Metadata: Historical Materials
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- St. Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies
- Holding institution (official language):
- Петербургский институт иудаики
- Postal address:
- 191036, St. Petersburg, 1-aia Sovetskaia ul., d. 10, lit. K, 1-N
- Phone number:
- (812)449-52-50
- Web address:
- http://pijs.ru/ob_arhive
- Email:
- archive@pijs.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 5
- Title:
- Historical Materials
- Title (official language):
- Исторический фонд
- Creator/accumulator:
- St. Petersburg Jewish University; St. Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies
- Date(s):
- 1873/2004
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 566 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Graphic material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
Op. 1 contains publications, manuscripts of articles and reference materials on Jewish history (1987-2001), including an article by M. Nosonovskii titled “16th-c. Epitaphs from Jewish Headstones of Ukraine” (in Monuments of Culture. New Discoveries. Writing, Art, Archeology. Moscow, 1999); an article by L. Trakhtenberg titled “Sobolevka: The History of a Past without a Future (17th – 20th c.)” (in Istoki [Sources]: The Bulletin of the People’s University of Jewish Culture in Eastern Ukraine. Khar’kov, no. 4, 1999); and historical information on the population centres of Dupnitsa and Kyustendil (Bulgaria), and photos of the Jewish cemetery in Dupnitsa (the author of this material is M. Iudelson; early 1990s).
Op. 2 contains publications, manuscripts of articles, dissertation abstracts and interviews on the history of Jews in the Russian Empire and the former USSR (1900-2000), including an article by G. Agranovskii titled “From the History of the Vil’na Rabbinical School” (1995); an abstract by T. V. Proshchenok of her history PhD dissertation on “The Jewish Legacy of the Urals in the 19th-20th c. (Democratic and Ethno-cultural Development)” (2000); an interview with S. M. Gluskina, a specialist in Russian and Hebrew philology, and daughter of M. Gluskin, chief rabbi of Leningrad from 1934-36; as well as several photocopies from Jewish publications in Yiddish (1900–25), in particular, speeches and articles by rabbis on the marriage and coronation of Nicholas II from the book Imrei rotsoin (Vil’na, 1900), and a piece issued in connection with pogroms against Jews, from the collection 1905 in Belorussia (Minsk, 1925).
Op. 3 contains personal papers (1934-2001), including documents of the well-known Orientalist and classics scholar I. Sh. Shifman (1930-90); D. V. Ioffe, an activist of the Jewish national movement of the 1970s in Leningrad, and grandson of Rabbi D. Katsenelenbogen; M. S. Bunin, an architect and the author of the book Bridges of Leningrad (1899-74); and others.
Ops. 4 and 8 contain, respectively, documents pertaining to the activities of Jewish organisations and individuals in the field of culture (1931-98), and various illustrative materials pertaining to the history of Jews in Russia (1919-2001), including a collection of posters for theatrical performances, concerts, and exhibitions (1910s-90s), including performances of the Petrograd Yiddish Theatre directed by R. Zaslavskii (1923), the M. Razumnyi Theatre (the “Petite Palace”; late 1910s), the Jewish Song and Dance Ensemble of the city of Kaunas (1971), etc., as well as posters for the exhibition “Jews in St. Petersburg: Two Centuries of History” (1994).
Op. 5 contains copies of files and a selection of materials on Jewish history from various archives in the territory of the former Soviet Union (1853-1990s). Among these are copies of documents pertaining to the history of the establishment and operation of the Indigenous Jewish Museum (TEM) in Samarkand, including lists of exhibits, work plans, minutes of meetings, etc.; materials on the organisation of Jewish education in Bukhara, in particular, a letter from Kh. Pinkhas addressed to Sh. M. Rivlin about Jewish schools (1907); business correspondence of Jewish merchants; property documents; marriage and divorce documents: ketubot and gett certificates, in particular a gett issued for R. Iliasov in 1910 with the stamp of the Sephardic rabbinical court in Jerusalem; extracts from vital records; various sorts of certificates, etc.; folkloric and ethnoGraphic materials (amulets, fairy tales, riddles, descriptions of customs, etc.); literary works; memoirs; documents pertaining to well-known Jewish community figures, including of the Kalantarov, Fuzailov, Mullokandov, Aminov and other families, in particular, a letter from Jews of Bukhara addressed to Rabbi R. Kalantarov of Samarkand (1900); lists of Jews of communities in various cities of Central Asia (1855-1910); and materials about Jewish life in the 1920s-30s, including documents from various Jewish organisations, among them the Turkestan Jewish community (1922-24), the office of the Tarbut organisation in Kokand (1920s), the Indigenous Jewish Institute of Education (1920s), the Indigenous Jewish Central State Museum of the Uzbek SSR (1933), and others.
Op. 6 contains information on the activities of modern Jewish organisations, in particular, the Russian Jewish Congress, including materials from its founding conference (1996); the Leningrad artists’ group Alef (early 1990s); the Kyiv municipal Jewish community (1994); the Harold Light Repatriation and Emigration Centre (1990s); etc.
Op. 7 consists mainly of photocopies of maps of cities and towns that had a significant Jewish population living compactly in them, in particular, Olgopol’, Iampol’, Medzhibozh, Balta, Kamenets-Podol’skii and others (1769-1892).
Op. 9 contains documents and books from the destroyed house of worship at the Jewish (Preobrazhenskii) cemetery of Leningrad (1919-87), including logs of burials (1945-85) and Jewish calendars (1921-67).
Op. 10 includes a collection of second copies of “Printed Memoranda of the Governing Senate” that pertain to the history of Jews in the Russian Empire for 1873-1914; these copies were made in the same period as the originals, which are currently housed in the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA). These materials were discovered in the 1980s among papers to be used for recycling and transferred in the early 1990s to the archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies.
Op. 11 contains audio recordings and transcripts of lectures from “The Dubnow Readings”, a regularly held scholarly seminar organised by the St. Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies and the Jewish Community Centre of St. Petersburg (1999-2004).
- Archival history:
- This fonds was formed in the 2000s, primarily from documents received by the archive both from staff members of the St. Petersburg Jewish University / St. Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies and from private individuals. Copies of documents pertaining to Jewish history were made as directed by St. Petersburg Jewish University administrators in archives of the former USSR, including TsGIA SSSR – the Central State Historical Archive of the USSR, (now RGIA – the Russian State Historical Archive), TsGIA – the Central State Historical Archive in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), TsGVIA SSSR, the Central State Military-Historical Archive of the USSR (now the Russian State Military-Historical Archive (RGVIA)), the Research Institute for the Theory and History of Architecture and City Planning (NIITAG RAASN) in Moscow, the Central State Historical Archive in Kyiv (TsGIAK), the Central Research Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine and the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art (TsGAMLI) in Kyiv. Some of these materials, for example, copies of documents from the archive of the Indigenous Jewish Museum in Samarkand, were obtained during an expedition to Central Asia in 1992 (originals are housed in fonds of the Samarkand State Historical-Architectural and Art Museum Reserve). (See also the description of this archive’s f. 12 “Expedition Materials [Consolidated Fonds]”.)
- Subject terms:
- Cemeteries
- Cemeteries--Gravestones
- Correspondence
- Education
- Education--Schools and universities
- Ethnography
- Exhibitions
- Historical research
- Jewish community records
- Jewish languages
- Jewish languages--Yiddish
- Marriage and divorce
- Marriage and divorce--Ketubot
- Memoirs
- Museums
- Personal records
- Photographs
- Pogroms
- Posters
- Real estate
- Theatre
- Vital records
- Vital records--Marriage records
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises eleven series arranged according to the thematic-chronological principle.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary