ONLINE NEWSLETTER (No. 6/2004 - February 2004)

Editor: Fran Bock

1912 Duma Voter Lists and Gubernskie Vedomosti: New Insights

by Shlomo Gurevich

It was exactly so: after three years of my research which included questioning of all my relatives of the older generation, Internet searches, the ordering of documents from archives in Minsk, Smolensk, Moscow and other cities, some questions about my family history remained unanswered, and I decided as last resort to check the 1912 Duma Voter Lists for Mogilev Gubernia, where my ancestors from the both sides lived and my parents were born. Why this as a last resort? Because I thought I had very little chance of finding there any of my family members, who were not known to be rich or in any way distinguished residents of their shtetls, Chislavichi and Monastyrshchina. Unfortunately, the Minsk Archives did not have these lists, and I decided to purchase a microfilm of the 1912 Mogilevskie Gubernskie Vedomosti newspaper from the Proquest company. It took about a month (since I paid for it through the Internet) for the microfilm to be delivered. But, in the end,  the day when it arrived has come. I opened the package, put the film into my old projector and quickly scanned it.  Like a very long serpent, the film was making rings around my table, and as it neared its end, the tension in my heart was growing. And, luckily, at last came the lists for Mistislavl uyezd which I was looking for. And here — unbelievably —  I found more than I had hoped to find — the names of my three great grandfathers and their brothers in Chislavichi and Monastyrshchina, some of which were new to me. I compared the data which I had now with that I had received from Minsk and realized the real importance of these lists, which I previously thought to be marginal but which appeared to be extremely valuable in my genealogical research.

Before I ordered the microfilm, I studied a couple of publications I had found about the Gubernskie Vedomosi and Duma Voter Lists as genealogical resources - Mr. Feigmanis’s article in Avotainu and Mr. Boonin’s at JewishGen website and Avotainu. Now I think that some important points must be added to the information contained in these two articles. All my conclusions were gained from 1912 Gubernskie Vedomosti of Mogilev Province, but I believe that they are true for other provinces as well.

1. 1912 Duma Voter Lists

For Mogilev Gubernia the 1912 Duma Voter Lists were published in special appendices to issues ## 60-62 of 1912 MG Vedomosti on the 1^st , 4^th and 8^th of August of that year, for all the 11 uyezds, separately for townspeople, landowners and peasants. There were few Jews in the two last categories, and we will deal only with townspeople. The townspeople were included in two lists in each uyezd — for 1^st Conference and for 2^nd Conference separately — to elect the main candidates for the Duma. There were also lists of additions and lists of exclusions. There were few Jews added, and those excluded just appeared on the Conference lists, so they are not within the scope of our study.

The persons officially allowed to vote were men of age 25 and older. They had to belong to one the following qualification categories: real estate or enterprise owners, apartment tenants who paid taxes, state servants who worked at various governmental offices like the post office, police, municipality, railroad, as well as teachers, priests, state pensioners, etc.

Persons of higher social and economic standing appeared on the lists for the 1^st Conference, those of lower standing for the 2^nd Conference. In different uyezds the minimum property value needed to meet this qualification requirement varied. Thus, in Mogilev the minimum for the 1^st Conference was 1000 rubles, and in Mstislavl we can find people whose property was pegged at 300 rubles. The state servants were almost entirely Christians (Russians, Poles, Germans, Belorussians,  Latvians, etc.). The number of voters appearing on the lists, the issue number, and the date of the 1912 MG Vedomosti where they were published can be found in Table 1 for each uyezd.

The property requirement for the 2^nd Conference was very low. Thus, we find people whose estimated property value was 25 rubles. All these facts imply that the Jewish population was widely represented on the Voter’s Lists. Let’s try to assess this quantitatively.

Let’s calculate the number of Jewish men aged 25 and over in 1912. By reason of a lack of Jewish demographic data for this year, we will use the data of the 1897 census found in Evreiskaya Encyclopedia and that of 1903 and 1909 compiled by L. Plotkin of Mogilev and published at Belarus SIG website. We will assess the Jewish population in 1912 by means of linear extrapolation of the 1903 and 1909 data. We will assume that the 1897 census 30,7% rate for men of ages 0-9, 23,0% rate for ages 10-19, 15.3% rate for ages 20-29, the number of Jews residing in towns and shtetls as 7,694 per 10,000 of total Jewish population and the ratio of men to women in towns and shtetls as 1000:1090, in other words substantially the same as in 1912.  We will also assume that the percentage of men of ages 20-24 was about half the value for ages 20-29, i.e.7.7%. Thus, the total percentage of Jewish men of age 25 and older was 38.6%. Assuming this rate for the entire gubernia in general and each uyezd in particular, we will calculate the number of Jewish men of age 25 and over who lived in shtetls and towns in 1912 (Table 2) and compare it with the number of Jewish voters appearing on the lists (Table 1).

It can be clearly seen that 22-64% of Jewish men over age 25 were on the lists in various uyezds, at an average of 37% for the whole gubernia, or more than one third. This correlates well with the assessment made on the basis of  the average number of members of Jewish family in that period (six members) — 24 to 71% in the uyezds, with an average of 41% for the whole gubernia.  But, if we compare the number of voters with the number of men after 40 and before 80, this percentage will be much higher, in some uyezds 100% and more, with a gubernia average of 76%, i.e. more than three fourths. We can surmise that younger Jewish men still did not possess property and were not registered as taxpayers; even when married, they lived mostly with the parents, so very often one household contained two or more related families. This situation is clearly illustrated by the revised lists, where the entire household is listed, and very often the children are older than 25. In my family, from the generation of my three grandfathers and their numerous brothers who were born in 1875-1895, none appears on the lists, though some of them in 1912 were older than 25. But my three great grandfathers and their brothers born in 1845-1865 do appear on the lists. All these facts prove, that the great majority of the Jewish families were represented by their heads on the Voter Lists.

Table 1. The number of voters appearing on the 1912 Duma Voter Lists for towns and shtetls of  Mogilev gubernia.

Table 2. The Jewish population of Mogilev gubernia in 1897-1912 and the percentage of those on the 1912 Duma Voter Lists vis-a-vis the total number of  Jewish men over 25.

“Well”, one can ask, “which information can I get if I even find on these lists someone belonging to my family?” It should be noted that even in various uyezds of the same gubernia, the information could vary slightly. For example, the table of Mstislavl uyezd list includes 5 columns:

One)         number of the entry,

Two)        full name (surname, first and — sometimes-second name, patronymic),

Three)    kind and — often — size of electoral qualification (in rubles),

Four)       ethnicity,

Five)         place of residence

In some uyezds the column of religion was added, in others the names were sorted according to their place of residence, though mostly an alphabetical order of names for the whole uyezd was retained.  The final list of those elected to vote for the 4^th State Duma from the name of Mogilev gubernia towns was published in 1912 MG Vedomosti issue # 81 on the 13^rd of October that year. It contains 25 names, 13 of them Jewish which equals 52%, less than the percentage of Jews on the lists. This can be explained by the fact that not all the Jews who appear on the lists actually took part in the elections and that some part of those who did voted for non-Jewish candidates.

3. Other information.

There is also other important  genealogical information  which can be found  in Gubernskie Vedomosti. The 103 issues of  MG Vedomsti published in 1912 (two issues a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays) contain the following:  lists of jury duty candidates, lists of trial defendants, numerous private and government advertisements about public real estate auctions, freight shipments from the Mogilev railroad station, loss of documents, searches for heirs, military conscription and police searches for wanted persons, mostly army deserters, etc. The first three categories are presented in Table 3, and the fourth in Table 4. The rest was published throughout the whole year and appeared in almost each issue of the newspaper.

 Table 3. Lists of jury duty candidates, lists of trial defendants and advertisements about public real estate auctions

Table 4. Advertisements about freight shipments from Mogilev railroad station

4. Conclusion.

1912 Gubernskie Vedomosti in general and Duma Voters Lists in particular have proven to be highly valuable sources for genealogical research covering the great majority of the Jewish families in the Pale of Settlement. This material is concise and readily accessible and can add much to any archival research.

References

1.  Mogilevskie Gubernskie Vedomosti, 1912, ## 1-103.

2.  Evreiskaya Encyclopedia, 1914, Vol. 11.

3.  H. D. Boonin. Gospodskaya Duma, Summer 1907; Voter Registration Lists. Avotainu, Vol.XVI, Number 2, Summer 2000.

4.  H. D. Boonin. Duma Voter List FAQ.

5.  A. Feigmanis. Gubernskie Vedomosti: A Genealogical Resource. Avotainu, Vol. XII, Number 4, Winter 1996.

6.  L. Plotkin. The Jewish population of Mogilev gubernia in uezds, towns and shtetls (1777-1926), .

7.  Krugosvet Encyclopedia, http://www.krugosvet.ru/.

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