Metadata: The Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus
Collection
- Country:
- Belarus
- Holding institution:
- National Archives of the Republic of Belarus
- Holding institution (official language):
- Национальный архив Республики Беларусь
- Postal address:
- Nezavisimosti Ave. 116, Minsk, 220114
- Phone number:
- (017) 351-05-12
- Email:
- narb@narb.by
- Reference number:
- F. 7
- Title:
- The Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus
- Title (official language):
- СОВЕТ МИНИСТРОВ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БЕЛАРУСЬ
- Creator/accumulator:
- The Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus
- Date(s):
- 1920/1996
- Language:
- Russian
- Belarusian
- Extent:
- 22,393 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
[NB The fonds is continually supplemented with new materials and is currently undergoing technical processing. During work with the fonds, ops. 13-16, vol. 2 were in the process of being created. Information given is as of 3 March 2020.]
Materials in this fonds that pertain to Jewish history and culture are found mainly in ops. 1-3, 5, 7, 8, 16, and may be provisionally divided into the following thematic groups:
1. Statistical and demographic information on the status and population change of the Jewish population of Belorussia, including data from censuses of the BSSR (1920, 1926, 1937-39, 1959, 1979, 1989); correspondence with the BSSR People’s Commissariat of Labour on combatting unemployment in the republic, and information on unemployment among the Jewish population of towns (1924-25); resolutions of the Standing Commission of the USSR Council on Labour and Defense on movement of the Jewish population due to Labour, agricultural, and industrial activity, and on Jewish migrants who had come to the BSSR from abroad to take part in Jewish agricultural colonisation, and on persons among this category who subsequently opted to return to their previous countries of residence (1926-27); etc.
2. Materials on the provision of aid to Jewish victims of war, interventions, and pogroms, including reports on the work of the Belorussian Commission of the Jewish Public Committee to Aid Victims of the War, Pogroms and Natural Disasters (Evobshchestkom) (1922); minutes of meetings of the Belorussian Society to Assist Victims of the Intervention; reports of the Central Commission on Improving the Life of Children (1924); complaints regarding damages, and Jews’ applications for material assistance (1922-24).
3. Documents on the nationalisation and confiscation of the property of individuals, businesses and public organisations, including Jewish ones – among these materials is a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars directing that such nationalisations be carried out (1922); lists of nationalised enterprises, including Jewish-owned ones, in the Bobruisk, Borisov, Vitebsk, Klimovichi, Minsk , Mogilev, Mozyr’, Orsha, Polotsk and Slutsk areas of the BSSR (1926–27), with statements and complaints regarding the authorities’ decisions to nationalise these properties (1927–28).
4. Materials on Jewish organisations and societies registered in the BSSR, including the Minsk branch of the All-Russian Labour Organisation He-Ḥaluts and the Society to Aid Indigent Jews of Minsk, with appended lists of leaders and members of these organisations (1923-25).
5. Documents pertaining to the nationalities policy of ‘nativisation’ carried out by the Soviet government in the BSSR, in particular, information on the number of Jewish town and village councils (1923-27); minutes of meetings of the BSSR Council of People’s Commissars and commissions subordinate to it, and correspondence, reports, and survey documents on the operations of Jewish national town and village councils (1925-27); reports by executive committees of district councils on the material situation of the Jewish population and on the development of Yiddish culture (1926-28); and reports on election campaigns to Jewish national councils (1929).
6. Information on Soviet class policy as pertained to the Jewish population of the BSSR, including lists of Jewish lishentsy (citizens deprived of suffrage) (1927-30).
7. Materials on Jewish agricultural colonisation in the BSSR, including minutes of meetings of the BSSR Central Executive Committee’s national commission on this issue, with the appended charter of the Society for Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (OZET; 1925-27); minutes of meetings of the BSSR Council of People’s Commissars on agricultural tax privileges granted to Jews relocating to Crimea (1925-27); the BSSR Central Executive Committee’s statue on the Committee on Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (KOMZET) (1928); plans and conclusions on procedures for resettling Jews in Birobidzhan (1929-33); etc.
8. Documents on the development and status of Soviet Jewish culture in the BSSR, in particular, correspondence with the Central Council of Trade Unions on organising a publishing house of trade union literature in national-minority languages, including Yiddish, and on the construction of clubs for particular nationalities (1926); bulletins and reports of the Belorussian State Publishing House (Belgosizdat) on the publication of literature in Yiddish (1927-28); materials pertaining to the history of the Yiddish theatre in the BSSR: documents on organising the Yiddish Traveling Theatre (1925); a report of the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre (GOSET) on a tour of the BSSR (1926-27); reports on the work of the Belorussian State Yiddish Theatre (BelGOSET); lists, descriptions, and curricula vitae of actors (1929-41); etc.
9. Information on the evacuation, return, and repatriation of Jews from the territory of the BSSR in the period from 1941 to 1953, including alphabetical lists of persons, including Jews, evacuated to the interior of the USSR in 1941; logs of requests for evacuee searches (1942); data on the economic damages caused by the Nazi occupiers and their accomplices to institutions, organisations, and individuals (1944-47); applications by Jewish returnees from evacuation requesting material aid, job placement, and housing (1944); information on the repatriation of Jewish citizens of Poland to that country – bulletins, memoranda, reports, and correspondence on the course of the repatriation effort (1946-53); certification of persons repatriated abroad, and a list of foreign nationals, including Jews, who had been interned in the concentration camp at Insterburg (now Cherniakhovsk, Russian Federation) (1946-47).
10. Resolutions, documents, information, memoranda, correspondence, and other materials of the State Committee on Religious and Nationality Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, including data on Jewish religious organisations and associations (1997-99), in particular, information on a program to promote tourist visits to Jewish historical and cultural landmarks in Belarus (1999); documents on the return of synagogues and houses of worship to Jewish communities at the request of the Association of Jewish Religious Communities of the Republic of Belarus (1998-99); data on the effort to suppress acts of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries (1999); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) of the Belorussian SSR, the republic’s supreme executive and administrative body, was established on 18 December 1920 pursuant to amendments to the Constitution of the BSSR of 1919 that were adopted by the 2nd Congress of Councils of Belorussia in December 1920. Duties of the chair of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the BSSR, as well as of the people’s commissar of foreign affairs, were initially carried out by a single person; membership of the Council of People’s Commissars consisted of the heads of the people’s commissariats of the BSSR plus the chairs of the Council on the People’s Economy and the Extraordinary Commission (Cheka). The BSSR Council of People’s Commissars had several standing commissions subordinate to it: the Economic Council, the Legislative Proposals Commission (until 1927), and the State Planning Commission. The BSSR Council of People’s Commissars exercised general oversight of the republic via the people’s commissariats and executive committees of councils; it promulgated directives and orders pertaining to any issues that did not fall exclusively under the competence of the Congress of Councils or the Central Executive Committee of the BSSR and its presidium; its directives had to do with state and local budgets, taxes, the administrative-territorial division of the republic, and the preservation of revolutionary order.
Pursuant to the USSR Law of 15 March 1946 and a decree (26 March 1946) of the presidium of the BSSR Supreme Council, the BSSR Council of People’s Commissars was reorganised as the BSSR Council of Ministers, which, according to the Constitution of the BSSR, remained the supreme executive and administrative body of state power in the republic. It coordinated and directed the operations of republic-level ministries of the BSSR, its state committees, and other institutions subordinate to it; drafted the economic plans of the BSSR and submitted them for the approval of the BSSR Supreme Council; and took measures to ensure order, protect the interests of the state and the rights of citizens, etc.
Upon the breakup of the Soviet Union and the declaration of the Republic of Belarus on 26 December 1991, the BSSR Council of Ministers was renamed the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus; its previous administrative functions remained.
- Subject terms:
- Agriculture
- Aid and relief
- Aid and relief--Philanthropy and charity
- Antisemitism
- Birobidzhan
- Cemeteries
- Census
- Children
- Correspondence
- Genealogy
- Holocaust
- Holocaust--Concentration camps
- Jewish colonies
- Jewish councils
- Jewish languages
- Jewish languages--Yiddish
- Jewish nativisation
- Jewish political activity
- Labour unions
- Literature
- Migration
- Plunder
- Pogroms
- Publishing
- Resettlement of Jews
- Statistics
- Synagogues
- Taxation
- Theatre
- World War II
- Zionism
- Zionism--Zionist organisations and parties
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises sixteen inventories (op. 5, in 3 vols.; op. 12 and 16, in 2 vols.) arranged chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
