Metadata: L. G. Deich
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- The Plekhanov House
- Holding institution (official language):
- Дом Плеханова
- Postal address:
- 190005, St. Petersburg, ul. 4-ia Krasnoarmeiskaia, 1/33
- Phone number:
- (812) 316-74-11
- Web address:
- http://www.nlr.ru/coll/housePleh/
- Email:
- domplekh@nlr.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 1097
- Title:
- L. G. Deich
- Title (official language):
- ДЕЙЧ Л. Г.
- Creator/accumulator:
- L. G. Deich
- Date(s):
- 1870/1941
- Language:
- Russian
- English
- Extent:
- 1,342 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Housed in op. 1 are reminiscences on revolutionary activities and historical research on revolutionary events of the late 19th and early 20th c. in Russia; and on the activities of the populists and representatives of other political parties and organisations; correspondence containing information on Deich’s time in Siberia and his life in the United States; documents of revolutionary figures; works about G. V. Plekhanov; and materials of the Department of the Police; op. 2 consists of a collection of books and periodicals from the libraries of L. G. Deich and V. I. Zasulich. Materials pertaining to Jewish history and culture contained in op. 1 may be provisionally divided into three thematic groups:
1) L. G. Deich’s correspondence with revolutionary figures, and in particular, P. B. Aksel’rod, A. I. Zundelevich, A. Gertsenshtein, V. I. Zasulich, and others; their letters contain information regarding their Jewish backgrounds, and their lives and revolutionary activities (1890s-1950s).
2) Reminiscences of the revolutionary activities of L. G. Deich that cite biographical information on the Jewish revolutionary figures A. I. Zundelevich, P. D. Ballod, P. B. Aksel’rod, and others, and in particular, a memoiristic essay on A. I. Zundelevich that contains insertions from his autobiography recopied by L. G. Deich (1932).
3) Research works by L. G. Deich, including The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement, with markings made by P. B. Aksel’rod (1913-24); manuscripts on the Jewish revolutionary figures L. A. Gol’denberg (1911-13), O. V. Aptekman (1924), G. M. Gel’fman (1916), S. Ia. Vittenberg (1911-13), A. B. Aronchik (1911), and L. I. Tsukerman (1911-13) that were part of a series of articles titled “Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement.”
4) Housed among L. G. Deich’s personal documents are materials of Jewish revolutionaries, their scholarly works, reminiscences and excerpts from their memoirs, and also correspondence between them; in particular, there are excerpts from reminiscences that mention O. Rutenberg, I. Bliumenfel’d, L. I. Aksel’rod, L. Figner, and V. Tsederbaum; a letter from V. I. Zasulich to Ia. Stefanovich on the Beilis affair (1913); V. I. Zasulich’s story “The Little Jewish Girl” (1882); articles by P. B. Aksel’rod titled “On the State of Jews in Russia” (1880s) and “The Fall of the Jewish Kahal in the town of Shklov” (the latter was published in the Mogilev Provincial Gazette, 1870); reminiscences by V. Figner, A. Pribylev, and G. Gurevich regarding A. I. Zundelevich, with information on the publication of the Jewish journal Ha-Emes in Vienna (1923) etc.
5. Department of the Police materials on the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire, including on court proceedings brought against A. B. Aronchik, L. D. Bronshtein (Trotskii), G. M. Gel’fman, G. D. Gol’denberg, and V. I. Iokhel’son, with biographical data on the defendants; files containing testimony on L. G. Deich’s involvement in revolutionary activity, and extracts from the Department of the Police archive on him (1875-94), etc., and in particular, a Department of the Police file titled “Criminal propaganda among workers and the distribution of criminal appeals among them. An investigation in the Pale of Jewish Settlement,” which contains several memoranda submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the growth of the revolutionary movement in the Pale of Settlement, with data provided by agents involved in observing Jews, and a detailed summary of the history of the Jewish workers’ movement, including the founding of the Bund; and appended instructions of the “Organ of the General Union of Jewish Workers in Russia and Poland” (the Bund), which describe tactics of how to act with regard to S. V. Zabutaov; there are instructions for how to behave during a police interrogation, as well as a threat that “anyone who has dealings with Zubatov [would be] expelled from the organization” (1902); the file titled “On the Jewish revolutionary movement, and measures against it” contains a note by an unidentified author that proposes measures for combatting the Jewish revolutionary movement; the author sees a way out of the situation through the establishment of a daily newspaper in Jewish “jargon” (i.e., Yiddish): “we will create a clean, strictly cultural newspaper, and it will be trusted, and this will cause a split in Jewry” (1898); there is a receipt for L. G. Deich’s contribution in support of the Zionist movement, and in particular for the purchase of land in Palestine; etc.
Op. 2 consists of books from the libraries of L. G. Deich and V. I. Zasulich, including From the Archive of P. B. Aksel’rod (Berlin, 1924); M. L. Usov, Jews (Prague, 1917); O. V. Aptekman, The ‘Land and Freedom’ Society (Prague, 1924); etc.
- Archival history:
- The Plekhanov House is a structural subdivision (department) of the National Library of Russia and constitutes a research centre for the study of the history of the Russian and international revolutionary and social movements, and the history of culture and education. The core of its fonds consists of the archive and library of Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856-1918), the philosopher, public commentator, and prominent figure in the revolutionary movement who was one of the founders of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDRP). In 1925 these materials were turned over to the Committee to Memorialize G. V. Plekhanov by his widow R. M. Plekhanova (nee Bograd) on the condition that they always be stored together as a unit. The grand opening of the Plekhanov House took place 11 June 1929 at the conference hall of the former Free Economic Society. In accordance with the conditions of the agreement between the committee and the State Public Library board, G. V. Plekhanov’s heritage had to be housed in a separate building with a particular staff; this became a standalone branch of the library. The library board accepted the proposed conditions, and by the spring of 1931 the construction and furnishing of the new building of the Plekhanov House were complete. For the final twenty years of her life R. M. Plekhanova served as director of the Plekhanov House and was involved in organising its fonds; along with her husband’s archive, these housed documents of members of the Liberation of Labor group and their comrades and fellow-thinkers, and numerous other materials. Simultaneously with the processing of the fonds in 1929-30, catalogues and card files began to be organised, including for the Plekhanov library; and materials connected with Plekhanov’s life and activities were collected. Analysis of Plekhanov’s archive, its scholarly inventorying and attribution, and the transcription of markings in it, is currently ongoing.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Lev Grigor’evich Deich (1855-1941) was an activist in the Russian revolutionary movement, a public commentator, translator, and journalist; and one of the founders of the Liberation of Labor group. The son of a Jewish contractor, he studied at a secondary school [gimnaziia] in Kiev, but in 1874 quit his studies and “went to the people” as a propagandist; he was a member of the Kiev group known as the “young insurgents.” As one of the organisers of the “Chigirin conspiracy,” he was arrested and held at the Kiev prison, from which he managed to escape. After the schism in Land and Freedom, he sided with the Black Redistribution organisation; in January 1880, he went abroad with other leaders thereof (G. Plekhanov, Ia. Stefanovich, and V. Zasulich). Upon the formation of the Liberation of Labor group, he was in charge of its printing press. In 1884, while transmitting illegal literature, he was arrested in the city of Freiberg and turned over to the Russian government, which looked for him in relation to its criminal investigation of the failed attempt on N. E. Gorinovich. He served thirteen years hard labor and four in a penal colony before fleeing abroad in 1901. After the second congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDRP), he sided with the Mensheviks. During the Revolution of 1905, he returned to Russia illegally, was arrested and exiled to the Turukhansk territory, but escaped en route. He took part in the conduct of the fifth congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party and the Stuttgart International Socialist Congress. From 1911-16 he resided in the United States. Like G. V. Plekhanov, he took a defensist position during the First World War. He returned to Petrograd after the February Revolution. In late 1917 and early 1918 he contributed to the weeklies Nachalo and Delo. He soon withdrew from political activities, from 1918 on engaging in research. After the death of G. V. Plekhanov in 1918, Deich prepared his works for publication, and published reminiscences and articles on the history of the Russian revolutionary movement. He was the first to perform scholarly research on the involvement of Jews in the revolutionary movement in Russia (in The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement [v. 1; Moscow, Leningrad, 1925]).
- Access points: locations:
- Russia
- Shklov
- Siberia
- United States
- Vienna
- Access points: persons/families:
- Aksel’rod, L. I.
- Aksel’rod, P. B.
- Aptekman, O. V.
- Aptekman. O. V.
- Aronchik, A. B.
- Ballod, P. D.
- Bliumenfel’d, I.
- Bronshtein (Trotskii), L. D.
- Deich, L. G.
- Figner, L.
- Figner, V.
- Gel’fman, G. M.
- Gertsenshtein, A.
- Gol’denberg, G. D.
- Gol’denberg, L. A.
- Gurevich, G.
- Iokhel'son
- Plekhanov, G. V.
- Pribylev, A.
- Rutenberg, O.
- Stefanovich, Ia.
- Tsederbaum, V.
- Tsukerman, L. I.
- Usov,. M. L.
- Vittenberg , S. Ia.
- Zabutaov, S. V.
- Zasulich, V.
- Zundelevich, A. I.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes two inventories systematised by structure (op. 1) and chronologically (op. 2).
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
