Russia

The Russian collection relates to the USSR in its borders between the two World Wars, including Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Original material: Individual files and documents from various parts of Russia (19th-20th centuries); files from the papers of the head office in Paris of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), relating to Russia (19th and early 20th centuries) which provide important information about the Jewish schools and community life of communities for some of which little other information has survived; private collections such as Simon Dubnow, Solomon Mikhoels, Elias Tcherikower, David Movshovich, Leo Motzkin, Aaron Steinberg and Vladimir Karasik, consisting of a very large collection of Jewish periodicals from the Soviet Union and China, from before the Russian Revolution until after the Perestroika. Microfilms and photocopies: Material of Jewish and non-Jewish provenance relating to Jews in over 950 communities from over 50 archives in the former Soviet States, including (approximately) over 3,000,000 microfilm frames and photocopies of documents (16th-20th centuries); material of Jewish provenance, such as two pinkassim from Uman (1774-1837), files from the Jewish communities of Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Irkutsk, Siberia; letters to Baron David Guenzburg from rabbis, public figures and private individuals, among them Simon Dubnow and material on such Russian-Jewish organizations as the Society for Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia (OPE) and its secretary, S Kamenecki, the Alliance for Attainment of Full Rights for Russian Jews, the Jewish Literary Association, the Society for the Study of Jewry, the Society for History and Ethnography in St. Petersburg, the Central Jewish Committee for the Relief of Pogrom Victims; the All-Russian Jewish Congress, Hechalutz, the Society for the Resettlements of Jews in the USSR (OZET), ORT, Tarbut, the Jewish Section of the Association of Former Political Prisoners and Exiles; Jewish political parties, such as the All-Russian Jewish Workers Union (BUND), the Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party (SERP), Poalei Zion, Zeirei Zion, the Talmud Torah in Odessa, the Rabbinical Seminary in Zhitomir, the Jewish community of Mohilev (Ukraine), the Jewish Historical-Archeographical Commission in Kiev, as well as private papers of such individuals as Arkadii Gornfeld, David and Horace Guenzburg, Pesach Marek, and a few members of the Duma, papers of Pauline Wengeroff (author of “Memoiren einer Grossmutter”) and members of her family; material of non-Jewish provenance from the archives of the Czar’s “Secret Police” (1825-1855), the Russian Interior, Finance, Military, Commerce and Education Ministries, high and local courts, magistrates in the territory of Belarus and the Ukraine, as well as private archives of Polish noble families, such as Landskorunskij, Lubomirskij, Potockij, Radziwil, Sapeha, Tarlo, Treter, Zamojskij; files from central government organs (14th-20th centuries), central and local military administrations, such as the Office of the Military Ministry and the Supreme Commander’s Staff of the Russian Army; from regional and city administrations, from private papers of higher Tsarist officials, as well as from Soviet government institutions; files from the German Foreign Office on Russian Jewry (1879-1920). Read more