Jewish Museum in St. Petersburg: Its Past and Future

In 1916 the Jewish Museum was opened in the capital of the Russian Impair. Its address was: St. Petersburg, Vasilievsky Island, 5 Liniya st., 50. This important cultural event occurred owing to the activity of the Jewish Historical and Ethnographical society which leaders were such famous scholars as S. Dubnov, M. Vinaver, S. Zinberg.

An outstanding public activist, historian, writer, and publicist S. An-Sky (Semen Akimovitch Rappoport) played the most important part in the organization of the museum. Being a person of extraordinary creative abilities and amazing energy, he returned to faithful service for Jewish national ideals after longstanding participation in the Russian revolutionary movement.

Since 1911 till 1914 An-Sky was the head of a number of ethnographical expeditions to the Podolian, Volynian, and Kiev regions of the Pale of settlement. The family of well-known Petersburg patrons - Gintzburgs, supported these expeditions. Many future creators and research-workers of the museum had taken part in these expeditions. Among them we can mention: an artist S. Yudovin, a folklorists and music-critics Y. Engel and Z. Kisselgof. A rich collection of ethnographical articles, documents, folklore records, photographs and drawings brought from the expeditions made a base of the future museum.

The founder of the museum relied on actively functioning national scientific institutions as the Jewish Historical and Ethnographical society, the Society of Jewish Traditional Music, the Jewish Literary Society, as well as the group of historians who published such famous scientific editions as "Evreiskaya starina" and 'Perezhitoye". When the museum was opened, its collection consisted of more then one thousand items. Among them there were implements, manuscripts, "cradle books", wax cylinders with Jewish folk songs recorded on them. All these articles brightly reflected life of the Jews in the territory of the Russian Impair.

The first stage of the existence of the museum was not so long. In spring of 1918 Bolsheviks closed it. The main purpose of this action was the nationalization of artistic values that were kept in its funds. But the struggle for revival of the museum had been lasted for several years. In 1923 the museum was opened again. The chairman of the Museum committee became a well-known sculptor Ilya Ginzburg. The deputy chairman was a physician Abram Bramson. The curator of the museum was Solomon Yudovin. During that period the museum existed only thanks to financial support from abroad as well as many other "old" Jewish scientific societies seized by the Soviet power.

To the end of the 20-s the Soviet power started the liquidation of all "bourgeois" Jewish scientific organizations within the framework of changes in the national policy and repressions against academic science of Leningrad. The Jewish museum was closed in December 1929. The valuable exhibits from its collection were delivered to different state deposits of Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, and Minsk.

Nowadays many manuscripts, books, paintings, and other items, that earlier were owned by Petersburg Jewish museum, are kept at different museums of Kiev, as well as at Russian Ethnographic museum and Museum of Religion and Atheism in St. Petersburg.

Today a group of scholars engaged in Jewish studies try to revival the Jewish museum in St. Petersburg. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee supports this project. We received first gifts from family collections of Petersburg citizens. First exhibits were collected during historic and ethnographic expeditions to regions of the former Pail of settlement. First exhibitions are being prepared.

The most important goal of the museum workers is to revival the Jewish museum in Petersburg, to preserve and popularize traditional values of the Jews of our country.