Russkii Arkhiv

125-141

Authors: Alla V. Shadrina

In 1943–1991 the religious organizations of the USSR were controlled by Council for the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Council for religious cults, established in 1943 and 1944 under the Council of People's Commissars. In the regions of the USSR, the posts of authorized Councils were introduced into the staff of the regional executive committees. They had wide powers in the sphere of control of the subordinated religious organizations. In 1960s and 1990s, the records management of the Council representatives was transmitted to the regional archives. Nowadays, archival funds, which in various regions of the Russian Federation received the name of “Authorized representative of the Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs, Religious Cults Affairs, and Religious Affairs”. These funds are sources on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church and other religious organizations during the Soviet period. This publication is devoted to the review of the Fund R-4173 of the State Archives of the Rostov Region “Authorized representative of the Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs, Religious Cults Affairs, and Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR in the Rostov Region”. The review is written in accordance with the Order of the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation from January 18, 2007 No. 19 “On Approving the Rules for the Organization of Storage, Acquisition, Accounting and Use of Documents of the Archives of the Russian Federation…”. In the review on the basis of the study of the office documentation of the fund R-4173, the history of institutions-fund-makers is considered; stages of the formation of the archive fund; the composition of the inventories of the fund and a thematic review of the fund's documents was carried out.

159-166

Authors: Mikhail Yu. Kiselev

The article contains information on the work of the Questionnaire-Biographical Commission of the proletarian history section of the Institute of History of the Communist Academy of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1929–1936), one of the structural subdivisions of which was the Section of the History of the Proletariat of the USSR. There was planed a preparation of a number of collections of autobiographies of participants of the October Revolution, the Civil War, the heroes of the labor front, and socialist construction. In order to obtain the biographical information of the workers, the Questionnaire-Biographical Commission organized memorial evenings, where participants told their biographies. Biographies contained both information of an autobiographical nature, and information about participation in the revolutionary movement, the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, the revolutionary events of 1917, the Civil War and socialist construction. Evenings of memories were taken down and were called “Evenings of the memories of the Red Guards”. In the fund of the Institute of History of the Communist Academy of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, a transcript of a memorial evening of participants in revolutionary events in Rostov-on-Don and the region was preserved.

192-204

Authors: Evgeny F. Krinko

Evacuation of the population to the east of the country during the Great Patriotic War was massive. In total, in 1941–1942 from the western regions of the country more than 17 million people were transported to the Soviet home front. Significant work was done to help the evacuees. One of the conditions of this was the organization of the registration of people who arrived in new places. The published documents are devoted to problems of organizing the accounting of evacuated citizens in 1941–1942. First of all, the difficulties were due to the huge number of evacuated citizens. Technical difficulties in the organization of statistical accounting were due to the lack of paper for the production of blanks, high workload of printing plants and other circumstances. The published documents have been extracted from the Central Statistical Directorate fund of the State Planning Committee of the USSR in the Russian State Archive of Economics. All documents are published for the first time.

12-32

Authors: Leonid L. Smilovitsky

This article is devoted to the little-studied topic of the correspondence abroad of Jews from the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. It examines the renewal of mail correspondence of the Jewish families with the outside world, which – due to dramatic internal political changes in the USSR during the 1930s – had ceased until the summer of 1941. The author provides an analysis of Jewish letters from the USSR to the United States, Palestine, South Africa, Argentina, and Mexico. This correspondence offers a window into a number of different aspects of the Jews’ experiences of the period: solidarity with the Red Army, the participation of Soviet Jews in the struggle against Nazism on the fronts of the war, Zionism, and Yiddish from the USSR. Particular attention is paid to such themes as the Holocaust, the search for relatives and the help of the Red Army, aid sent from Palestine, life after evacuation, and observance of the Jewish tradition. The letters of Jews from the Soviet Union abroad during 1941-1945 are an extraordinary phenomenon in the history of private military correspondence. The sympathy and attention demonstrated by tens of thousands of people from abroad helped the USSR overcome its international isolation and provided moral and material assistance, which significantly contributed to the ultimate victory of Soviet weapons over a common enemy.

52-62

Authors: Alla V. Shadrina

This article deals with one of the under-studied phenomenon in the history of the antireligious movement in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s – the antireligious work and activities of the League of Atheists in North Caucasus Krai. The Memorandum on the Antireligious Activities in Krai (1927), kept in the depository of the Centre of Documents on the Modern History of Rostov Oblast and published here for the first time, provides an exhaustive view on the organization of the antireligious propaganda in the Don Okrug of the North Caucasus Krai, and on the dissatisfactory conditions that the League of Atheists was in due to the lack of attention paid by the Communist Party officials to that association, to the deficit in well-trained staff, and because of the lack of material resources and financing.

95-102

Authors: Evgeny F. Krinko

The Lev Smilovitsky’s book of memoirs, “From the experience”, was published in 2016 in Jerusalem (Israel) in Russian. The author tells about the history of his family and his life in Rechitsa (Belarus) before the war and in its early months, evacuation to Bashkortostan, voluntary withdrawal to the Red Army, service as a chauffeur in antitank artillery of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command, wound and hospital, participation in combat operations for Vitebsk and Koenigsberg. The book contains many interesting facts and reflections of the author about the front life and military everyday life. After the war, Lev Smilovitsky graduated from the Minsk Law Institute, worked in the governing bodies of the regional and republican Komsomol organization of Belarus, in the Ministry of Culture of the Belorussian SSR, and in the Belarus’ publishing house. He defended his thesis and lectured at the Department of CPSU History of the Minsk Pedagogical Institute. In the early 1990s, he emigrated to Israel together with his family. The book was prepared for publication and published by the son of Lev Smilovitsky – historian Leonid Smilovitsky (Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University).