Metadata: Russian Museum of Ethnography
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Russian Museum of Ethnography
- Holding institution (official language):
- Российский этнографический музей
- Postal address:
- 191186, Россия, Санкт-Петербург, Инженерная ул., 4/1
- Phone number:
- (812) 313-45-74
- Web address:
- http://www.ethnomuseum.ru/
- Email:
- info@ethnomuseum.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 2
- Title:
- Russian Museum of Ethnography
- Title (official language):
- Российский этнографический музей
- Creator/accumulator:
- Russian Museum of Ethnography
- Date(s):
- 1917/2001
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Hebrew
- German
- Belarusian
- Ukrainian
- French
- English
- Extent:
- 3,633 storage units [the fond is continually supplemented with new documents; information given is as of September 2016]
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The fonds contains a significant set of documents pertaining to the history of Jews in Russia, distributed throughout all inventories, except for op. 4.
Op. 1 includes materials pertaining to the museum’s office and business/financial operations; operations of its councils on research, methodology, and restoration work; operations of the fonds procurement commission; and the museum’s activities in arranging expeditions, collection work, exhibitions, and research (1917-1980). Materials on the ethnography of Jews, Krymchaks, and Karaites include statistical information “on the space and population of Central Asian possessions,” including data on the numerical makeup of the Jewish population in different regions of the Asian part of the Russian Empire – the Ural, Turgai, Akmola, Semipalatinsk, Semirech’e, Transcaspia (Zakaspiia), Samarkand, Syr-Dar’ia and Fergana regions (circa 1918); documents on the transfer in 1918 of the collection assembled during expeditions (1912-14) of the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society organised by S. An-skii (Sh. Z. Rappoport) for temporary storage at the Ethnography Department of the State Russian Museum, including a list of “Jewish ethnographic items from the collection of the former Rappoport”; S. A. An-skii’s acknowledgement of the transfer of his collection to the Ethnography Department of the State Russian Museum (1918); a summary inventory of “items of Jewish artistic and ethnographic antiquity collected by the Jewish ethnographic expedition organiaed by S. A. Rappoport-An-skii,” and other inventories and lists of the collection’s items compiled by department staff (1922-1929); correspondence between the Museum of the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society (Petrograd/Leningrad) and the Ethnography Department of the State Russian Museum regarding the return of the S. A. An-skii collection, including a copy of a letter to the department’s council from the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society committee, signed by the society’s chair L. Ia. Shternberg and the director of its museum I. Ia. Ginzburg on this issue (1922); extracts from the session log of the council of the Ethnography Department of the State Russian Museum regarding the scientific significance of the S. A. An-skii collection (1922); a letter from A. M. Bramson, the last director of the Museum of the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society, and S. B. Iudovin, the museum’s curator, regarding the return of the An-Skii collection; acknowledgement of the receipt of photos, negatives, and individual items from the former collection of the Museum of the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society, with an appended certificate on the transfer of exhibit items from the Ethnography Department of the State Russian Museum to the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society; etc. (1929); information on “Jewish items” from the S. A. An-skii collection and a chart of the “Jews” exhibit, with sketches of ethnographic items of the collection, compiled (S. E.) Viner (1923); documents on the closure of the Museum of the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society and the transfer of its fonds to the Ethnography Department of the State Russian Museum, and in particular, correspondence of A. I. Zarembskii, research secretary of the Ethnography Department of the State Russian Museum, with the administrative department of the Leningrad Regional Executive Committee and the Leningrad Branch of the Main Administration of Research Institutions (Glavnauka) on liquidating the Museum of the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society and transferring its collection to the State Russian Museum; letters from the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Education to the State Russian Museum on transferring the museum holdings of the former Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society to the State Russian Museum, “with duplicate materials to be delivered to the Central Museum of Ethnology in Moscow,” etc. (1929-30); a field journal from the expedition led by I. M. Pul’ner to study the ethnography of Belorussian Jews, including sketches of the layouts of Jewish homes (1931); correspondence of I. S. Kaia and I. M. Pul’ner on Krymchak ethnography, and in particular, on wedding rituals, etc. (1939); letters from the Crimean Regional Commerce Department in the city of Simferopol’ (D. Lotto and others) to Iu. P. Pantsoshnik on the “technology of producing Karaite national dishes” in the Crimean region (1950s); a report by Z. V. Kalinnikova “on a trip [on behalf of the State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR] to visit Karaites in the Crimean region” for the purpose of determining the possibility of supplementing the museum’s collection, with an appended listing of Karaite fonds of the State Museum of Ethnography, including the collection of Prof. S. M. Shapshal assembled in 1915 (1958).
