Metadata: Memoirs and Biographical Materials Fond
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- State Museum of the Political History of Russia
- Holding institution (official language):
- Государственный музей политической истории России
- Postal address:
- 197046, Russia, St. Petersburg, ul. Kuibysheva, d. 2–4
- Phone number:
- (812) 233-70-52
- Email:
- polithistmuseum@mail.ru
- Reference number:
- F. VI
- Title:
- Memoirs and Biographical Materials Fond
- Title (official language):
- Фонд воспоминаний и биографических материалов
- Creator/accumulator:
- various individuals
- Date(s):
- 1957/2012
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- approx. 28,000 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Materials pertaining to Jewish history and culture may be provisionally divided into four thematic groups. 1) Memoirs and particular documents pertaining to the history of Jewish families; in particular, the file of M. L. Goberman includes his autobiography (1956), which describes the life of the family of a retired Jewish serviceman (a former “Cantonist”) in Moscow in the 1890s-1910s; the file of M. M. Levis includes her memoirs (typescript; word-processing, 1950s-90s), which tell of the life of an assimilated Jewish family in St. Petersburg in the 1890s-1910s and the fate of its members during the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s; this includes a family tree of the Levi-Baron-Gutman family composed by D. Tsvetkov; the family descended from Kh. B. Mendel’son, a painter and sign-maker who lived in the city of Kovno in the 19th c; the file of Ia. V. Libinzon includes a composition titled “My Memoir” (written in the 1950s) that tells of the life of a traditional Jewish family of the city of Orsha (Mogilev province), touching on such subjects as cheder (Jewish primary school) instruction, the local “Jewish poor and bourgeoisie,” the author’s brother’s expulsion from St. Petersburg due to his lack of a residence permit for the capital, etc.
2) Information about pogroms; in particular, the file of the Breslav-Zhdanovich family contains a typewritten copy of a letter by B. A. Breslav that tells of the situation in Ekaterinoslav, the activities and antisemitic slogans of the Black Hundreds, the pogrom against Jews, measures taken to prevent it, the organisation of Jewish defence groups, and operations of the Bund, Po’ale Tsiyon, and the Zionist Organization (1905); a composition titled “A Brief Sketch of Recollections on the Bolshevik Organization of the Zvenigorod Region during the Civil War (1917-20)” contains information about revolutionary events in the city of Zvenigorodka, the Bolsheviks’ political struggle against Zionists and Bundists, pogroms organised by the Petliurist leader Iurko Tiutiunnik, and also about the beginnings of the literary career of the prominent Soviet poet Itsik Fefer as editor of the newspaper Zvenigorodskaia kommuna and head of agitprop.
3) Materials of Jewish cultural figures, including a file of the artist I. N. Gurvich that contains memoiristic compositions: “Once More about the Russian Museum, 1932” (1968); “On the ‘15 Years of Artists of the RSFSR’ Exhibit” (1932; the judges included I. I. Brodskii, I. N. Gurvich, V. N. Perel’man, and D. P. Shterenberg)”; “From the Notebook of an Army Political Inspector” (undated), which mentions a pogrom in the town of Krivichi in July 1920; “Bohemia” (1970-71; a typescript), which includes comments on the work of Malevich, V. E. Tatlin, and Marc Chagall, with a description of everyday life in the Pale of Settlement, Jewish religious rituals, information about Yehudah Pen, N. L. Aronson, Osip Tsadkin, and others; a file of the writer N. E. Burenin, which contains a letter to his mother, S. I. Burenina, from New York, with a description of his visit to the “Jewish quarters” of that city (1906); a list of historical and revolutionary materials brought by N. E. Burenin from Finland and Sweden that mentions works by Maxim Gorky translated into Yiddish, and thirty-eight pages of excerpts made by Gorky from newspaper publications on the “Jewish question” (1929); an essay titled “Pages from My Memoirs. M. Gorky and the Synagogue Choir” (undated); etc.; the program of a concert of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Zubin Mehta dedicated to the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg and organised by the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the St. Petersburg Jewish religious community; the concert was held at the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Choral Synagogue (2003); etc.
4) Memoirs of the Second World War, and in particular, a series of drawings by the artist A. N. Khan’ko titled “Near Weimar on Mount Eterberg” (the cycle “The Buchenwald Death Camp, 1943-44”), with an appended letter by the artist giving detailed annotations to each drawing; etc.
- Archival history:
- This was established in 1919 in Petrograd as the Museum of the Revolution. It was originally located in the building of the Winter Palace. In 1972, it was renamed the State Museum of the Great October Socialist Revolution (GMR), a branch of the Central Museum of the Revolution of the USSR. Since 1991, it has been called the State Museum of Political History (GMPI). In 1974 it was awarded the Order of the October Revolution. Since 1920, it has been located in a building that is a historical and revolutionary monument, the former home of M. Kshesinskaia (from March-June 1917, the operational centre of the central and Petrograd committees of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party [RSDRP], the Bolshevik military organisation, and the “Pravda” soldiers’ club). The museum has fifteen fonds collections containing approximately 500,000 storage units, including collections of banners; weapons; propagandistic and revolutionary-themed china; the numismatic collection; works of art; books in Russian and foreign languages, and in particular, from the library of the Shlisselburg prison fortress; satirical revolutionary magazines of 1905-07; posters; items; and photo- and documentary materials on the history of the revolutionary movement, the October Revolution of 1917, the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars, and the attempt to build socialism in the USSR; personal papers of such prominent state and party figures as V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, Ia. M. Sverdlov, L. D. Trotskii, M. S. Uritskii, A. D. Tsiurupa, etc. The museum has a computer database; materials may be searched for by inventory number; by number in the acquisition log; by the date and location of an event; by terms in the title and description of an event; by index; by date and location of an item’s creation; by author name; by the history of an item’s acquisition; etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- This fonds was formed mainly in the 1950s-90s from various materials of personal provenance, including memoirs that deal primarily with the revolutionary movement in Russia in the 1900s; the armed uprising in Petrograd in October 1917; the Civil, Soviet-Polish, Soviet-Finnish, and Second World Wars; and socialist construction in the USSR; and autobiographies, personal correspondence, and copies and originals of documents pertaining to the activities of the memoir-writers; newspaper and magazine clippings; etc.
- Access points: locations:
- Bohemia
- Buchenwald Death Camp
- Ekaterinoslav
- Finland
- Kovno
- Moscow
- New York
- Orsha
- Russia
- St Petersburg
- Sweden
- Zvenigorod Region
- Zvenigorodka
- Access points: persons/families:
- Aronson, N. L.
- Baron family
- Breslav family
- Breslav-Zhdanovich family
- Breslav, B A
- Brodskii, I. I.
- Burenin, N E
- Burenina, S I
- Chagall, Marc
- Fefer, Itsik
- Goberman, M L
- Gorky, M.
- Gurvich, I N
- Gutman family
- Khan’ko, A N
- Levi family
- Levi-Baron-Gutman
- Levis, M M
- Libinzon, Ia V
- Malevich
- Mehta, Zubin
- Mendel’son, Kh B
- Pen, Yehudah
- Perel’man, V N
- Shterenberg, D P
- Tatlin, V E
- Tiutiunnik, Iurko
- Tsadkin, Osip
- Tsvetkov, D
- Zhdanovich family
- Subject terms:
- Art
- Art--Artists
- Assimilation, acculturation
- Black Hundreds
- Bund movement
- Civil wars
- Correspondence
- Education
- Education--Cheders
- Genealogy
- Holocaust
- Holocaust--Concentration camps
- Jewish Question
- Jewish self-defence and resistance
- Jewish soldiers
- Literature
- Literature--Writers, poets, and playwrights
- Memoirs
- Music
- Pale of Settlement
- Pogroms
- Residency issues of Jews
- Synagogues
- Zionism
- Zionism--Zionist organisations and parties
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes a card file systematised by document type.
- Finding aids:
- A card file is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
