Metadata: The Kherson Regional State Administration’s Department of Religious Affairs (Consolidated Archival Fond)
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of the Kherson Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Державний архів Херсонської області
- Postal address:
- Ukraine, 73003, Kherson, 3 Yaroslav Mudryi Str.
- Phone number:
- 380 (0552) 22-5733
- Web address:
- http://kherson.archives.gov.ua/
- Email:
- daxo@ukrpost.net
- Reference number:
- F. R-3727
- Title:
- The Kherson Regional State Administration’s Department of Religious Affairs (Consolidated Archival Fond)
- Title (official language):
- Відділ у справах релігій Херсонської обласної державної адміністрації, м. Херсон (ОАФ)
- Creator/accumulator:
- The Kherson Regional State Administration’s Department of Religious Affairs
- Date(s):
- 1944/1995
- Language:
- Russian
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- 484 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Graphic material
- Scope and content:
-
A significant portion of the fonds consists of materials of the plenipotentiary of the Ukraine Council of Ministers’ (Cabinet of Ministers’) Council on Religious Cults (Council on Religious Affairs), including documents from 1945-62 pertaining to the operations of the Kherson Jewish religious community. Among these are the community’s “registration file” for 1945-48, which contains a registration application; lists of “the twenty” and of the audit commission; inventories of religious property; minutes of society sessions on the election of chairmen, executive committees, and rabbis; correspondence of the Council on Religious Cults’ plenipotentiary with municipal authorities on providing worshippers with “gratis and perpetual use” of the synagogue at 40 Pod’polnaia Street; instructions and notifications of the plenipotentiary (on performing urgent repairs at the synagogue and appointing a rabbi); a petition from Ia. Ia. Gurevich, chair of the Jewish community’s executive committee, addressed to Nikita Khrushchev, chair of the Ukrainian SSR Council of Ministers, and to the secretary of the Kherson Regional Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine and the chair of the Kherson Regional Executive Committee, requesting that another synagogue building (the one at 64 Frunze Street) be provided for the community, due to the absence of funding for repairs to the building that had previously been provided, and the plenipotentiary’s conclusion on this petition recommending that it be rejected; rulings of the Kherson Municipal Executive Committee, findings of the people’s court, and appeals and complaints of the Kherson Jewish religious community regarding the invalidation of the agreement granting gratis and perpetual use of the synagogue on Podpol’naia Street and the expropriation of its guard-house (1945-48); a chart of the synagogue building made by the city’s chief engineer (1948); applications submitted to the plenipotentiary by cantors requesting permission to hold religious services; questionnaire forms, autobiographies, and registration certificates of member of the clergy; lists of worshippers (1953-55); etc.
There is a separate set of documents consisting of information on synagogues and Jewish houses of worship located in the territory of the Kherson area in 1945-51, including data on their location and condition; when they were closed and for what reason, and what entities received their buildings; whether they were damaged during the German occupation; etc.; letters and directives of the USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Cults regarding the transfer of buildings for the needs of religious communities; on how to handle believers’ petitions for matzah; on the functions of cantors, and on barring them from holding “religious concerts” to benefit synagogues; etc.
There are also materials on the de-registration of the Jewish religious community of the city of Kherson and the removal of the synagogue building from it in 1961-62, including rulings of the Kherson Regional Council of Toilers’ Deputies and of the Kherson Municipal Executive Committee, and conclusions of the plenipotentiary (to the effect that the Jewish religious community had been in violation of legislation on “religious cults”); an article in the newspaper Naddnipians’ka pravda in which a cantor named Irzhanovskii denounced the unlawful activities of the community’s leaders; a letter from members of the Kherson Jewish religious community to the newspaper Izvestiia requesting help with getting the synagogue building back (in time, it was restored to worshippers, at their own expense); complaints submitted by worshippers to the plenipotentiary and to USSR Council of Ministers’ Chairman Nikita Khrushchev; etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- This was established in 1992 on the basis of the office of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs’ plenipotentiary for the Kherson region (on the functions of these plenipotentiaries, see the historical information given in the description of f. R-5028 et al. of the State Archive of the Nikolaev Region). It was under the jurisdiction of the Kherson Regional State Administration; and was also subordinate, originally, to the Ukrainian SSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs; from 1994 on, to the Ministry of Nationalities, Migration, and Religious Organizations; and from 1995-2000, the Ukraine State Committee on Religious Affairs. In 2005, it was added to the regional state administration’s Department of Domestic Policy and Community Affairs. The department was tasked with implementing state policy with regard to religion and the Church and protecting the right of the individual to freedom of conscience, and also with assisting religious organisations in the performance of foundational tasks.
- Access points: locations:
- Kherson
- Kherson area
- Ukraine
- Access points: persons/families:
- Gurevich, Ia. Ia.
- Irzhanovskii
- Khrushchev, Nikita
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes a single inventory systematised according to the structural-chronological principle.
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
