Metadata: G. M. Deich
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- The National Library of Russia
- Holding institution (official language):
- Российская национальная библиотека. Отдел рукописей.
- Postal address:
- 91069, Russia, St. Petersburg, ul. Sadovaia, д. 18, main building; tel.: (812) 310-28-56; fax: (812) 310-61-48; e-mail: office@nlr.ru http://www.nlr.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 1276
- Title:
- G. M. Deich
- Title (official language):
- ДЕЙЧ Г. М.
- Creator/accumulator:
- G. M. Deich
- Date(s):
- 1930/1989
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 1,121 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
-
Housed in the fonds are materials pertaining to the biography of G. M. Deich, including autobiographical statements (1946; 1970s); work place documents and evaluations, and diplomas (1937-64); identification documents, etc. (1930s-70s); documents pertaining to work and teaching activities, and in particular, work agreements and contracts (1940s-80s); decrees conferring academic degrees on him (1947-73); certificates of commendation; invitations to conferences and symposia, etc.; reviews of his printed works and manuscripts (1940s-80s); memoiristic materials, including journals, reminiscences, travels notes regarding trips to Estonia, Latvia, the US, etc. (1950s-80s); literary works: stories, essays, etc.; correspondence; newspaper clippings; photographs; materials of other persons; G. M. Deich’s death certificate; etc. (2003).
Each of the fonds’ inventories contains materials that pertain to Jewish history and culture; these may be conventionally divided into the following thematic groups:
1) Research works by G. M. Deich and materials he used in writing them, including the typewritten fair copy of an article titled “Materials on ‘Other-Believers’ [inovertsy] in Certain Archival Fonds of the Supreme and Central Authorities of Tsarist Russia (An Experiment in Archival Heuristics),” which contains information on the empire’s legislative restrictions on “other-believers”: Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc., as identified based on an analysis of the Collected Laws of the Russian Empire and documents of supreme and central power entities, and in particular, the State Council, Senate, Synod, Committee of Ministers, and His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancery, as well as ministries and main administrations, that are housed in fonds of the USSR Central State Historical Archive (TsGIA SSSR) (now the Russian State Historical Archive, RGIA) (1970); the manuscript of an article titled “Governors’ Reports of the 1840s-60s as a Source of the Confessional Makeup of the Population of European Russia,” which includes the tables “The confessional makeup of the population of Russia in the 1840s-60s,” indicating numbers of Jews (in the table referred to as “adherents of Judaism,” iudaisty) in various provinces of the Russian Empire; and “Other-believers in Russia in 1842-69 and the percentage of the whole population of the country they represented (figures in parentheses indicate the number who had been baptised / converted to Russian Orthodoxy)” (1984); autograph manuscripts of the article “V. I. Lenin in the Struggle against Antisemitism,” written for the New York weekly Algemeyner Zhurnal (1988) and “Materials for a Biography of A. D. Blank” (the father of M. A. Ul’ianova, nee Blank, V. I. Lenin’s mother; undated); autograph manuscripts of the essays “A Description of the Town of Liubavichi in the Early 19th c.” (written sometime after 1978) and “A Chronicle of the Village of Liubavichi” (1983), which give information on the Jewish population of Liubavichi, its two Jewish cemeteries and four Jewish houses of worship, on the spread of Hasidism, etc.; clippings from Pravda (no. 13, 13 January 1953; no. 94, 4 April 1953; no. 96, 6 April 1953) on the “Doctor’s Affair” etc.
2) Correspondence with various organisations and editorial offices regarding the publication of articles by G. M. Deich, including a letter from him to A. A. Vergelis, editor in chief of the journal Sovetish Heimland, proposing that a Yiddish translation be published of a set of materials on Jewish population numbers for Russia in 1842-69 (1979), and the response from Sovetish Heimland, signed by the editor B. Mogil’ner, declining to publish this (1979); a letter from G. M. Deich to the USSR Council of Ministers’ Council on Religious Affairs proposing publication of a reference guide on Other-Believers in Russia in the Mid-19th c., which would give “yearly data on the number of Catholics, Lutherans, Muslims, Jews, and other persons of other faiths … in every county for 1842-69” (1980); an answer from S. Makarov, editor of the journal Sel’skaia molodezh’ [Rural Youth], declining to print G. M. Deich’s essay on the town of Liubavichi (1983); a letter to the propaganda and agitation department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union responding to S. Verbitskii’s piece in the journal Neva (no. 1, 1983) titled “Not to Be Swept under the Rug: On the Pale of Settlement,” in which G. M. Deich expresses the view that the author of the piece had made an “entirely arbitrary interpretation of the reactionary policy of the tsarist government in the nationalities question regarding the notorious Pale of Settlement” (1983); etc.
3) Memoirs and materials on family history, and in particular, a typewritten fair copy of an article titled “Lineage,” which contains genealogical information on representatives of the Deich and Kugel’ families, G. M. Deich’s ancestors (written sometime after 1977); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Genrikh Markovich Deich (1913-2003) was a historian and archivist. He graduated from Leningrad State University (history department) in 1937. He subsequently worked at the Khar’kov Pedagogical Institute and University. In 1944 he was hired as a senior research fellow at the Central State Historical Archive in Leningrad (TsGIA SSSR) (now the Russian State Historical Archive, RGIA), where he compiled information for a guidebook to this archive then being prepared. In the reference material he compiled, he also indicated fond materials that pertained to Jews; but when the guidebook was edited, this information was removed. In 1947 he defended his doctoral dissertation at the Moscow Historical-Archival Institute. In 1947-60 he taught at the Pskov and Novgorod Pedagogical Institutes. In 1962 he defended his habilitation thesis at the Leningrad branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of History. In 1966 he was chosen in a competition to serve as a professor at the Herzen Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, where he worked until 1976. From 1989 to the end of his life, he resided in the US, where the following research works by him were published: Synagogues, Houses of Worship, and Officials Thereof in the Jewish Pale of Settlement in the Courland and Livonian Provinces of the Russian Empire, 1853-54: Archival Materials on the History and Genealogy of the Jewish People (1992); “Liubavich – the Center of Chabad Hasidim. Documentary Sketches (1994); and The Tsarist Government and the Hasidic Movement in Russia (1994). His A Research Guide to Materials on the History of Russian Jewry, 19th and Early 20th Centuries (ed. B. Natans) was published in Russia (Moscow, 1994), as was his Reminiscences of a Soviet Historian (St. Petersburg, 2000). He died in West Orange, NJ.
- Access points: locations:
- Russia
- United States
- Access points: persons/families:
- Blank, A. D.
- Deich family
- Deich, G. M. (Genrikh Markovich)
- Kugel’ family
- Lenin, V. I.
- Makarov, S.
- Mogil’ner, B.
- Ul’ianova, M. A.
- Verbitskii, S.
- Vergelis, A. A.
- Subject terms:
- Antisemitism
- Antisemitism--Antisemitic legislation
- Cemeteries
- Conversion to Christianity
- Correspondence
- Diaries
- Doctors' Plot
- Genealogy
- Hasidic Judaism
- Jewish community
- Legal records
- Literature
- Literature--Novels, poetry, and plays
- Manuscripts
- Memoirs
- Newspaper clippings
- Pale of Settlement
- Personal records
- Photographs
- Statistics
- Vital records
- Vital records--Death records
- Yiddish periodicals
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes three inventories systematised by structure. (At the time this fonds' description was being written, op. 3 was still being processed.)
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary