IDC Publishers - Bund Archive

Bund Archive

Order		Background		Specifications

Scope
The collection of RGASPI (fond 271) consists of 2 parts (opisi) and 632 storage units (delo). Inside opisi the documents are arranged in files (delo or storage unit) which might contain from 3 to several dozens documents (pages). Opis 1 (506 storage units) covers predominantly the pre-Revolutionary period of Bund's history, 1894-1917. The most records from opis' 2 are dated 1917-1921 (dealing with history of the Bund in the Bolshevik's Russia. The records inside collection are systematized thematically and chronologically.

External Finding Aid
Online EAD finding aid at www.idc.nl/ead/353faid.php

Content note
The Bund Archives in RGASPI contains documents on the following topics: History of Jews in Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, Ukraine); Anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia pogroms, Yiddish culture in Russia Jewish Labor movement In Russian Empire: before the rise of Bund; Bund in Russia, 1897-1923 (including records of the Bund Foreign Committee in Geneva, 1898-1919; of the Central Bureau of Bundist Groups Abroad, and of Bund cells in Tsarist army). . Russian revolutionary parties : Narodnaia Volia (populists), Rossiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Pariia (RSDRP), Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party); The Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR esery), Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia, Jews in Russian revolutionary parties, biographies. Jewish political movements (Zionism, Poalei Zion, Zionist- Socialists, Territorialists, Folkists, religious groups, biographies) International socialist movement: Socialist International, Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), socialist parties in Germany, Great Britain, France and other European countries, biographies; Correspondence of prominent leaders of socialist movements such as K. Kautskyi, A. Bebel, L. Trotskii, A. Plekanov, Bundist publications range from leaflets and pamphlets to complete runs of periodicals. Included are illegal propaganda pamphlets and periodicals of the Bund's earliest period which were published abroad and smuggled into Russia, and proclamations and brochures printed in clandestine printing shops inside Russia. The collection also includes photographers, posters, minutes, reports, correspondence, financial ledgers, manuscripts, biographical materials.

Language note
Texts primarily in Russian, Yiddish, also in Hebrew, German, French, Ukrainian, Polish.

Biographical note
Correspondence of prominent leaders of socialist movements such as K. Kautskyi, A. Bebel, L. Trotskii, A. Plekanov

Bibliographical note
Jewish Documentary Sources in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus: A preliminary List. / Sallis, D. Web M, (eds.). New York: The Jews Theological Seminary of America, 1996. Dokumenty po istorii i kul'ture evreev v arkhivakh Moskvy: Putevoditel'. / Kupovetskii, M.C., Starostin, E.V., Veb, M. (Eds.). M., 1997.

Provenance
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI) [Russian State Archive of Social and Political History], Moscow The collection of RGASPI consists of two big groups of documents disclosed in two opisi, which are differ on the basis of their provenance and content. The most of the documents of the opis' 1 - are the attested and edited copies from "abroad archives of Bund, which was bought in 1924-1927. At the end of the 1924 N.S. Angarskii (as representative of Institute of Lenin and ISTPART started the negotiations with one of the holder" of "abroad archives of Bund" Franz Kurskii and the representatives of Polish Bund in order to buy the archive and the library of Bund. Later the Bund archives had been moved to Berlin and there under the supervision of F. Kurskii many documents were copied. However the documents were not only retyped. There remarks and explanations to unclear passages were made, the nick names were replaced by original names, the data we checked, sometimes the text had to be "decoded" and " deciphered". A lot of remarks and editing allow consider many of these documents as originals records. Besides the Institute of Lenin got a part of printed and hectograph materials of Bund. This collection was held first at the Institute of Lenin and then in the Central Party archive, where in the documents were disclosed and systematized in 1940. The second group of documents (from opis' 2) was received from the Leningrad Museum of Revolution, which from 1918 started to gather the " new" archive of Bund. It called a "new" because the "old" one was taken away abroad after the revolution 1917. With a few exception (files 1-7 from the "abroad archive of Bund" this opis' contains original records. The most of the documents are dated 1917-1921. Part of the records was transferred in 1949 from the Russian State archive of the Russian Federation GARF (former TsGAOR). (former Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhIDNI) [Russian Center for Preservation and Study of Records of Modern History])