Records on Nationalist and Opposition Movements in Late Imperial Russia: The Police "Fonds" of the State Archives of the Russian Federation

Canadian Slavonic Papers

Records on Nationalist and Opposition Movements in Late Imperial Russia: The Police "Fonds"of the State Archives of the Russian FederationAuthor(s): George BolotenkoSource: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 37, No. 3/4(September-December 1995), pp. 529-535Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40869733 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 23:19

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Canadian Association of Slavists and Canadian Slavonic Papers are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.34 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:19:23 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=canassocslav

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40869733?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Archival notes

George Bolotenko

Records on Nationalist and Opposition Movements in Late Imperial Russia: The Police Fonds of the State Archives of the Russian Federation

Modern nationalism, for better or worse, has been the most influential and operative of the "isms" shaping the history of the modern era over the last several centuries. Judging by events in Europe of the last five-to-seven years, it will certainly continue as a redoubtable force in the immediate future, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. Even Western Europe, given the recent difficulties it has experienced on the road to a unified future, may not succeed in

stuffing the genie of nationalism back into the bottle. This is even more the case in the newly-independent lands that constituted the former USSR.

The USSR, following Bolshevik victory in 1921, largely preserved and later even expanded the geographical frontiers of its predecessor state, the Russian

Empire. In so doing, the USSR prolonged the existence of the last remaining imperial polyglot of Europe. Through its nationalities policy it sought a new

physics of nationalism in which centrifugal and centripetal forces in the USSR's multinational solar system would preserve all components in their cosmic balance. The model proved untenable, and failed. This failure contributed

significantly to the collapse of the Soviet colossus in 1989. Archival records dealing with the various nationalisms of constituent

polities of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were always closely guarded. Only in the last several years have they been made accessible to historians and others interested in this subject. Now scholars have a much better

opportunity to try to understand nationalism - its genesis, growth and

development in Tsarist/Soviet Russia. Among the newly-accessible Russian archives today, few are as critical to

the study of nationalism as the Tsarist-era records of the Departament Politisii (Fond 102), the /// Otdelenie (Fond 109), the Osoboe Prisutstvie Pravitel'stvuiushego Settata (Fond 112) and the Verkhovnyi Raspredelitel'nyi Komitet (Fond 272). All are preserved in the State Archives of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii - hereinafter called

GARF) located in Moscow. It is in these fonds and other similar record bodies -

grouped generically as the records of the Police Department - that all Tsarist-era

oppositional movements, including the various nationalist ones, are best

represented.

Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes Vol. XXXVII, Nos. 3-4, Sept.-Dec. 1995



530 GEORGE BOLOTENKO

Originally these and similar fonds, which reflect policing and internal surveillance, were maintained in St. Petersburg. After the year 1925, Dzerzhinskii, Menzhinskii and Yagoda, chiefs of the Cheka-OGPU (which came to run the Soviet Union's archives), moved trainloads of critical political, police, gendarme and surveillance fonds to Moscow. Here they were put to extensive

operational use by the OGPU-NKVD throughout the 1920s and 1930s. It was in this manner that these records ended up in GARF instead of remaining in more

appropriate archives as in St. Petersburg's (Russian State Historical Archives -

RGIA) which took into its care all pre-1917 departmental/ministerial records.

Only following the death of Stalin in 1953 did the existence of these

spetsfonds ("special fonds") become known to some scholars. However, until

September of 1991 access to these fonds and to the card catalogues was allowed

only to some very select Soviet citizens on a need-to-know basis. Moreover, even when information was drawn from these records scholars, for obvious

reasons, could not cite the source. These fonds were finally opened to all in

September of 1991. Since that time, many German, American and British researchers have worked with these records - Canadians, however, have not.

Access into the files of these fonds is either by nominal or subject card

catalogues, each of which is preserved in its own room within the stacks of the State Archives of the Russian Federation. These card catalogues - six systems in all - were started only after World War II. For students of nationalism, the first

catalogue, the pre-Revolutionary nominal catalogue of the Police Department, is of critical value. In what follows, I will offer some indication of what archival records a researcher can expect to find on the national/nationalist movements of four ethnic groups of the former Russian Empire: the Finns, Poles, Ukrainians and Jews.

I. "THE NATIONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENT IN FINLAND" Drawer 42/3 of the subject catalogue holds the card entries that provide access into Police and Gendarme records dealing with this topic. The entries are

grouped by event or political movement and then chronologically within each movement. The first subject entry in Drawer 43/3 is titled "The Matter of Student Disturbances at Helsingfors University" (III Section, Fond 109, 3-aia

1 Other catalogues here at GARF are also useful to students of nationalism. There are separate nominal card catalogues to the following record bodies: Gendarme perliustrations (copies of intercepted mail) comprising approximately 1000 fat dossiers; personal fonds of political leaders and ministers holding critical offices (such as the Departments of the Police and the Interior) and institutional records of such departments; a fond of pre-revolutionary era (1831-1917) oppositional brochures and flyers; and a fond of post-revolution (1917-1922) brochures and fliers.



POLICE FONDS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION 53 1

Ekspeditsiia, Opis 1871, delo 54, pp. 1-23). Approximately 300 cards comment on this event. For the period 1901-1913, there are approximately 20 catalogue card entries on the Finnish national movement in the armed forces, approximately 60 on the Finnish press, perhaps 10 cards leading to general political assessments of the situation in Finland.

Political parties were well monitored by Tsarist police. Not surprisingly, catalogue entries capture the whole gamut of Finnish political organizations. The S D Party has several hundred entries. On the Young Finns, there are 20 cards; on the Party of Active Opposition, approximately 40; on Voima, 50 to 60; on the Party of Passive Opposition, approximately 20. Box 42/3 continues with entries on other political movements: Friends of the Swedish Enlightenment, with 10 or so entries; and the Swedish National Party, approximately 15 entries. Other entries point to records on the Finnish Agrarian Union, to the workers' movement in general in the period 1889-1917 (approximately 200) entries, and to organizational links with Russian revolutionary movements and with Finnish

organizations abroad. In all, the catalogue cards in Drawers 42/3 and 43/3

provide approximately 1,400 pointers into records on the Finnish national liberation movement.

II. "THE POLISH NATIONAL-LIBERATION MOVEMENT"

Catalogue cards pointing to data on the Polish nationalist movement, approximately 6,000 cards, are located in Drawers 33/3 to 41/3 inclusive (nine drawers). While some records date back to 1832, the first significant bloc of cards, perhaps 60 or so, deal with the Polish uprising of 1863. Drawer 34/3 holds locational information to records about anti-government demonstrations, about various societies, unions and organizations, during the years 1890-1917, while 35/3 points to information about the SDKPL. Drawer 36/3 has, as its first card entry, the "Matter Regarding Surveillance over I.I. Pilsudski, Member of the PPS," dated 10 April 1887 (Fond 102, 1898, delo 6, part 865, pp. 1-133). The approximately 1,000 card entries in this drawer, as well as Drawers 37/3 and 38/3 in their entirety, deal with records about the PPS. The records are abundant. There are annual police reports on the movement and its conferences, on its Central Committee and Party Council, on its Military Organization, on its Central Party School and Temporary Commission and its Jewish Labour Committee.

Beyond these records of the PPS1 s central organizations, there are records on 25 of its provincial and on six of its regional organizations, ranging from

copious to a handful of entries. On the Warsaw province organization, there are

approximately 300 card entries, on Radomskaia 120, on Lomzhinskaia 100, down to Kharkiv, Kherson and Kholmsk with one card entry each. Other cards




indicate material on town organizations of the PPS (30 cards for Warsaw, 5 for Lviv), and on its groups abroad (in Austria, England, Germany, France, Switzerland, etc).

Drawer 38/3 holds approximately 500 entries to records dealing with the PPS-Levitsa, records dealing, as with the PPS proper, not only with the movement's central agencies, but also with its regional and local groups throughout the Empire.

Drawer 39/3, approximately 700 cards, provides access into records of more than 135 political organizations/nationalist societies, such as, inter alia, the Union of Progressive-Independent Youth (60 cards covering the period 1898- 1915), the League of Polish Independence (20 cards over 1909-1913), the Polish Peasant Union (30 cards over 1912-1930), the Union for Active Struggle (30 cards over 1910-1912) and the Union of the White Eagle (15 cards over 1878-1911).

While Drawer 39/3 directs the researcher to largely political sources, Drawer 40/3 points the researcher to archival sources on Polish organizations which had broader agendas, to youth, women's and educational societies, both at home and abroad. For example, there are six entries on the Polish Society of Women's Equality (1913-1914), 20 cards on the Polish Cultural Educational Society (1890-1916) and 50 cards on Enlightenment (Oswiata). On Polish organizations abroad, there are 120 cards on the national liberation movement in Polish regions of Austria-Hungary and Germany, perhaps 70 cards on Polish organizational activity in the United States (1890-1914), 30 cards on such activity in France, as well as information on Polish national activities elsewhere. Finally, Drawer 41/3 is a guide to printed extracts or articles dealing with the Polish nationalist movement, clipped out of approximately 80 newspapers. While for the period 1866-1891, there are only about 20 entries, for the years 1892-1902, there are 20 to 30 entries per year. For 1902 there are about 50 entries, for 1903 perhaps 40, after which time, the catalogue breaks off.

III. "THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT AND NATIONALIST [PARTIES]" On the Ukrainian nationalist movement, GARF's catalogue holds approximately 1,400 entry cards, located in Drawers 51/3 and 52/3. The first 30 or so cards lead a researcher to various dossiers between 1863 and 1917: files such as the 1863 dossier titled "Report of the Department of Police on V.A. Frankovskii - on Publishing Textbooks in Ukrainian in Poltava and Kharkiv" (DP, Fond 102, 3- oe Deloproizvodstvo, Opis 1887, delo 301, 1 p.), and the 1880 file titled "Police Surveillance over Ukrainophile Propaganda Activity of Dr. L.L. Zelenskoi, Who



POLICE FONDS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION 533

Moved from St. Petersburg to Kharkiv" (III Otdelenie, Fond 109, 3-aia Ekspeditsiia, Opis 1880, delo 793, 1 p.).

Following this, there are various entries on Ukrainian nationalist activity grouped by province (20 provinces represented in all). Kyiv [Kiev] seems to have most frequent mention (about 40 entries), followed closely by Kharkiv (35 entries), Poltava (25 entries) and then Kherson (20 entries). There are perhaps 10 entries on Ukrainian nationalism as monitored by the police in St. Petersburg itself, attesting to an interesting phenomenon so far little studied, i.e., the role of

Ukrainophiles in the development of Ukrainian nationalism who had a connection with the Imperial capital.

There are approximately 50 entries covering Prosvita in the period 1905- 1916, and on activity of various levels of the Ukrainian SD Union (Spilka), on the Central Committee and local provincial and town organizations (there are something over 200 card entries here). Likewise with the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party: there are 17 entries of a general nature on the party and its central organs, and perhaps 130 entries on party activity at provincial levels in 10 provinces, with the bulk concentrated in Kyiv (50-60), Podol'sk (35), and Kharkiv and Chernihiv (15 each).

To records on the Ukrains'ka Hromada there are approximately 100 access cards, covering the years 1871-1917, starting with a file dated 29 November 1871, titled "Report of the Chief of the Kyiv Gendarme Administration to the

Department of Police, Containing Information on the Establishment in the City of Kyiv of a Society of Radical Ukrainophiles, Who have Received the Name Hromada (Information on Membership and Their Activity)" (DP, Fond 102, 3- oe Deloproizvodstvo, 1881, delo 1350, pp. 24-25). The Young Hromada and the

Mazeppist Movement have about 15 entries each.

IV. "THE BUND. INFORMATION OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZATION. LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS. [OTHER JEWISH MOVEMENTS]." The Jewish population of the Empire, prominent by its numbers in various left-

wing political movements, was monitored closely by Tsarist authorities. The card catalogue at GARF is ample proof of this, holding six drawers of cards, perhaps 6,000 entries in all, pointing to police records on various Jewish

political activity and movements before 1917. Drawers 16/3, 17/3, 18/3 and 55/3 deal with records on the BUND. Drawer

16/3 holds a run of "general information" cards on the BUND, perhaps 200, covering the years 1897-1915. Several hundred more cards give entry to records on the BUND's Central Committee. Finally, in drawer 16/3, there are many hundreds of cards pointing to records on major BUND filiais at either provincial or city/town levels. For example, for Warsaw province, there are 300 cards, for




the years 1890-1914, filed internally in chronological order. For the city of Vilnius there are approximately 200 cards, covering the years 1896-1915. Six other towns, such as Disno, Slonim and Sventsiary, have about 20 cards leading into files from the years 1896-1915.

Drawer 17/3, stuffed with approximately 1,000 cards, leads researchers to archival information on the provincial and local organizations of the BUND. For example, on the Vitebsk provincial BUND organization, there are about 200 cards covering the years 1902-1914; on various town organizations within the province, there are varying numbers of card entries, such as 20 cards for the town of Lepel'. Certain towns with dominant Jewish populations often have more reference cards to them than there are to the relevant provincial capitals. For example, there are about 20 cards on the provincial BUND for Grodno province, covering the years 1901-1914; however, for the town of Belostok itself, there are more than 70 cards for the period 1896-1914. Other towns with significant card entries are: Zhytomir (60), Brest (25), Grodno (50), Kovno (60) and Riga (70).

While Drawer 17/3 (above) holds cards to provincial and local (i.e., municipal) BUND organizations and their activities, Drawer 18/3 holds access cards to records largely on county, small town and village organizations. Many of these records are press reportage. For the province of Minsk, there is the following information, grouped by county: Bobruisk county (30 cards over 1898-1913); Borisov county (10 cards); Igumenskii county (3); Minsk county (25 cards over 1897-1908); Mozyr county (10 cards); Pinsk county (30 cards over 1897-1911); Rechitskii county (5 cards over 1902-1916); and Slutsk county (10 cards over 1903-1913). Such breakdown by county exists for all provinces of the Pale. There are also access cards to records on the BUND in other major cities of the empire, such as Chernihiv (20 cards over 1898-1907) and Odesa [Odessa] (50 cards over 1900-1916).

The whole of Drawer 19/3, approximately 1,000 cards, holds cards providing access to Police records on the Poalei-Tsion. The cards are organized along the same principles as the BUND cards, starting with central organization, its various bodies and offices, and then moving down through general provincial information, provincial headquarters, large cities, and, finally, records on the movement's activities in the counties and villages. The whole of Drawer 20/3 holds cards accessing records on the Zionist movement among Jews in the Russian Empire.

Finally, Drawer 55/3 again deals with the BUND. However, it holds cards pointing to records collected by the Tsarist police on the BUND' s activities abroad - its centres in other European capitals, periodicals and literature



POLICE FONDS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION 535

published abroad, records of inter-Party meetings and records generally ascribed to the BUND.

The value of these records to students of nationalism is self-evident; the thoroughness and extent of the card catalogue providing access to them is truly a boon to researchers. One only hopes that they - both card catalogue and records - will remain open, and that scholars working in the area of nationalism will turn to them for the wealth these records harbour. If scholars do so, it will doubtless help remove much of the conjecture, the very many "white spots" that still characterizes writings about nationalism in Imperial and Soviet Russia.

RESUME

Cet article décrit le contenu du premier fichier des ressources sur les mouvements nationalistes dans les dossiers des services de police russe d'avant 1917, maintenant détenus par les Archives d'état de la Fédération russe. Mis en

place après la seconde guerre mondiale seulement, les fichiers classés par nom ou par sujet sont accessibles à tout chercheur depuis septembre 1991. Le fichier finlandais contient approximativement 1400 marqueurs d'enregistrement. Il y a à

peu près 6000 fiches traitant du mouvement nationaliste polonais. On compte quelque 1400 fiches d'entrées sur le mouvement nationaliste ukrainien. Le BUND juif est traité dans environ 6000 entrées.



Documents

Records on Nationalist and Opposition Movements in Late Imperial Russia: The Police "Fonds" of the State Archives of the Russian Federation