Metadata: Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia
Collection
- Country:
- Belarus
- Holding institution:
- National Archives of the Republic of Belarus
- Holding institution (official language):
- Национальный архив Республики Беларусь
- Postal address:
- 220114, Nezavisimosti Ave. 116, Minsk, Belarus
- Phone number:
- +375 (17) 351-05-12
- Web address:
- https://narb.by/be
- Email:
- narb@narb.by
- Reference number:
- F. 4-P
- Title:
- Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia
- Title (official language):
- ЦЕНТРАЛЬНЫЙ КОМИТЕТ КОММУНИСТИЧЕСКОЙ ПАРТИИ БЕЛОРУССИИ
- Creator/accumulator:
- Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia
- Date(s):
- 1918/1991
- Language:
- Russian
- Belarusian
- Yiddish
- Polish
- Lithuanian
- German
- Extent:
- 102,525 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
The fond contains a significant quantity of documents that pertain to Jewish history and culture; these are found mainly in ops. 1–10 [op. 1 has been published as: Iu. I. Aneichik, Zh. A. Likhodievskaia, and G. I. Plavskaia, Tsentral’nyi komitet Kommunisticheskoi partii (bol’shevikov) Belorussii, 1918-1941 gg. Fond 4-P. Opis’ 1 / Minsk: Natsional’nyi arkhiv Respubliki Belarus’, 2007], 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, and 33a, and may be provisionally divided into the following thematic groups:
1) Statistical and demographic materials covering various aspects of the socioeconomic situation of the Jewish population of Belorussia over a broad historical period, from the late 19th to late 20th centuries, including: statistical and demographic information on the Jewish population of the region based on the censuses of 1897, 1926, 1939, 1959, and 1989; lists of Jewish-owned enterprises, in particular, businesses that were nationalized by the Soviet government: factories, plants, workshops, shops, retail stores, printing presses, and mills; information on these enterprises’ products, the number of workers employed, and wages; data on municipalized apartment buildings and requisitioned Jewish property, and on emergency taxes and indemnities imposed on the Jewish population; etc. (1918-21); materials on Jewish industrial activity in the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP); bylaws, reports, minutes of board meetings, and lists of members of Jewish craft cooperatives, and data on the status and development of Jewish private commercial activity (1921-24); reports by the Main Bureau of Jewish Sections of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and reports by Jewish bureaus and sections, on the economic situation of the Jewish population in the 1920s; statistics on unemployment among Jews (1921-23); questionnaire forms and inspection certificates on the status and material situation of the population of Jewish towns, and resolutions of the Central Bureau and Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia on measures to improve their economic situation (1921-24); information on assistance received from the American Relief Organization (ARA), the Joint Distribution Committee, the Agro-Joint, and Jewish fraternal organizations in the US, and money transfers and parcels received from relatives in the US (1922-24); reports of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture of the Belorussian SSR, the BSSR Committee on Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (BelKOMZET), the BSSR Society for Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (BelOZET), and correspondence and information on the Jewish agricultural colonization project in the BSSR, the allocation of land to Jews, and the progress of the campaign to resettle Jews in Crimea and Birobidzhan; lists of Jewish agricultural colonies and cooperatives, and reports and inspection documents on the operation thereof; documents of All-Belorussian Congresses of Jewish Peasant Men and Women (1924-36); information on “dekulakization” in Jewish towns during collectivization (1928-32); documents on the migration of the Jewish population (1920s-30s); a printed copy of an essay in Belarusian by M. M. Sragovich, a staff member of the Jewish department of the Institute of Belorussian Culture (Inbelkul’t) titled “The Jewish Population of the Gorki District (Past and Present. A Brief Historical Survey of Socioeconomic and Everyday Factors)” – the essay is based in part on materials from the Gorki pinkas (1925); etc.
2) Documentary information on pogroms against Jews during the Civil and Soviet-Polish Wars, including statements and telegrams from rabbis, representatives of Jewish communities, and plenipotentiaries of Jewish agricultural colonies; reports of the Belorussian commission of the Jewish Public Committee to Aid Victims of the War and Pogroms (Evobshchestkom) and county committees of the Evobshchestkom; testimonial statements by victims and witnesses; reports by commanders of the special-assignment units (ChON) organized by factory party cells, and reports by personnel of the Main Political Directorate (GPU) and police; information, documents, and reference materials of the Nationalities Commission of the Central Executive Committee of the BSSR; materials of the Main Bureau of Jewish Sections of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and of the Jewish bureaus and sections of the Minsk provincial and county committees of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and investigative files on pogroms against Jews perpetrated by Polish military forces and units of the People’s Volunteer Army (NDA) of General S. N. Bulak-Balakhovich in the Mozyr’ area (including a copy of Bulak-Balakhovich’s reply, dated 9 August 1921, to a statement by Boris Savinkov on pogroms); etc. (1918-22).
There is also a file pertaining to the organizing of a commemorative event to mark the 25th anniversary of the Gomel’ pogrom (29 August – 1 September 1903), which contains detailed information about this pogrom (1928); etc.
3) Information on the activities of the following Jewish political parties, organizations, and unions:
3.1) The Bund: resolutions of the X, XI, and XII conferences of the Bund (1917, 1919, 1920); lists of Bund members mobilized to the front during the Civil War (1918-19); reports and informational notes on operations of local Bund organizations; resolutions, rulings, correspondence, statements of protest, and other materials regarding the Bund’s merger with the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), including the statute ratifying this merger (1921); materials of a commission tasked with merging the Slutsk organization of the Bund with the Slutsk County Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, including a list of members of the Slutsk organization of the Bund (1920-21); lists of members of local Bund organizations (1921); appeals, proclamations, and statements to the general public on various occasions (1920s); complaints filed by Bund party entities regarding discrimination and harassment on the part of the Soviet authorities (1926-28); minutes, resolutions, and information on the expulsion of former Bund members from the Russian Communist Party for their alleged manifestation of “residual Bundist traditions” (1926-37); a secret letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia to party organizations on the struggle against “Bundist traditions” (1926); etc.
3.2) The Belorussian Jewish Social-Democratic Workers’ Party Po’ale Tsiyon: Soviet authorities’ rejections of attempts to register local branches of this party; proclamations of the party’s central committee; information on the operations of its local committees, and reports by these committee (1918-24); resolutions of the III, IV, V, and VI All-Russian Congresses of the Jewish Social-Democratic Workers’ Party Po’ale Tsiyon (1917, 1919, 1920, 1922); lists of party members subjected to political repression (1926-28); etc.
3.3) The Jewish Communist Party of Belorussia Po’ale Tsiyon: the decree of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party of Belorussia establishing the Jewish Communist Party of Belorussia Po’ale Tsiyon, and a telegram from this Central Bureau, signed by V. G. Knorin, on the establishment of the Jewish Communist Party (1919); the platform and charter of the Jewish Communist Party of Belorussia Po’ale Tsiyon (1919-20); materials of the party’s 1st conference (1919); lists of its local organizations and members thereof, and information on their activities (1919-27); correspondence, including a letter from a group of Jewish communists of Vitebsk to the editorial office of the newspaper Zaria zapada (Dawn of the West) regarding these persons’ resignation from the Jewish Communist Party Po’ale Tsiyon, and requesting that their statement on this withdrawal be published in the newspaper (1928); etc.
3.4) The Zionist-Socialist Party: the party’s platform (1917); resolutions and decrees of the All-Union Conference of the Zionist-Socialist Party of the USSR (1925); resolutions, circulars, instructions, newsletters, letters, surveys, and reports of the BSSR GPU on the activities of the Zionist-Socialist Party and its influence in the Jewish community (1924-26); information on the party’s attitude toward Jewish sections and the authorities; lists of arrested party members, and correspondence of party members intercepted by postal-political censors (1924); Zionist-Socialist Party pamphlets: A Program for the Study of Zionism (1923) and Fundamentals of Our Ideology (a publication of the Central Committee of the Zionist-Socialist federation “Dror” in the USSR; 1925), a binder of issues of the underground journal Sionistsko-sotsialisticheskaia mysl’ (Zionist-Socialist Thought), the press organ of the Zionist-Socialist Party (1920s); and reports and articles on the nationalities policy of the Soviet state and the war on Zionism (1925-27).
3.5) Jewish youth associations, including the Jewish Socialist Youth Union, the Zionist-Socialist Youth Union, the Zionist Student Organization He-Ḥaver (Hebrew: “Comrade”), the Youth Branch of the Trade Union Federation Histadrut (Hebrew: “Federation”), the United Zionist Youth Organization, the Zionist-Socialist Union Yugnt Farband, the Belorussian branch of Tseirey Tsiyon (Hebrew: “Youth of Zion”), the All-Russian Labor Organization He-Ḥaluts (Hebrew: “Trailblazer,” “Pioneer”), the Jewish Zionist youth organizations Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir (Hebrew: “Young Guard”) and Shomrim (Hebrew: “Guardians”): investigative materials and reports of the BSSR GPU on the activities of these youth organizations in the Belorussian SSR in connection with the Soviet government’s liquidation of them and their subsequent underground activities (1920s-40s); proclamations of the Minsk committee of the United Zionist Youth Organization titled “To Jewish Youth” and “To the Entire Jewish Population of Minsk”; the “main provisions of the United Zionist Youth Organization adopted at a joint meeting of the central committee of the Zionist youth organization He-Ḥaver and the youth branch of Histadrut (1924); a collection titled “On the Fifth Anniversary of Histadrut” (1925); a proclamation titled “Tasks of Zionist Youth,” and appeals by the central committee of the United Zionist Youth Organization and the central committee of He-Ḥaver (1926); documents of the IX All-Russian Conference of He-Ḥaver, including a statement, resolutions, reports, an appeal, and a platform (1924); the bulletin of the Union of Jewish Socialist Youth Nashi vedomosti (Our Gazette) (1920s); platform provisions and reports on the publication of a Tseirey Tsiyon proclamation in Minsk (1924); circulars of the Main HQ of the Northwestern Area of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir in the USSR, and a newsletter of this HQ, synopses of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir reports on the “evolution of the nation,” and materials from Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir Main HQ newspapers (1925-26); documents on the Zionist movement seized from A. I. Borenshtein, a courier of the Vilna/Vilnius organization of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir (1940); reports on the activities of groups of the All-Russian Labor Organization He-Ḥaluts and Shomrim organization in Belorussia, and small-circulation publications of these organizations (1925-26); reports and articles of various structures of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia on Soviet nationalities policy and the war on Zionism (1925-27).
3.6) Jewish public charitable and educational organizations, including the Agro-Joint, the Joint Distribution Committee, the fraternal organization of American-Jewish immigrants from Minsk (Landsmanshaft), the Kultur-lige, the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population (OZE), the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia (OPE), the Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia (ORT), and the Union of Jewish Toiling Masses (Setmass): charters and minutes of sessions of these organizations’ governing bodies; reports and operational plans of their Belorussian branches; reports of the BSSR GPU, information from Jewish bureaus and sections, and correspondence and materials on the suppression and closure of these organizations’ Belorussian branches (1921-38).
4) Materials on Soviet nationalities policy vis-à-vis Jews, in particular, on the implementation of the policy of “nativization” (korenizatsiia) in the BSSR; declarations, resolutions, and rulings of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, the Council of People’s Commissars, and the presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the BSSR on conducting outreach and political-educational work among the Jewish population of Belorussia and improving the economic situation of Jewish towns (1924-30); minutes of meetings and sessions, operational plans, bulletins, reports, memoranda, and correspondence of the Main Bureau of Jewish sections of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party of Belorussia and of county, area, and district Jewish sections and bureaus, and in particular of their departments and special commissions on surveying and “improving the life of Jewish towns” (1925-28); circulars, instructions, bulletins, abstracts, and information on preparations for elections to Jewish national councils, as well as on Jewish involvement in elections to local BSSR councils; reports and bulletins on the work of councils, and documentation on surveys of the activities of Jewish village and town councils (1924-29); lists, descriptions, reports, bulletins, and information on the incidence of Jews among lishentsy (i.e., citizens deprived of suffrage), in particular, a memorandum by A. Beilin, secretary of the Main Bureau of Jewish Sections of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, that includes information on Jewish lishentsy in towns of the BSSR; etc. (1921-36); reports on the operations of Jewish national court chambers in the cities of Bobruisk, Gomel’, Vitebsk, Mozyr’, Minsk, and Mogilev (1926-34); etc.
5) Documents on the conduct of antireligious campaigns to combat Judaism and Jewish religious education in the BSSR; these materials include summaries and memoranda by plenipotentiaries of the Council on Religious Cults on the number of synagogues, Jewish houses of worship, and Jewish religious societies in cities and districts of the BSSR from 1917 to 1939; reports, rulings, and resolutions of conferences of “Jewish workers” on the war on clericalism (1925-27); circulars, newsletters, and abstracts of reports of the nationalities subdivision of the Central Council of the League of Militant Atheists of the USSR on conducting antireligious propaganda among ethnic minorities and on a curriculum for Jewish antireligious groups (1926-28); materials on the registration of Jewish religious societies, including correspondence on this issue with the BSSR Central Executive Committee and NKVD and with the latter agency’s commission on the separation of church and state – appended are documents requested by these agencies, including registration applications and charters of the Jewish religious community of the city of Mozyr’, the Va’ad Ha-dati Union of Congregants of Synagogues and Houses of Worship, and the Jewish burial society of the city of Bobruisk (1925-27); statements and telegrams containing protests by rabbis, representatives of religious communities, and groups of believers against mass closures of synagogues and Jewish community structures, as well as reports by the BSSR GPU and police on rallies and demonstrations in several population centers of the Bobruisk, Mozyr’, Polotsk, and other areas to protest such closures of synagogues and other Jewish entities, which often continued to operate in underground form (1923-36); in particular, a report on efforts of the Igumen County Committee and its Jewish section to resolve local Jewish congregants’ objections to a decision adopted by an Uzda volost’ non-party conference that the building of the Uzda synagogue be taken over and used for cultural and educational purposes (1923); files on the closure of cheders, Talmud-Torahs, yeshivas, and Jewish private schools, including a decree of the Igumen Revolutionary Committee of 15 July 1920 on this subject; order no. 53 (29 April 1922) of the Executive Committee of the Slutsk County Council, by which all Jewish private schools were ordered closed; a resolution (15 May 1922) of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party of Belorussia on eliminating Jewish religious education in the BSSR; information on the activities of underground cheders and melameds (1922-27); a memorandum to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia from Bureau of Jewish Sections Secretary A. Beilin reporting the number of underground yeshivas in the BSSR for 1927; lists of children “interested in transferring from Jewish private schools (cheders) to Soviet Jewish schools” (1922); etc.
6) Information on the establishment of a network of Soviet Jewish educational and academic institutions in the BSSR, including surveys conducted by departments of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia under the rubric of “The Status of Jewish Cultural and Educational Institutions” (1924); minutes, reports, bulletins, and information provided by the Main Bureau of Jewish Sections of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia on the state of cultural and educational outreach to the Jewish population, by area of the BSSR (1925-26); memoranda and reports of the Central Bureau of Jewish Sections of the People’s Commissariat of Education; reports of Jewish cultural inspectors; materials of ethno-national commissions and Jewish sections pertaining to the education of Jews in the republic (1925-30); correspondence with the central committee of the BSSR Komsomol, the BSSR People’s Commissariat of Education, county committees of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and other entities on the placement of students in Jewish Soviet party schools (1920-21); reports of the Jewish party night school run by the Main Bureau of Jewish Sections of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party of Belorussia (1923); reports, operational plans, questionnaire forms, and lists of graduates of the Central Jewish Party School in Minsk (1921-30); documents on the operations of Jewish “mobile schools” (shkoli-peredvizhki) in the Borisov, Krupki, Lepel’, and Pleshchenitsy districts (1926-27); lists of Jewish schools and technicums, including descriptions of their premises and equipment, and information on their textbooks, teaching staff, and student enrollments (1920s-30s), including information on the status of the Jewish Agricultural College in Kurasovshchina (1931-33); reports on the progress of efforts to eliminate illiteracy among Jews (1920s); information on children’s shelters, kindergartens, and playgrounds, and on the material situation experienced by educators, with performance reviews of teachers and minutes from teachers’ meetings, congresses, and conferences (1926-27); directives prohibiting the study of Hebrew, or the conduct of instruction in Hebrew (1920); statistical information on Jewish departments in institutions of higher education in the BSSR, and lists of Jewish university professors (1927-31); an informational bulletin on “class-enemy attitudes on the part of particular teachers, and instances of the manifestation of antisemitism and Jewish chauvinism in institutions of higher education in the BSSR” (1933); memoranda, reports, and other information on the activities of the Jewish sector of the BSSR Academy of Sciences (1932); materials on the liquidation of the Yiddish-language educational system and the gradual Belorussianization of former Jewish-ethnonational educational institutions (1931-40); resolutions of the BSSR Council of People’s Commissars: “On reorganizing Jewish schools in Belorussia as Belorussian schools”; “On reorganizing Jewish kindergartens and separate Jewish groups in Belorussian kindergartens as Belorussian ones”; decrees stipulating the Belorussianization of Jewish-ethnonational schools, teachers’ colleges, and the Jewish department of the Minsk Pedagogical Institute; etc. (1938).
7) Documents on efforts to foster Soviet Jewish culture in the BSSR, in particular, information on the Jewish writers’ groups Der Yunger Arbeter (Yiddish: “Young Worker”), Yungvald (Yiddish: “Young Forest”), and Yunge Gvardie (Yiddish: “Young Guard ”), and on a literary group at the Jewish Pedagogical College in Gomel’ and the Jewish sections of the All-Belorussian Association of Poets and Writers and the BSSR Union of Writers (1922-36); a statement by the Jewish Bureau to the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia requesting that the question of conferring a pension and the title “Honored Writer” on the Jewish writer Samuil Marshak be taken up (1927); plans and reports of the BSSR State Publishing House regarding the publication of Yiddish-language fiction and children’s literature; lists of books by Jewish authors whose potential publication was deemed “inopportune”; decrees, memoranda, and minutes of meetings of Jewish sections on “Trotskyist outbursts by Jewish writers”; correspondence on the organizing and conduct of evening events featuring new Jewish literature in Yiddish (1920-34); materials on the celebration of jubilee events dedicated to Sholom Aleichem and Mendele Moykher-Sforim (1939, 1935); data from reports of the BSSR State Publishing House on the publication of Yiddish-language newspapers, magazines, and literary works, and information on subscriptions to and circulations of the newspapers Der veker, Der shtern, Der emes, Yunger arbeter, Yunger Pioner, Yunger Leninets, Bialistoker Shtern, etc. (1921-40); surveys of the contents of Yiddish-language radio news programs (1931); information on specialized Jewish libraries in Bobruisk, Vitebsk, Minsk, and Mogilev (1929), and on Jewish departments organized within public libraries in area centers (1938-40); materials on Jewish writers subjected to political repression, including a decree of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party of Belorussia (24 March 1921) barring a group of Jewish writers from emigrating; the manuscript of an article by G. Rozin titled “Current Issues in Soviet Jewish Literature in the BSSR,” published in the newspaper Oktiabr’ (1939); a memorandum (February 1939) from L. F. Tsanava, head of the BSSR People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, to Lavrentii Beria, head of the USSR People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, on placing Jewish writers in the BSSR under surveillance (1939); minutes of meetings of the party organization of the BSSR Union of Writers, resolutions of the bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, correspondence, minutes of interrogations, and other documents pertaining to the political repression of the Jewish writers, poets, playwrights, and literary critics Zelig Axelrod, Hersh Kamenetski, E. Sh. Kagan, Khayim Maltinski, Ayzik Platner, Moyshe Kulbak, Khatskl Dunets, L. Katsovich, G. Shvedik, M. Mendel, M. Erik, and others (1937-40); documents on the history of Yiddish theater in the BSSR, including information on the Jewish section of the Belorussian State Theater Studio in Moscow (1920s); memoranda on the results of a survey of the operations of the Belorussian State Yiddish Traveling Theater (1933); operational reports and minutes and transcripts of meetings of the party organization of the Belorussian State Yiddish Theater (BelGOSET); lists, questionnaire forms, and descriptions of Jewish actors; resolutions regarding the celebration of the 5th and 15th anniversaries of BelGOSET in 1932 and 1941; correspondence about the Jewish troupe of the Russian Drama Theater in Minsk; materials pertaining to BSSR tours by Jewish theater troupes from other union republics (1929-40); etc.
8) Materials on the situation of the Jewish population during the Second World War and the Holocaust in Belorussia and Poland, including Jewish refugees’ testimony on Nazi atrocities in Polish cities and towns: Lodz, Kalisz, Warsaw, Ostrów, Będzin, Szczekoczichin, Sosnowica, Pińczów, etc.; reports of government and regional commissions, lists, applications, correspondence, and information on the intake and accommodation of refugees from Poland (1939-41); a memorandum from P. K. Ponomarenko, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, to Stalin, titled “On the Situation in the Occupied Regions of Belorussia” (1941); special communiques and memoranda by heads of operational groups of the BSSR NKVD; reports by personnel having returned from reconnaissance missions in the German rear; information and reconnaissance notes by personnel of the Belorussian HQ of the partisan movement; letters from Jewish partisans and underground personnel; memoranda and informational notes by staff members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia on “atrocities of the German occupiers”; bulletins, summaries, and reports by commanders of partisan brigades and squadrons and by leaders of underground committees, organizations, and groups containing information on the mass extermination of the Jewish population in Antopol’, Bobruisk, Berezino, Brest, Baranovichi, Bialystok, Begoml’, Buda-Koshelevo, Borisov, Bogushevsk, Vishnevo, Volozhin, Vileika, Vitebsk, Gomel’, Gorodok, Disna, Dolginovo, El’sk, Zhabinka, Zembino, Korma, Krasnopol’e, Kalinkovichi, Krupki, Krucha, Koidanovo, Kartuz-Bereza, Kremenchug, Lel’chitsy, Lepel’, Logoisk, Logishin, Luban’, Luninets, Lyskovo, Minsk, Mozyr’, Mogilev, Mar’ina Gorka, Orsha, Ozarichi, Pleschenitsy, Poltava, Polotsk, Pruzhany, Petrikov, Pukhovichi, Pinsk, Pogost, Ruzhany, Rossony, Smolensk, Smolevichi, Surazh, Senno, Starobin, Tolochino, Trostenets, Chechersk, Chashniki, Shumiachi, Khoiniki, Ianovichi, and other locations (1941-44); an informational note by I. S. Kravchenko, a staff member of the organizational and instructional department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia (and subsequently a prominent historian) titled “Minsk under the Boot-Heel of the German Invaders” (1944); reports and summaries by Jewish members of the underground and partisan movement about their struggle against Nazism, including notes by Minsk underground members Kh. M. Pruslina and A. A. Ezubchik, a report by E. T. Kosovoi, an essay by G. Smoliar titled “The Minsk Underground (the Underground Organization of the Communist Party of Belorussia in the Minsk ghetto, July 1941 – August 1942),” etc.; documents of the BSSR Commission to Assist the Work of the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) to Investigate and Ascertain the Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders, including investigative materials, minutes of witness interrogations, questionnaire forms, lists of Nazi war criminals, transcripts of testimony by former prisoners of Jewish ghettos and members of the underground; etc. (1943-45); transcripts of trials of war criminals, in particular, a trial that took place 15-29 January 1946 in Minsk at which eighteen members of the German Army and police were tried by a military tribunal (1946-49); etc.
9) Information on manifestations of antisemitism in the BSSR, in particular, minutes of meetings of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and of the secretariat and plenary sessions of the Central Committee, of provincial, county, area, and district committees of the party, and of Jewish bureaus and sections, and victim statements and complaints and police and People’s Commissariat of Justice reports on manifestations of antisemitism at industrial enterprises and institutions in several cities of the BSSR; and a 1929 directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia titled “On the War on Antisemitism” (1927-33); documents reflecting state antisemitism in the BSSR from the 1940s-70s, including files pertaining to efforts to root out an “anti-Soviet group of Jewish nationalists” within the BSSR Pharmacy Administration system, a “group of bourgeois-Jewish nationalists” in the Belkoopsoiuz (the Belorussian republic-level union of consumer cooperatives), a group of “Jewish bourgeois nationalists” in Borisov; etc. (1947-52); materials on the organizing of “workers’” meetings and demonstrations in connection with the “Doctors’ Plot” (1953); a report (19 October 1971) of the propaganda and agitation department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia to Central Committee Secretary A. N. Aksenov, and a resolution of the Central Committee’s bureau, on “measures to counteract Zionist propaganda” (1970s); materials on the authorities’ smashing of an underground Zionist Jewish youth group in Minsk that had connections with Zionist groups in Moscow, Leningrad, Riga, Kiev, Vilnius, and Kishinev (Chișinău) (1971); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
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Originally, there was a single Bolshevik organization of Belorussia and the Western Front: the Northwestern Regional Organization of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (Bolsheviks), established in September 1917. The following year, on 30 December 1918, at the VI Northwestern Regional Conference of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in Smolensk, the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belorussia was organized as an integral part of the Russian Communist Party. The conference recognized the need for the creation of the Belorussian SSR, and also declared itself to be the party’s first congress; and it elected the Central Bureau of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belorussia. In connection with the formation of the Lithuanian-Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (the LitBel SSR), the Communist Party of Belorussia was in March 1919 merged with the Communist Party of Lithuania to form the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Lithuania and Belorussia. At the newly merged party’s unification congress, the party central committee was elected, which included the presidium, political bureau, organizing bureau, and underground operations bureau. In September 1920, in connection with the dissolution of the Lithuanian-Belorussian SSR, the Communist Party thereof was divided into the Communist Party of Lithuania and the Communist Party of Belorussia. From February to May 1924, the governing body of the Communist Party of Belorussia was the Provisional Belorussian Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, established in connection with the annexation of the eastern Belorussian provinces to the Belorussian SSR. In May 1924, the VIII Congress of the Communist Party of Belorussia elected the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia. Supreme authority in the Belorussian republic-level party organization was held by its congresses, and between sessions thereof, by plenary sessions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia. This committee was governed by the platform and charter of the All-Union Communist Party and by resolutions of congresses of the All-Union Communist Party and the Communist Party of Belorussia and of plenary sessions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia had oversight of all operations of the republic-level party organization; saw to the implementation of directives of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party; performed the selection and placement of senior personnel; and for all intents and purposes directed the operations of all state entities and public organizations. Day-to-day operations of the Central Committee were carried out through its apparatus, which consisted of departments, sub-departments, sectors, groups, commissions, national bureaus, etc.
In January 1919, the Jewish Section (Evsektsiia) of the Central Bureau of the Communist Party of Belorussia began operations. On 8 August 1920, the Central Committee of the LitBel Communist Party issued a circular establishing the Main Bureau of Jewish Communist Sections (the Main Bureau of Evsektsii), tasked with overseeing operations of the Jewish sections of local party organizations. The Main Bureau of Jewish Sections initially included Ia. A. Levin and A. G. Beilin; its staff increased in subsequent years, but until the late 1920s never exceeded ten persons. In August 1920, the provincial committees of the Communist Party of Belorussia and the Belorussian Komsomol formed bureaus of Jewish sections, as did all county-level organizations of the party. In the course of the administrative-territorial reform of 1924, Jewish bureaus and sections, and plenipotentiaries for Jewish outreach, were organized by ten area and one hundred district committees of the Communist Party of Belorussia. In 1924, upon the liquidation of the party’s central bureau, the official title of the Main Bureau of Jewish Sections became the Main Bureau of Jewish Sections of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and from 1926 on, the Bureau of Jewish Sections of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia. The Bureau of Jewish Sections was abolished in January 1930, whereupon outreach to Jews (along with other ethnic minorities) was reassigned to the organizational-instructional department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia.
In 1952, the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belorussia became known simply as the Communist Party of Belorussia. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia ceased operations pursuant to the ruling of the Supreme Council of the BSSR (25 August 1991) “On the temporary cessation of the activities of the Communist Party of Belorussia and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the territory of the Belorussian SSR.”
- Access points: locations:
- Antopol’
- Będzin
- Begoml’
- Belorussiya
- Berezino
- Bialystok
- Bobruisk
- Bogushevsk
- Borisov
- Brest
- Buda-Koshelevo
- Chashniki
- Chechersk
- Disna
- Dolginovo
- El’sk
- Gomel’
- Gorki
- Gorodok
- Ianovichi
- Igumen
- Kalinkovichi
- Kalisz
- Kartuz-Bereza
- Khoiniki
- Koidanovo
- Korma
- Kremenchug
- Krucha
- Krupki
- Kurasovshchina
- Lel’chitsy
- Lepel’
- Lodz
- Logishin
- Logoisk
- Luban’
- Luninets
- Lyskovo
- Mar’ina Gorka
- Minsk
- Mogilev
- Mozyr’
- Orsha
- Ostrow
- Petrikov
- Pińczów
- Pinsk
- Pleshchenitsy
- Pogost
- Polotsk
- Poltava
- Pruzhany
- Rossony
- Ruzhany
- Senno
- Shumiachi
- Slutsk
- Smolensk
- Smolevichi
- Sosnowica
- Starobin
- Surazh
- Tolochino
- Trostenets
- USA
- Vileika
- Vitebsk
- Volozhin
- Warsaw
- Zembin
- Zhabinka
- Access points: persons/families:
- Mendele Moykher-Sforim
- Sholem Aleichem
- Subject terms:
- Agriculture
- Aid and relief
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
- Anti-religious activity (Soviet Union)
- Antisemitism
- Birobidzhan
- Bund movement
- Censorship
- Census
- Communism
- Communism--Communist parties and organisations
- Correspondence
- Dekulakisation
- Doctors' Plot
- Education
- Education--Schools and universities
- Education--Students
- Education--Teachers and professors
- Financial records
- Holocaust
- Jewish colonies
- Jewish languages
- Jewish languages--Hebrew
- Jewish languages--Yiddish
- Jewish nativisation
- Jewish political activity
- Jewish press
- Jewish soldiers
- Libraries
- Literature
- Literature--Novels, poetry, and plays
- Literature--Writers, poets, and playwrights
- Mass murder
- Migration
- ORT (Organisation for Rehabilitation through training)
- Personal records
- Plunder
- Pogroms
- Post-WWII trials
- Printing
- Professions
- Professions--Crafts
- Rabbis
- Refugees
- Resettlement of Jews
- Statistics
- Synagogues
- Taxation
- Testimony
- Theatre
- Trade and commerce
- Yiddish periodicals
- Zionism
- Zionism--Anti-Zionism
- System of arrangement:
- The fond includes 160 inventories, systematized mainly according to the chronological-structural principle. The fond also has subject indexes: “A listing of issues taken up at sessions of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia” and “A listing of issues taken up at sessions of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia” for the entire period of the existence of the Communist Party of Belorussia.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary