Zonal State Archives in Baranovichi

Description of holdings

Amount of holdings: 908 fonds, 243 946 items

Chronological scope: 1939-1941, from 1944 to the present (certain records from 1850-1857, 1909, 1921)

Geographical coverage:

• abolished Byten, Gorodishche, Kossovo and Telekhany districts of the abolished Baranovichi region
• Baranovichi (before 1957 Novaia Mysh), Gantsevichi, Ivatsevichi and Liakhovichi districts of the Brest region

Contents:

The main bulk of the holdings are the records created by local authorities, courts, law-enforcement agencies, enterprises and other institutions that reflect social, political and economic development in the region.

The Archives also holds records created by the institutions of the Baranovichi region in 1944-1953 and partly in 1939-1941.

Of the most interesting holdings are:

Fonds 131 – Collection of personal papers of the participants of the October Revolution of 1917, the revolutionary movement in Western Belarus 1921-1939, the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945, and the Heroes of Socialist Labour (35 files from 1909-2004). The collection includes reminiscences, autobiographies, and photographic documents.

Fonds 188 – Baranovichi Region Council of Deputies and Executive Committee (2 193 files from 1939-1941, 1944-1953). There are records on the kulaks families (better-off peasants); lists of higher and executive personnel of the district and town executive committees, and village councils from the years 1944-1952.

Fonds 192 – Baranovichi Town and District Temporary Administration (1 file from 1939-1940). This includes data on the economic status of the Baranovichi district, as well as lists of factories, plants, and mills with the names of their owners and location.

Fonds 497 – Resettlement and Repatriation Department at the Baranovichi Region Executive Committee (44 files from 1945-1953). There are alphabetical lists of the citizens who moved to Poland in 1944-1947.

Fonds 516 – Baranovichi District Council of Workers’ Deputies and Executive Committee (1 772 files from 1940, 1944-1998). This includes the characteristics of the peasant committee chiefs from 1940; certificates and data on damage caused by the Nazis to enterprises, institutions and individuals in the Novaia Mysh district; lists of persons who were sent to work in Germany and returned in 1944-1945; lists of persons hanged and shot by the Nazis in the territory of the district in 1944; lists of the Russian and Ukrainian citizens who were taken out by Germans in 1942-1943 and who lived in the district as on October 25, 1948; lists of families who arrived from Poland in 1944 and who moved to Poland in 1945; inventories and assessments of property owned by citizens who moved to Poland in 1944-1947; lists of local partisans and resistance members as on July 20, 1975; lists of executives of the district executive committee and the village councils from 1946-1949; data on the economic development in the Novaia Mysh district.

Fonds 577 – Planning Commission at the Baranovichi Region Executive Committee (121 files from 1944-1953). Of interest are the political-economic survey of the region for 1945-1949; register of shipping on the Neman River at the loading dock of the Minsk gubernia (province) in 1850-1857; lists of the region’s localities; a short guide to the Belarusian rivers and ponds from 1948.

Fonds 616 – Baranovichi Regional Commission for Assistance to the State Extraordinary Commission on Investigation of Nazi Crimes and Estimate of Nazi Damage in the Baranovichi Region (76 files from the years 1944 and 1945). Especially valuable are the lists of persons who were taken from the Baranovichi region (for 15 districts) for forced labour in Germany and lists of persons tortured by the Nazis during the Occupation; generalized data of the regional commission and certificates of the district commissions on individual crimes committed by the Nazis in the region in 1941-1944; short descriptions of the Nesvizh architectural buildings dating from 15th to17th centuries which were destroyed; 1944 lists of the Belarusians who collaborated with the Nazis.

Fonds 693 – Statistical Board of the Baranovichi Region (1 268 files from 1944-1953). There are passports of the towns of the Baranovichi region from 1948 and 1952; economic descriptions of the region’s districts as of January 1, 1941 and 1944; lists of enterprises, power stations, machine-and-tractor stations, collective, state and cooperative farms for each district from 1944-1952; lists of the region’s localities for 1945-1953, lists of houses and grounds in personal ownership as on May 1, 1945; maps of the region’s districts.

Fonds 1265 – Department of Social Security and Consumer Service for Families of Partisans and Servicemen at the Baranovichi Region Executive Committee (23 files from 1944-1946). The fonds includes WWII letters sent by the Soviet soldiers to their friends and relatives from the frontline.