ANNOTATION: Novgorod, a contraction for novyi gorod (new town), was the most important settlement in the early history of the north Russian plain. Though the Russian Primary Chronicle speaks of the existence of Novgorod in the middle of the ninth century, extensive archaeological excavations conducted since the end of World War II have found no evidence of artifacts datable prior to the mid tenth century. The name of "new town" has persuaded historians to believe in an earlier establishment, an "old town," but no consensus exists for the location of the earlier foundation...

[READ MORE]

ANNOTATION: Smolensk, city in the western part of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, close to Belorussia; the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast (district) and one of the oldest Russian cities. Jews lived in Smolensk from the fifteenth century. Before World War II more than 13,000 Jews lived there, out of a total population of 156,677...

[READ MORE]

ANNOTATION: Krasnodar, capital of Krasnodar Krai (territory) in Northern Caucasia, in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. In 1926 the total population of Krasnodar was about 174,000 and its Jewish population was 1,746, which presumably had increased by 1941. By the time the city was occupied by the Nazis on August 9, 1942, thousands of refugees from the southern part of the Ukraine and the Crimea, Jews and non-Jews, had flocked into Krasnodar, in an effort to escape from the Germans...

[READ MORE]