Kautz Family YMCA Archives

Resources (3)

• Records of YMCA international work in France (1869-1989; Bulk 1920s-1970s)

  4.7 Cubic Feet (13 boxes). ncludes correspondence, minutes, reports, financial documents, pamphlets, maps, journal and newspaper articles and other records of the YMCA movement in France, with the majority of the collection focused between the 1920s and the 1970s. A great deal of the collection concerns youth work done in France for Russian refugees as well as Paul B. Anderson's Russian Service supervision in Paris. Within this area of the collection is also material covering the YMCA Press in France and the printing that the press did for the Russian refugee population. United States YMCA assistance with Russian relief work and the YMCA Press is also documented within this portion of the collection. There is also documentation of Russia and the economic and social conditions of the USSR and Eastern Europe touching on events leading to World War I through the post-World War II iron curtain. Correspondence and reports involve James Stokes, Paul B. Anderson, Lawrence Edgar Denison Aplin, Ira Robert Constad, Tristan Mercier, Charles Gullion, Hugo Grassi, Nicholas T. Goncharoff and the Goncharoff project and Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev. Finding aid available: http://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/7/resources/967
  

• Records of YMCA international work in Russia and the Soviet Union and with Russians (1884-1989; Bulk 1900-1930)

  Records of YMCA work in Russia and the Soviet Union consist of reports, correspondence, financial records, and printed material. Early material consists primarily of correspondence among YMCA secretaries working in Russia, as well as correspondence and reports to James Stokes, John R. Mott, and other YMCA leaders in the Unites States on matters relating to programs, exchanges and visits, relations with the Orthodox Church, finances, and membership recruitment. Includes correspondence and reports from YMCA secretaries working in Russia and Western Europe, primarily from before the Revolution but also from later years when the YMCA was involved in the Russian emigre communities. Pre-revolutionary holdings deal mainly with the "Mayak" Society in St. Petersburg, founded by James Stokes in 1900, and closely tied to the American YMCA (it was also known as the Society for Cooperating with St. Petersburg Young Men in the Attainment of Moral and Physical Development) and with the "Student Work" of the YMCA in Russia. Some of the subjects covered are physical education and sports, general education (arithmetic, languages, music), and social service. From the start of World War I the YMCA was increasingly involved in humanitarian and relief work. Though headquartered in Petrograd, the YMCA and its War Prisoners' Aid division operated in such other cities as Moscow, Odessa, Kiev, Minsk, Kazan, Orenburg, Tashkent, Perm, Omsk, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Krasnoiarsk, Irkutsk, Chita, and Khabarovsk. It also helped Russian POWs in enemy hands. After the spring of 1917 (and the visit of the Root Mission in the summer), the YMCA worked more and more with the Russian army and engaged in war-related non-combat support. Among the administrators and secretaries of the YMCA Russian operations were Ethan T. Colton, Russell M. Story, Crawford Wheeler, Paul Anderson, Arthur Eugene Jenny, Reverend William L. Tucker, G. Sidney Phelps, Arthur P. Kempa, Raymond J. Reitzel, Franklin Gaylord, Sherwood Eddy, A. M. Craig, A. C. Harte, E. T. Heald, John R. Mott, Jerome Davis, Donald Lowrie, Louis Penningroth, and Herbert Sidney Gott. Correspondents with various YMCA offices and personnel: Maddin Summers, American consul in Moscow; Ernest L. Harris, consul in Omsk; and Boris Bakhmeteff, Russian ambassador in Washington. Toward the end of its work in Russia, the YMCA was particularly active in Siberia. There is much material on the Revolution and Civil War, relations with the Bolsheviks, contacts with Admiral A. V. Kolehak, the Czech troops in Siberia, the Cheka, and Russian emigres. Finding aid available: http://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/7/resources/928

• YMCA Russian publishing work files (1951-1970s)

  5.4 Cubic Feet (6 boxes). Includes correspondence, photos, manuscripts, manuscript rejections, author information, desk diaries, lists, graphs, catalogue cards, minutes, financial and administrative reports, pamphlets, publicity and journal and newspaper articles recording the actions surrounding YMCA involvement in publishing for post-World War I Russian diaspora, including the Chekhov Publishing House, the YMCA Press,and Les Editeurs Reunis (United Publishers) depository and bookstore, primarily from the files of YMCA World Service Executive Secretary Paul B. Anderson. Lists included within this information consist of inventory and authors, as well as individual sites, regions and countries that were distribution areas. The majority of the collection refers to the Chekhov Publishing House. Finding aid available: http://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/7/resources/994