Housed in op. 2 are scholarly articles, essays, and reports by museum staff members, mostly unpublished, as well as reports on expeditions of the State Museum of Ethnography / Russian Museum of Ethnography (1918-2001). These include materials on the history and ethnography of Jews, Karaites, and Krymchaks, in particular, the following scholarly works: S. I. Kushul’, “On the Dying-Out of the Karaites (a report)” (1918); M. F. Babadzhan, “A Brief History of the Crimean Karaites” (1956) and “Architectural Monuments of the Crimean Karaites” (1957); B. S. Eliashevich, “What Every Karaite Should Know,” “Evpatoriia Architectural-Artistic Monuments of Antiquity of the Crimean Karaites,” and “The Karaites of Trakai” (1958); A. S. Bezhkovich, “A Description of the Wedding Rituals of the Ancient Karaites” (1959); E. I. Peisakh, “Ethnographic Collections on the Krymchaks in the State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR” (a report delivered at the jubilee session marking the museum’s 70th anniversary in 1965); topic reports of the Podolia expedition of the Ethnography Department of the State Russian Museum, compiled by M. A. Fride and N. Nikitina, with a description of Jewish quarters and synagogues, the arrangement of Jewish homes, and traditional crafts and trades of Jews in towns of Podolia (1924-27).
Op. 3 contains personal files of museum staff members (1917-2001), including their autobiographical statements, work lists, questionnaires, publication listings, evaluations, work-related correspondence, etc., and in particular, personal files of researchers whose activities were connected with the study of the history and ethnography of Jews and Karaites: A. S. Bezhkovich (1930-53), A. I. Zarembskii (1921), A. A. Miller (1918-34), M. A. Fride (1921-28), K. Z. Kavtaradze (1921-39), I. M. Pul'ner (1933-41), V. V. Romanovskaia (1932-36), A. K. Serzhputovskii (1912-30), F. A. Fiel’strup (1921-26), and others.
Housed in op. 5 is a set of documents on the activities of the Jewish section of the State Museum of Ethnography, including research materials of its staff members (1924-41), which may be provisionally divided into eight thematic groups:
1) journals from I. M. Pulner’s expeditions, organised by the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society and the State Russian Museum, to Belorussia (1924, 1927, 1928, 1930) and Georgia (1929); I. M. Pul’ner’s recordings of charms, spells, and folk signs and beliefs in Belorussia (1927); Pul’ner’s report on the expedition to Georgia (1929); and ethnographic recordss collected by the Pul’ner expedition in Belorussia (1930).
2) Materials on the establishment and operations of the Jewish section of the State Museum of Ethnography, including documents of the historian, philologist, Sinologist, and Japanologist Prof. D. M. Pozdneev (on whom see also the description of the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia f. 590, “D. M. and A. M. Pozdneev”), who served as a consultant of the State Museum of Ethnography, and in particular, a memorandum to F. Ia. Kon, a member of the board of the People’s Commissariat of Education, on the organisation of the “Birobidzhan department within the State Museum of Ethnography system” (1934); a memo on the organisation of the Jewish section in the State Museum of Ethnography’s department of the peoples of Belorussia (1936); a letter addressed to N.G. Talanov, director of the State Museum of Ethnography, “on the further operations of the Jewish section" (1936); a report titled “Organizing a Jewish department in the State Museum of Ethnography” (1937); production plans for operations of the Jewish section of the State Museum of Ethnography from 1937 to 1940; a plan for a research trip by section staff members to western regions of Ukraine in the summer of 1941; a list of materials of the former Jewish section (1953); etc.
