Metadata: V. D. Bonch-Bruevich
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- State Museum of the History of Religion
- Holding institution (official language):
- Государственный музей истории религии
- Postal address:
- 190000, Russia, St. Petersburg, Pochtamskaia ul., d. 14/5
- Phone number:
- (812) 315-30-80
- Web address:
- www.gmir.ru
- Email:
- gmir@relig-museum.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 2
- Title:
- V. D. Bonch-Bruevich
- Title (official language):
- Бонч-Бруевич В. Д.
- Creator/accumulator:
- V. D. Bonch-Bruevich
- Date(s):
- 1829/1929
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 9,052 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
The fonds contains V. D. Bonch-Bruevich’s research and collection materials; correspondence pertaining to his official positions and public activities; articles and reviews; biographical documents; and materials on the history of the Orthodox Church and sectarianism in Russia. Materials pertaining to Jewish history and culture in op. 22, 25, and 26 may be provisionally divided into five thematic groups.
1) Materials on the ritual-murder blood libel, including a handwritten copy of the “Conclusion on the case of the murder of Fedor Emel’ianov by Jews in Velizh” (1829), and excerpts from six different books on this issue; and copies of documents and newspaper clippings on the Beilis case, and in particular, “The verdict of the Kiev District Court in the case of the murder of Andriusha Iushinskii” (1913).
2) Official correspondence and other materials regarding the fate of synagogues and Jewish houses of worship in the 1920s in the territory of the RSFSR, including a letter from V. D. Bonch-Bruevich to the NKVD regarding the preservation of the Arakcheev Jewish house of worship in Moscow as a historical and spiritual monument, with an appended copy of a petition by a group of believers to the presidium of the Moscow Council; a complaint to the presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee regarding the Moscow Regional Executive Committee’s decision to close the Arakcheev house of worship (1929); the original of a letter addressed to V. D. Bonch-Bruevich from congregants of the Jewish house of worship of Moscow’s Bauman district, signed by forty-five members of the Jewish community; a petition submitted to the chair of the presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from the council of the Marina roshcha Jewish congregation in Moscow requesting that the latter be allowed to keep the building of the Marina roshcha synagogue, with an appended copy of the agreement concluded in 1921 with the legal department of the Moscow City Council; copies of documents on the closure of synagogues and Jewish houses of worship (petitions by believers and responses from district administrations), including congregations of Taganrog, the Kiev district (the Great Stone Synagogue and the Liubavich and Staroe selo synagogues), and the Khar’kov Choral Synagogue, as well as synagogues and houses of worship in the cities of Novozybkov, Minsk, Gomel’ (the synagogue Rosh Pino), Kutaisi, Oni, Kulashi, Sachkhere, Kareli, Kiev, etc. There is also a summary of closed synagogues and the condition thereof, arranged by city: Minsk, Khar’kov, Poltava, Loev, Simferopol’, Gomel’, etc.
3) Works on “the Jewish question” by various authors, and in particular, a manuscript by N. N. Pavlovskii titled On Restoring the Kingdom of Israel in Palestine (in two parts; Poltava, 1897) and the same author’s memoranda to K. P. Pobedonostsev, procurator of the Holy Synod, and Count M. Murav’ev, minister of foreign affairs, titled “On Restoring the Kingdom of Israel in Palestine” (1897, 1898); a report by P. V. Kamenskii on draft legislation on non-Orthodox Christian and heterodox religious associations (1911); an article by Iu. M. Frindberg titled “The Separation of Church and State and the Jewish Religion” (undated); a manuscript by an unidentified author titled “Judaisers,” on the activities of Judaisers in Buzuluk county (Samara province), about the dogmas of their faith, rituals, holidays, etc. (mid-19th c.).
4) Materials of various organisations, including a printed copy, with notes in pencil, of the program of London’s Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel society (1911); an appeal to workers from the 1st Poltava Organization for the Settlement of Jewish Workers in Palestine on organising a collective garden (1920); a typewritten copy of a letter to Major-General (G. G.) Matiushin of the Main Artillery Administration on the topic of Jewish students subject to the draft in connection with the war (1915); a statement by the central committee of the Zionist Organization in Russia on a case regarding Zionists (1920); a letter from l. Chereppover to V. D. Bonch-Bruevich on the transfer of printed materials on Zionism to the museum (1920), etc.
5) Newspaper clippings on the following topics: “Black Hundreds and pogroms” (1909-12); “Judaisers” (1904-13); “Subbotniks” (1913-30); “Jews, Sectarianism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism” (1912-30); “Anti-Semitism” (1928-30); and “Zionism” (1930-33).
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich (1873-1955) was a state and party figure, PhD in history, ethnographer, and commentator. In 1883, he enrolled in preparatory classes of the Constantine Surveying Institute in Moscow. He studied at this institute from 1884-89, but was expelled for involvement in the revolutionary movement, and exiled to Kursk to remain under police supervision there. He graduated from the land surveying school in Kursk. In 1892 he became involved in Marxist circles, and in 1895, became a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDRP). He emigrated in 1896, and studied at the University of Zurich. He was involved in the revolutionary events of 1905-07 in St. Petersburg, contributing to the newspapers Novaia zhizn’, Volna, Vpered, etc. He ran several publishing houses. He was active in the revolutionary events of 1917. As director of the RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars (1917-1920), he was one of the organisers of the central apparatus of the Soviet state. In 1918, he was elected a full member of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences. Throughout his life, he collected materials on the history of religion and atheism, sectarianism, and ethnography; and he published several books on these topics (from 1918 on). In 1933, he became director of the State Literary Museum. For the last ten years of his life (1945-55), he served as director of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad, which housed materials he had collected on the history of religion and sectarianism in Russia.
- Access points: locations:
- Bauman district (Moscow)
- Gomel’
- Kareli
- Khar’kov
- Kiev
- Kulashi
- Loev
- Marina roshcha district (Moscow)
- Minsk
- Moscow
- Novozybkov
- Oni
- Poltava
- RSFSR
- Russia
- Sachkhere
- Simferopol’
- Taganrog
- Velizh
- Access points: persons/families:
- Bonch-Bruevich, V. D.
- Chereppover, l.
- Emel’ianov, Fedor
- Frindberg, Iu. M.
- Iushchinskii, A.
- Kamenskii, P. V.
- Matiushin, G. G.
- Murav’ev, M.
- Pavlovskii, N. N.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes twenty-nine inventories systematised by subject.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary