This is the name of the International scientific project on edition of the series of guides that include fonds descriptions of the archives in Ukraine containing the documents on the history and culture of the Jews. The Project is the part of a wider program on assimilating of the written legacy of the Jews from the collections of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Since 1991 it has been realized by the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH, Moscow) and Judaica Project - a joint program of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS, New York) and YIVO - Institute for Jewish Research (New York).
There a lot of modern tools of intellectual access to the Jewish archival holding in the State Archives of the former USSR, including Ukraine. But the actuality of this large-scale archival project is stipulated by the absence of general guides with fund/collection level descriptions of Jewish holdings.
Most of Soviet-era guides and referenc books to archival fonds giving general and more or less combined idea of their structure bear the stamp of Soviet party ideological policies, often laced with anti-Semitism. Moreover, in fonds annotations materials on history and culture of Jews are not only not exposed but, as a rule, passed over in silence. For the same reasons, these old finding aids do not meet even the most basic methodological requirements. It refers, first of all, to such important part of it as inventories. Descriptions of document units (i.e. files) rarely reflect their Jewish content. The situation is further worsened by the fact that according to the classification system used in Soviet archives collections of Jewish origin are often assigned to a "third category" status and considered to be of little value. As a result, a scholarly apparatus to them is last in line to be formed and taken care of.
There is still less information of the documents concerning Jewish history and culture housed in departmental archives and also in manuscript sections of museums and scientific libraries, which, on the one hand, are not at all accessible to the wide circle of researchers, and, on the other, not always reveal the contents of their fonds and collections, and particularly, on "Jewish question".
In view of this fact, the project participants have to resolve a number of difficult issues in the process of uncovering documentary information on the topic. So, for the widest possible selection of pertinent archival collections for their further scientific description they use the would-be presumption of the existence of documents relevant to Jewish history and culture coming from the many-sided analysis of the creators’ activities. It goes without saying that the fonds of Jewish origin proper must be annotated (both private collections and records of Jewish communities, educational, philanthropic, cultural and educational, religious, professional, commercial, and other organizations and institutions, political parties and social movements). The same concerns collections of non-Jewish origin whose creators were involved in matters affecting or pertaining to Jews if, while looking through them "de visu", they uncovered any significant records referring to Jewish history and culture.
All the information gathered within the project bounds is arranged as the database consisting of 35 information fields selected on the MARC system and AMC; the preparation of the text of the guide being realized on its basis.
Database records and then the guide entries include all the gathered information about a concrete archival fund and, in particular, its title, repository control number, inclusive dates of the documents, general volume of a fund and quantity of uncovered groups of records on the topic, physical characteristics, history or biography of the creator, a scholarly and reference apparatus, and, main and foremost, description of contents and annotation which represent its generalized characteristic, focussing on the found materials on Jewish history and culture.
Within the archival project there have already been published in English "Jewish Documentary Sources in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. A Preliminary List" (1996) and two guides in Russian: "Documents on History and Culture of Jews in the Archives of Moscow" (1997) and "Documents on History and Culture of Jews in the Archives of Belarus" (2003). As for the further plans, there will be published a number of other editions. Precisely, as for the records in Ukrainian archives, 5-6 volumes of the guide are supposed to be published including a separate volume concerning Kyiv archives.
State archival institutions of Ukraine are taking part in the mentioned project in accordance with the Protocol about the principles of cooperation between the Main Archival Administration of Ukraine together with Archivists Union of Ukraine and the Russian State University for the Humanities, signed in January, 1992. Actually, Ukrainian archivists began scientific description of the archival fonds liable to be included into the guide on July 1, 1997.
Further development of cooperation within the bounds of this project is stipulated by the Agreement between the State Committee on Archives of Ukraine, Archivists Union of Ukraine, the Russian State University for the Humanities and Project Judaica from July 1, 1999 and the Protocol about the principles of cooperation between the State Committee on Archives of Ukraine, RSUH and Project Judaica from February 20, 2003.
On January 14, 2000 in Kiev there was held the Seminar for State Archives employees of Ukraine where they considered organizational and methodological issues connected with the realization of the Project. The seminar participants had a chance during lively dialogues to discuss the most actual problems. Another All-Ukrainian Seminar was held in Kiev on June 17, 2003.
In future a number of regional seminars are planned.
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The information on the structure and contents of these fonds fully described will be presented in automatized database and predominantly reflected in per fund descriptive articles of the guide volumes, and also partly used while compiling scholarly and reference apparatus to them.
Realization of this project does not only ensure creation of modern search engines, widening of the intellectual access to the documents of such highly claimed topicality, ingenuous drawing of the uncovered documents in scientific use through their publication, exposing, getting used of while preparing papers for the conferences, but also solving particular tasks of archivists (concretizing of registration data, fonds categorizing, amending earlier made inventories, etc.).
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