3. Documents pertaining to the ethnographic expedition of the Jewish section of the State Museum of Ethnography to the Jewish Autonomous Region in April-August 1937, including work plans; minutes of a meeting of expedition members for preliminary discussion of the plan for an exposition titled “Socialist Birobidzhan”; expense estimates for the expedition to the Jewish Autonomous Region; a summary report on work conducted in the Jewish Autonomous Region and an individual report by expedition member V. V. Romanovskaia; lists of materials and photographs collected by the expedition in Birobidzhan; etc.
4) Preparatory materials for the “Jews in Tsarist Russia and in the USSR” exhibit (in operation at the State Museum of Ethnography from 1939 to 1941), including: reports by local authorities of the Jewish Autonomous Region; statements and data on the settlement of Jews in Birobidzhan, on the study and development of the natural resources of this territory, etc. (1931-37), and in particular, an operational plan and memorandum on the organisation of the first Far Eastern parasitology expedition of the Far Eastern section of the USSR Academy of Sciences (DVOAN) (1932); a report by the Birobidzhan city planning team (1933); minutes of board meetings of the “Red October” collective farm (1934); a report titled “On the State of Public Education in the Jewish Autonomous Region” covering 9 months of 1934; annual reports on operations of healthcare institutions in the Jewish Autonomous Region for 1936; a production plan and annual income/expense budget of the Kirov collective farm (Birobidzhan district, Jewish Autonomous Region) for 1937; charts of economic and agricultural districts and topography of the Jewish Autonomous Region (undated); blueprints for model homes for persons resettling in Crimea’s Evpatoriia district (1926-27), etc.; charts of the arrangement of the exhibit (1936-39); memoranda, minutes, and reports on the construction of the exhibit; minutes of scholarly sessions regarding approval of the exhibit (1938-39), and on its reception and viewing by representatives of the scholarly community of Leningrad, and their evaluations of it, including that of State Museum of Ethnography staff member O. G. Spektor; documents on the opening of the exhibit at the State Museum of Ethnography; the manuscript of a brief guide to the sections of the “Jews in Tsarist Russia and in the USSR” exhibit (1939); etc.
5) Manuscripts of articles by staff members of the Jewish section of the State Museum of Ethnography, and materials used in preparation thereof, in particular, I. M. Pul’ner, “Beliefs, Rituals, Customs, and Signs Associated with Infertility, Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Newborns among Georgian Jews” (1929), “Issues pertaining to the Organization of Jewish Ethnographic Museums and Jewish Departments within General Ethnographic Museums,” published in the journal Sovetskaia etnografiia [Soviet Ethnography], no. 3-4 (1931), and “Elements (Vestiges) of Chosennness in the Wedding Rites of the Jews of Russia from the Late 18th – Early 20th c.” (undated); a bibliographic listing titled “Jews of the Caucasus in the Russian-Jewish Periodical Press" (1936); etc.; I. M. Pul’ner and M. I. Shakhnovich, “From the Experience of Constructing the ‘Jews in Tsarist Russia and in the USSR’ Exhibit” (1940); D. M. Pozdneev, “The Jewish Autonomous Region” (1936) and “The Struggle for the Yiddish Language” (1937); clippings from periodicals on the topics “The Status of Jews in Central Asia,” “The History and Status of Georgian Jews in the USSR,” “The History and Status of Mountain Jews in the USSR” (1929-34), etc.
6) Correspondence, including informational letters from the presidium of the Leningrad Museum of the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society to members of the friends of the museum group (1929); letters from organisations and individuals to I. M. Pul’ner, head of the Jewish section of the State Museum of Ethnography, and in particular, from the Mendele Moykher-Sforim First All-Ukrainian Museum of Jewish Culture, the artists A. N. Gefter and I. B. Rabichev, the collectors B. I. Toporovskii and M. Goldshtein, the Krymchak educator I. Kaia, and others (1937-41); correspondence with Jewish public, cultural, and scholarly institutions of the union republics, and other institutions and individuals, regarding the collection and acquisition of ethnographic recordss for the “Jews in Tsarist Russia and in the USSR” exhibit, including: the Committee on Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (KOMZET); the research commission of the central council of the Society for Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (OZET); the Birobidzhan, Leningrad, Odessa, and Ukrainian OZETs; the liquidation committees of the central council of the OZET and Leningrad OZET; the Leningrad OZET photographic paper factory; the editors of the newspaper Der Emes (Moscow); the Moscow, Odessa, and Kiev State Yiddish Theaters (GOSET); the State Jewish Children’s and Puppet Theaters in Kiev; the Office of Jewish Soviet Literature, Language, and Folklore of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (Kiev); the Morris Winchevsky Central Jewish Library (Kiev); the Mendele Moykher-Sforim First All-Ukrainian Museum of Jewish Culture (Odessa); the Native-Jewish Museum (Samarkand); the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Museum (Tbilisi); the Commission for the Study of the Culture and Natural Resources of the Jewish Autonomous Region; the Birobidzhan Experimental Agricultural Station on Field Husbandry and Livestock; the secretariat of the “Prokor” society in Belgium; the Kaliningrad Museum of the Odessa Region; the IZO Union; the Union of Soviet Artists; the House of the Red Army; the Vitebsk State Museum; theatre sectors of the arts administrations of the Councils of People’s Commissars of the Belorussian SSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the RSFSR; the Artillery Museum; the State Museum Fund; the museum department of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Education; the State Museum of Belorussia in Minsk; the USSR Academy of Arts; the Central V. I. Lenin Museum; the Museum of the History of Religion of the USSR Academy of Sciences; and the Antireligious Museum (Kiev); as well as with I. V. Kamenetskii, M. I. Leiptsiger, G. N. Traugot, S. B. Iudovin, M. Kadyshevich, V. F. Girshovich, I. A. Ol’shanetskii, A. L. Kaplan, Ia. M. Shur, S. M. Zaidenberg, L. F. Stadnik, M. I. Rabinovich, S. A. Rubinshtein, A. M. Bramson, and others (1937-41).
7) Various materials on Jewish history and culture, and in particular, a collection compiled from various sheets (as a Sammelband) that had belonged to the Brotherhood of the Guardians of the Faith “Shomerei Emunah” (Belostok/Białystok and Kremenchug, 1843-97); a manuscript of Z. Liantsman’s play The Daughter of Jerusalem, with the drama censor’s stamp indicating that it was “permitted to be staged in St. Petersburg” (undated); copies of documents for the collection The Persecution of Jews under Tsarism (1870-1903); extracts from the prerevolutionary periodical press on the topic of “the status of the Mountain and Georgian Jews under tsarism”; a letter on the operational plan of an expedition by the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Museum (Tbilisi); etc.
8) Photographic recordss on the topic of “the Jewish religion in the service of tsarism,” including a retouched photograph by A. S. Shaikhet titled “A Pioneer Girl Asks her Father to Remove His Religious Vestments” (1929); and photographs: of A. N. Gefter’s drawing “Poison Arrow. The Kulak and the Rabbi” (undated); of a dish presented to Emperor Nicholas II by representatives of Jewish farmers of colonies of the Kherson and Ekaterinoslav provinces (undated); of D. E. Zagoskin’s painting “A Belorussian Jewish Town” (undated); of stands from the “Jews in Tsarist Russia and in the USSR” exhibit (1939); a photocopy of the appeal “To Congregants of the Synagogue and Houses of Worship of Odessa” (1914); expedition photographs, and photos of drawings by S. B. Iudovin (1910s-30s); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
On 13 March 1934, by order (no. 211) of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Education, the Ethnography Department was separated from the State Russian Museum and became the basis for the State Museum of Ethnography (GME). In August 1948, after receiving collections of the State Museum of the Peoples of the USSR in Moscow, whose collections had consisted mainly of ethnographic recordss of the Imperial Moscow and Rumiantsev Museum (a single institution, the country’s oldest ethnographic museum, founded in 1862), the GME was renamed the State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR (GME narodov SSSR). On the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary in 1984, the museum was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples. When the Ministry of Culture of the USSR was abolished and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Russian Federation was established in 1991, the State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR was transferred to the jurisdiction of the latter. In 1992, upon the collapse of the USSR, the museum was renamed the Russian Museum of Ethnography (REM). It is currently one of the largest ethnography museums in the world. Its collection numbers approximately half a million exhibit items, and includes items from daily life; documentary photographs and archival materials; and drawings, engravings, and lithographs reflecting features of the traditional-everyday culture of over 150 peoples of Eastern Europe, Siberia and the Far East, and the Caucasus and Central Asia during the 18th-20th centuries.
The State Museum of Ethnography’s Jewish section was established in November 1936 as part of its department of the peoples of Belorussia. It was tasked with assembling ethnographic exhibit items and studying the everyday life of Jews in the Russian Empire and the USSR; particular attention was paid to the newly formed Jewish Autonomous Region (EAO) in the Birobidzhan district of the Soviet Far East. The ethnographer and bibliographer I. M. Pul’ner was appointed head of the section in 1937. In April-August 1937, the section organised an ethnographic expedition to the Jewish Autonomous Region. Materials collected during the expedition would form the basis of the “Jews in Tsarist Russia and in the USSR” exhibit, which was displayed at the State Museum of Ethnography from March 1939 to June 1941. The activities of the Jewish section were halted in connection with the Soviet-German War of 1941-45, and were not renewed after 1945.
- Access points: locations:
- Akmola region
- Belgium
- Białystok
- Birobidzhan
- Crimea
- Ekaterinoslav province
- Fergana region
- Georgia
- Jerusalem
- Jewish Autonomous Region
- Kherson province
- Kiev
- Kremenchug
- Moscow
- Odessa
- Podolia
- Russia
- Samarkand region
- Semipalatinsk region
- Semirech’e region
- Simferopol’
- St Petersburg
- Ural region
- USSR
- Access points: persons/families:
- An-ski, S.
- Babadzhan, M. F.
- Bezhkovich, A. S.
- Bramson, A. M.
- Eliashevich, B. S.
- Fiel’strup, F. A.
- Fride, M. A.
- Gefter, A. N.
- Ginzburg, I. Ia.
- Girshovich, V. F.
- Goldshtein, M.
- Iudovin, S.
- Kadyshevich, M.
- Kaia, I.
- Kalinnikova, Z. V.
- Kamenetskii, I. V.
- Kavtaradze, K. Z.
- Kon, F. Ia.
- Kushul’, S. I.
- Leiptsiger, M. I.
- Liantsman, Z.
- Lotto, D.
- Miller, A. A.
- Nicholas II
- Nikitina, N.
- Ol’shanetskii, I. A.
- Pantsoshnik, Iu. P.
- Peisakh, E. I.
- Pozdneev, D. M.
- Pul’ner, I.
- Rabichev, I. B.
- Rabinovich, M. I.
- Romanovskaia, V. V.
- Rubinshtein, S. A.
- Serzhputovskii, A. K.
- Shaikhet, A. S.
- Shakhnovich, M. I.
- Shapshal, S. M.
- Shternberg, L. Ia.
- Shur, Ia. M.
- Spektor, O. G.
- Stadnik, L. F.
- Talanov, N.G.
- Toporovskii, B. I.
- Traugot, G. N.
- Viner, S. E.
- Zagoskin, D. E.
- Zaidenberg, S. M.
- Zarembskii, A. I.
- Subject terms:
- Art
- Art--Artists
- Birobidzhan
- Correspondence
- Drawings
- Education
- Ethnography
- Exhibitions
- Financial matters
- Health and medical matters
- Historical research
- Jewish languages
- Jewish languages--Yiddish
- Jewish quarters
- Karaite Judaism
- Krymchaks
- Libraries
- Manuscripts
- Marriage and divorce
- Mountain Jews
- Museums
- Personal records
- Photographs
- Professions
- Professions--Crafts
- Professions--Scholars (secular), scientists, and academics
- Statistics
- Synagogues
- Theatre
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes five inventories systematised chronologically and alphabetically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary