Metadata: Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia (ORT)
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- The Centre “Petersburg Judaica”
- Holding institution (official language):
- Центр «Петербургская иудаика»
- Postal address:
- 191187, St. Petersburg, Gagarinskaia ul., d. 6, k. 1, lit. А; European University at St. Petersburg
- Phone number:
- (812) 386-7637
- Email:
- judaica@eu.spb.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 7
- Title:
- Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia (ORT)
- Title (official language):
- Общество ремесленного и земледельческого труда среди евреев России
- Creator/accumulator:
- Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia (ORT)
- Date(s):
- 1921/1956
- Language:
- Russian
- English
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 32 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
The material in this fonds, which consists of copies and originals of documents of the Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia (ORT), may be provisionally divided into six thematic groups:
1) Minutes of sessions of various ORT governing bodies, including the presidium and main committee of the ORT of Ukraine (1921-22), the bureaus of the ORT vocational-technical commission (1923) and the joint statistics-economics commission (1928) of the All-Russian ORT, minutes of sessions of the ORT education centre (1921-28, 1936) and the presidium and central council of the ORT Union, with editing marks by one of its leaders, A. S. Singalovskii (1928), as well as of the Moscow office of the ORT Union in the USSR (1930s); etc.
2) Copies of agreements between the Committee on Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (KOMZET) and the central board of the ORT Union, including a contract of 24 May 1928, approved at a meeting of the KOMZET central committee; etc.
3) Budget estimates, plans, and reports on operations of the ORT Union in the USSR, in particular, a summary report on expenditures by the central board of the ORT Union under a contract with the KOMZET for the land settlement of Jews in the Odessa district and the Belorussian SSR for the 1926-27 operational year (1927), an explanatory note to the estimate of expenses of the ORT Union’s Moscow office (1928); etc.
4) Correspondence of Ia. S. Tsegel’nitskii, the plenipotentiary of the central board of the ORT Union in the USSR, with various Soviet and foreign organisations (1935).
5) Memoiristic materials, including copies of G. Ia. Aronson’s “Notes of the ORT Secretary” (undated) and reminiscences by E. A. Bershtein titled “The ORT in Odessa” (undated).
6) Pamphlets and clippings from newspapers and magazines, including The Jewish Reconstruction Fund Limited (1924), Virtshaft un lebn [Economy and Life] (1930), and The ORT Economic Bulletin (1941); copies of handwritten selections of documents issued by N. N. Sharf, director of the World ORT’s historical archive in Geneva (1950s); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia (ORT) (after 1921, the Union of Societies for the Promotion of Handicraft and Agricultural Work among Jews; now the World ORT) was founded in St. Petersburg in April 1880 on the initiative of the industrialist, banker and railway magnate S. S. Poliakov. It was N. Bakst, professor of physiology of St. Petersburg University, who conceived of the idea of establishing the ORT. Initially, the ORT’s Temporary Committee on Education operated on the basis of the “Rules...” adopted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in September 1880. Aside from its chair, S. S. Poliakov, committee members included the prominent financiers, industrialists and Jewish public figures Baron G. Gintsburg, Ia. Gal’perin, L. Rozental’, M. Fridliand, A. Zak and Rabbi A. Drabkin. In 1906, the Temporary Committee was reorganised as a society with an approved charter. By 1913, the ORT had become one of the most respected Jewish philanthropic organisations in Russia, and had branches in Moscow, Gomel’, Kovno, Ekaterinoslav, Odessa, Samara, Kherson, Kiev, Ekaterinburg, Riga, Minsk, Belostok, Lida, Dvinsk, Berdichev, Krivoi Rog and Uman’. It operated vocational schools and crafts courses in twenty of the empire’s cities. After the October Revolution, the Soviet government did not shut down the ORT as it did other “bourgeois” Jewish organisations; the authorities hoped to use the ORT’s prestige for their own purposes in the future. At the same time, the ORT was no longer independent: in 1921, the old ORT central committee was dissolved and a new one appointed with an absolute majority of members of the Jewish Section of the Communist Party [Evsektsia]. The ORT was also forbidden to open new branches or be part of various unions and associations outside of Soviet Russia. By this time, most ORT leaders had been forced to emigrate and in August 1921 they established the Union of ORT Societies in Berlin; this brought together the organisation’s regional committees still operating in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Bessarabia, and its newly formed committees in France and the United Kingdom. For political reasons, the All-Russian ORT did not become part of the Union of ORT Societies. Nevertheless, the All-Russian (subsequently All-Union) ORT, formally remaining an independent public organisation, maintained close ties with the Berlin ORT Union, receiving considerable material and financial resources from it and distributing these to the Jewish population of the USSR. In 1929, with the active support of members of the Evsektsia, the All-Union ORT adopted a new charter barring membership to lishentsy (persons stripped of civil/voting rights due to pre-revolutionary class status or activities deemed inimical to working people). In 1930, in order to ensure full control over the distribution of aid coming from abroad, the All-Union ORT was eliminated via its merger with the Society for Land Settlement of Jewish Toilers (OZET).
The research, educational and exhibition centre “Petersburg Judaica” began operations in the 1998-99 academic year as an inter-departmental research and teaching group at the European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP). In late 1999, the centre was registered as a nonprofit organisation to study and promote the cultural heritage of the Jews of Russia and Eastern Europe. From 2000 to 2004, it operated under a joint-operations agreement with the Russian Institute of Art History (RIII) and was located on the premises of that institute (the former palace of Count V. P. Zubov at 5 St. Isaac’s Square). The first exhibition prepared by the centre’s staff, titled “The Great Synagogues. The Third Destruction of the Temple,” opened in the exhibition hall of the Institute of Art History in 2000. Currently the Centre “Petersburg Judaica” exists, on the one hand, as an independent structure; on the other, it operates within the European University at St. Petersburg as the Inter-Departmental Centre for Judaica of the European University at St. Petersburg (MFTs PI). Since 2004, the latter has enrolled students in the European University at St. Petersburg who, while studying in one of the university’s departments, simultaneously engage in a special advanced training program in the field of Jewish studies. The centre is distinguished by its many years of experience in the conduct of field research. The staff of the Centre “Petersburg Judaica” conduct research, educational and exhibition activities, striving to ensure that all three areas of work are interconnected. Since 2000, the centre has held about 40 exhibitions devoted to various aspects of Jewish culture, art, history and ethnography in close cooperation with the State Museum of the History of Religion, the Russian Ethnographic Museum, the State Russian Museum, the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, the ROSFOTO Museum and Exhibition Centre and several museums and art galleries in Israel, France, Switzerland and the United States. In the course of the activities of the Centre “Petersburg Judaica” its staff have organised a research archive and collections of paintings and graphic works of Jewish artists of Leningrad/St. Petersburg of various periods, including works by N. I. Al’tman, S. B. Iudovin, A. L. Kaplan, L. G. Nissenbaum, A. S. Zaslavskii, A. I. Zinshtein, T. V. Pogorel’skaia, L. Ia. Grol’man and A. V. Lukina, as well as a collection of artistic photographs by M. Kheifets. Since 2013, the Centre “Petersburg Judaica” has been a member of the Association of European Jewish Museums.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises a single series; documents are arranged in the order in which they were received by the archive.
- Finding aids:
- An electronic catalogue (on CD-ROM) is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary