of the Southern Territory of Russia, and with municipal dumas of other cities, on the apportionment and mutual allocation of funding from korobka moneys to finance the settlement of foreign Jews as farmers (1847-62); files on leasing collection of the korobka from Jews in Odessa, Odessa county, and Ovidiopol’ for the next four-year period (1848); on allocating korobka and candle tax funds on behalf of Jewish schools (in particular, the Jewish School of B. Shtern, “for the production of winter attire and shoes for needy Jewish pupils”) and schools for needy Jewish children (1847, 1850-51); on allocating korobka and candle tax funds to establish supplemental pensions and “lifetime grants” of 300 silver rubles a year for three teachers of the Odessa Jewish school (S. Pinsker, M. Gurovich, and I. Finkel’) (op. 107, 1857); to build (or enlarge) synagogue buildings; to organise the Odessa Jewish hospital’s “special ward in case of an outbreak of cholera,” and clean the same institution’s “retirades” [privies] (1871); etc.
4) Files on military conscription (op. 3, 3а, 7, 8, 107) include directives on conducting drafts in Russia; among these are materials on performing successive drafts of “conscripts from among the Jews” (ten persons for every thousand men); on the Odessa kahal’s compiling of lists of conscripts “whose turn had come up” (1832) and delivering Jewish townspersons “whose turn had come up” for military service (arranged by draft precinct); on Jewish conscripts who evaded fulfilment of their military service requirements (op. 107, 1842-46, 1852), and Jewish conscripts who fulfilled these obligations on behalf of other persons; on Jews caught and handed over as conscripts for “not having written residency documentation” and “for bad behaviour”; on situations in which Jewish communal parnasim [wardens or board-members] and agents were turned over to prisoners’ squadrons as punishment for enabling a “shortage of conscripts” (op. 107, 1852); requests for exemption from military service requirements on various grounds; etc.
5) Materials pertaining to Odessa Jews’ involvement in charitable activities include files on granting the Odessa merchant S. Gurovich a permit to build kosher butcheries (at his own expense), profits from which would go toward the Jewish community and the Alexander children’s shelter (op. 107, 1855); on a project conceived by municipal duma members A. Galka and M. Rashkovich to found a “charitable committee for the prevention of poverty among the Jews in Odessa” (op. 107, 1864); on the hereditary honorary citizen A. M. Brodskii’s donation of a two-story building on Aleksandrovskii Avenue to the Jewish community such that the Talmud-Torah might organise an orphanage there, and on a monetary donation by the Odessa merchant L. Leibengerts to benefit the same institution (op. 107, 1865, 1870); on the merchant V. Shteinberg’s donation to build a gate for the Main Synagogue (op. 107, 1867); etc.
6) Files on the keeping of vital records on the Jewish population include data on the personnel makeup of the Odessa Jewish community; on the registration of Jews as Odessa townspeople, merchants, and craftsmen; and on administering the oath of “loyalty to Russia” from foreign Jews. Data on the composition of the Odessa Jewish community is also found in logs used by the Odessa Jewish burial society “for the recording of deceased Jews”; and in lists of various categories of the Jewish population, and particularly, lists of Jewish townspeople of the city of Odessa who were employed in farming and in “townsperson trades,” and of Jewish craftsmen; an alphabetical listing of Jewish merchants of the city of Odessa of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd guilds (op. 107, 1852); etc.
7)Documents of the post-1905 period housed in the fonds include information on collaboration between the duma faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDRP) and the Bund; a report pertaining to a petition by the Committee to Organize Jewish Fighting Squads for a grant to meet the needs of the squads “in light of the utter exhaustion of the committee’s funds, and the need to increase squad personnel serving to defend the city,” and a decree that this petition be granted; a file on the city’s assuming jurisdiction over three Jewish higher elementary schools (op. 1, 1918-19); etc.
There are also documents on the founding of several Jewish educational institutions, particularly the Yeshiva for the Detailed Study of the Talmud and Sources of Jewish Religious Laws (op. 107, 1863); on supplementing the land of the Karaite cemetery (op. 28, 1852); and on building synagogues and Jewish houses of worship, and monitoring same; correspondence between the Odessa Municipal Duma, the Odessa city prefect, and the chair of the Odessa Jewish community’s delegate assembly on a new charter for the Odessa Jewish burial society (op. 107, 1868); information on officials of the Odessa Jewish community, including Rabbis S.-A. Schwabacher, M.-G. Gal’perin, D.-B. Fil’shtein, and others; the “learned Jew” employed by the Novorossiia and Bessarabia governor-general; M. Gurovich, a teacher of the Odessa Jewish school; and Iu. Gessen, trustee of the Odessa Talmud-Torah (op. 107, 1852, 1869); statistical data on the number of Odessa’s Jewish merchants and townspeople broken down by gender (op. 1, 1861); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- This was established in 1795 pursuant to the Charter on the Rights and Benefits of Cities of the Russian Empire of 1785 as a body of city government consisting of six representatives from the merchant estate. Upon implementation of a City Statute especially devised for Odessa and imperially approved 30 April 1863, the number of duma councilors (now representing three groups: homeowners, merchants, and townspeople) was raised to seventy-five, with this entity’s executive body, the Municipal Administrative Duma, consisting of three more representatives each (among them Jews) from these same estates. Pursuant to the City Statute of 16 July 1870, this body was headed by a mayor and consisted of councillors elected for a four-year term, its size correlated to the number of city electors entitled to vote. In 1873, pursuant to the same City Statute, all executive and economic-administrative functions were transferred from the duma to the municipal administration (see f. 16). At various times the Odessa Municipal Duma included, alongside other structural subdivisions, a Jewish Desk and Jewish Department. It was dissolved by Soviet power in 1920.
- Access points: locations:
- Kherson province
- Odessa
- Ovidiopol’
- Ukraine
- Access points: persons/families:
- Brodskii, A. M.
- Fil’shtein, D.-B.
- Finkel’, I.
- Gal’perin, M.-G.
- Galka, A.
- Gessen, Iu.
- Gurovich, M.
- Gurovich, S.
- Leibengerts, L.
- Pinsker, S.
- Rashkovich, M.
- Schwabacher
- Shteinberg, V.
- Shtern, B.
- Subject terms:
- Agriculture
- Aid and relief
- Aid and relief--Philanthropy and charity
- Bund movement
- Cemeteries
- Education
- Education--Melamdim
- Education--Schools and universities
- Education--Talmud Torah
- Education--Teachers and professors
- Education--Yeshivot
- Financial matters
- Financial matters--Debt
- Financial records
- Health and medical matters
- Health and medical matters--Diseases
- Health and medical matters--Hospitals
- Hevrah kadisha
- Jewish community records
- Jewish self-defence and resistance
- Kahal
- Karaite Judaism
- Legal status of Jews
- Military
- Professions
- Professions--Crafts
- Rabbis
- Statistics
- Synagogues
- Taxation
- Taxation--Candle tax
- Taxation--Korobka
- Vital records
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes sixty inventories systematised largely according to the structural-chronological principle; op. 2, 3а, 4а, 5а, 6а-48 are organised by year, and materials in op. 104 and 107 are numbered separately in each yearly section, and exist in a single volume with op. 104 and 107 of f. 16 (the Odessa Municipal Administration). The greatest number of Jewish-themed files is concentrated in the Jewish Desk (op. 3, 4) and Jewish Department (op. 107) sections.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
