Minsk City Police

Part of the Lithuanian Kingdom from the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the mid-sixteenth century, Minsk was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1793, following the second partition of Poland. Under tsarist rule, the city became the capital of the Minsk province. From 1920 to 1991, it was the capital of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). At present, Minsk is the capital of the Republic of Belarus. The Records of the Minsk Jewish Community Council, or Kahal, are a fragment of the original archives of the Minsk Jewish community, which dates back to the sixteenth century. Most of the documents in this collection, which covers the tsarist period from the 1820s to the 1917 Russian Revolution, were assembled between the last decade of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The collection is of fragmentary nature, and consists of miscellaneous materials that relate to the role and activities of the Minsk Kahal in Jewish life; the relation between the Jewish body politic and local authorities; and between the Jewish body politic and the Jewish residents in the Minsk province