The project is devoted to the impact of Soviet national and religious policies on the Jewish community of Berdychiv in 1920-s and early 1930-s. The aim is to clarify the local specifics of the process of Jewry’s Sovietization against the macrohistorical background of the early stages of building the USSR. The time frame is chosen to proceed the dynamics from the original Soviet ideas of nation construction to the Great Turn changes in the policies towards Jews on the example of the city of Berdychiv.
The theoretical foundation of my project is based on academic works on national and religious policy in the Soviet Union, modernization in the early USSR, history of Jews in the early Soviet Union as well as on studies by local historians of Berdychiv.
To implement the empirical aspect of the research, I plan to investigate official documents of Soviet governmental bodies, held in the archives of the Ukraine and Russia, and mass-media materials of the defined period as well as ego-documents of coevals who lived in Berdychiv in 1920 – 30-s.
Project leader: Yuliya Len, MA, University of Tarty (Estonia), program “Folkloristics and Applied Heritage Studies”.
In the picture: Kutkin, employee of the Berdychiv's museum in his office, 1920-s. Source: Archival fonds of Archaeology Institute, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.