Overview of the funds and documents of the State Archive of Tomsk Oblast about the First World War refugees

The aim of this study is to give an overview of the funds and documents of the State Archive of Tomsk Oblast about refugees of World War I. The task was to study the foundations of institutions and organizations that were somehow involved in refugee issues in the period from 1915 until the early 1920s. The chronological framework covers the beginning of the mass arrival of refugees in Tomsk Province and the end of their re-evacuation to the homeland. In the study, funds of the following institutions were analyzed: 1) the Head of the Tomsk resettlement area; 2) Tomsk Provincial Committee on the Settlement of Refugees; 3) Tomsk Provincial Administration; 4) Tomsk Provincial Zemstvo; 5) Volost Zemstvo in the Province of Tomsk; 6) Tomsk Provincial Commissioner of the Provisional Government; 7) Tomsk Provincial Statistics Bureau; 8) the Labour Department of the Tomsk Provincial Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers, Peasants and Red Army Deputies; 9) Tomsk Provincial Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers, Peasants and Red Army Deputies; 10) the Executive Committee of the Tomsk Provincial Council of Workers, Peasants and Soldier Deputies. The most informative are the records of the Head of the Tomsk resettlement area and Tomsk Provincial Committee on the Settlement of Refugees. In the first there are lists of refugees by counties and townships for 1915-1916 and general data on refugees over the same period. The documents of the second fund can be divided into several thematic groups according to the information they contain: 1) data on the movement and distribution of refugees by counties, townships and cities of the province; 2) documents about the placement, arrangement and provision of different kinds of assistance to refugees; 3) documents about search of lost refugees; 4) information about the financial situation of refugees, the number of working people among them, the employment of refugees, etc.; 5) registration of refugees, including the family registration card; 6) organizational matters and correspondence of the Committee with the agencies on refugee issues; 7) applications and petitions of refugees on various issues: on the issuance of grants and loans, on travel documents, tracing family members, etc. 8) information on charity organizations providing assistance to refugees on the territory of the province. Documents of the other funds contains mostly statistical information, registration data and correspondence with agencies to resolve issues of recording and re-evacuation of refugees. To conclude, the author states that funds of the State Archive of Tomsk Oblast have a sufficient amount of materials in order to provide a complete picture of the situation and the state of refugees in the province. A comprehensive study requires documents from the archives of the neighboring regions and the federal archives, but for a regional research the complex of documents is quite representative.

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