A View from Both Banks: A Jewish Life in Jekabpils and Krustpils (Latvia)
The aim of this project is to collect a wide range of memories about various aspects of the traditional life of Latvian Jews, as well as to explore interfaith and interethnic relations in Latvia before the Second World War.
Jewish Commemorative Practices and the Modern Cult of Victory
The project aims to study contemporary Jewish commemorative practices and oral stories related to the Great Patriotic War and the Holocaust. The analysis of these texts and practices will, first, allow an understanding of how different commemoration traditions and local versions of Victory Day celebrations are arranged, and second, discern the external conditions and internal mechanisms that formed these traditions.
Virtual Reconstruction of the Archive and Collection of the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society
The goal of the project is to launch the website featuring the virtual reconstruction of the archives and collections of the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society (JHES) including essays and data on its creation, activities and liquidation, as well as on the fate of its collections. The archives and collections of JHES were scattered around various museums of the former USSR, including Ukraine and Byelorussia, some had left the country. By no means all the items pertaining to the history of JHES have been located so far, even though a number of related articles have been published.
“No one could jump ABOVE himself’: The Unfulfilled Dreams of the Siberian Jewish Gold Entrepreneur Yakov Frizer”
The main purpose of the project is the analysis of the diaries, notes, and letters of the big Siberia Jewish gold entrepreneur Yakov Frizer (Barguzin, 1869 – Harbin, 1932). The documents make possible the reconstruction of everyday life of Siberian merchant strata, peculiarities of the Eastern Siberia exploration, development of gold mining industry and consolidation of the local merchant elite, interaction between the merchant class and the state, the fate of private initiative, peculiarities of the Jewish question in Siberia, problems of national and religious tolerance. As a result of the project, the researches are planning the publication of the monograph and the organization of the thematical exhibition.
Soviet national and religious policies towards the Jewish community of Berdychiv in 1920-s – early 1930-s
The aim is to clarify the local specifics of the process of Jewry's Sovietization using the example of the city of Berdychiv. As part of the project it is planned to investigate official documents of Soviet governmental bodies, mass-media materials as well as ego-documents of coevals who lived in Berdychiv in 1920 – 30-s.
Jews in Soviet Siberia (1920 – 1930)
The project focuses on the analysis of the socio-demographic, economic and political transformations in the Siberian "Jewish street” during the first two decades of Soviet power. As a result of the project it is planned to prepare a monograph with the working title “Making Jews Soviet“: Bolshevik experiment in Siberian conditions, 1920-1930s”.