Age and family structures among the Jews of Mitau, Kurland, 1833–1834

The article analyzes an 1834 listing of the Jewish inhabitants in the city of Mitau in the province of Kurland, one of the Baltic provinces (the other two were Estland and Livland) of the Russian Empire. From Catherine the Great's reign onward, the Jewish population of the Baltic provinces rose steadily throughout the 19th century, but microstudies of Jewish communities in the region are virtually nonexistent, especially for the first half of the century. The Mitau list shows that the Jewish population there was very young, with about 45% being in the age group 0–14. Age at first marriage for males was about 24 years, and for females 21. From about age 35, 93% of males and 97% of females were married. The mean size of the family group was 5.8 persons, and about a third of all families were either extended (containing unmarried relatives beyond the nuclear family) or multiple (more than one kin-linked conjugal family unit). Judging by kinship terms in the source, the kin system tilted toward patrilineality, as would be expected. These characteristics need to be compared to other Jewish communities before and after 1834—in the Baltic area and surrounding regions—but the paucity of local studies suggests that some time will pass before the Mitau findings can be placed in an adequate comparative framework.     

Criteria for compensating for the impacts of large projects: The impact of british columbia's revelstoke dam on local government services

This article presents the criteria used to screen compensation claims generated by the construction of a large hydroelectric dam on the Columbia River. It examines the issues that emerged as a result of the flawed negotiation procedure that had secured only vague commitments by the project developer. The case study illustrates the practical concerns that arise when applying microeconomic concepts to help resolve contentious issues. The article concludes with a discussion of how the context of the impact assessment and negotiation procedures can affect its outcome.     

The 1881 census in the Russian Baltic provinces: An inventory and an assessment

The 1881 census of the Russian Baltic provinces of Livland, Estland, and Kurland was the first modern-type systematic population enumeration in the Baltic area. It had been preceded by enumerations of other kinds—land cadastres that included aggregate population counts (during Swedish control of the area) in the 17th century, and fiscal revisions (during Russian control of the area) that did list residents by name but did not follow any principles of modern census-taking. The Baltic German politico-economic elite, which controlled public affairs in the Baltic provinces, decided to carry out a census of a modern kind, and produced the 1881 count. Although initially the initiative was coordinated by the statistical specialists of the three provinces, the publication of results was decentralized, resulting in a series of volumes that supplied different tables for each province. The article analyzes the contents of the census, some of its shortcomings, as well as its strengths.     

Migration,households, and agrarian reform in the Baltic provinces of Russia: 19th and 20th centuries

Earlier research has shown that migration flows affect household size and that these measures in turn are affected by local and regional legal systems that seek to regulate migration. This article explores these connections in those areas of the 19th century Russian Baltic provinces of Livland and Kurland that in the 20th century became the country of Latvia. Different data bases are used to link variables during the decades after the agrarian reforms of the 1816–1819 period, in the decades after the 1860s reforms that made possible the purchase of farmland by peasants, and in the decades after 1920 when the new country of Latvia nationalized land heretofore owned by estates and redistributed it to landless peasants and small farmers. The findings are tentative because the data sources differ substantially from period to period, but the present analysis suggests strong enough connections between agrarian reform, migration, and household size and structure to require a more thorough project.     

Age and family structures among the Jews of Mitau,Kurland, 1833–1834

The article analyzes an 1834 listing of the Jewish inhabitants in the city of Mitau in the province of Kurland, one of the Baltic provinces (the other two were Estland and Livland) of the Russian Empire. From Catherine the Great's reign onward, the Jewish population of the Baltic provinces rose steadily throughout the 19th century, but microstudies of Jewish communities in the region are virtually nonexistent, especially for the first half of the century. The Mitau list shows that the Jewish population there was very young, with about 45% being in the age group 0–14. Age at first marriage for males was about 24 years, and for females 21. From about age 35, 93% of males and 97% of females were married. The mean size of the family group was 5.8 persons, and about a third of all families were either extended (containing unmarried relatives beyond the nuclear family) or multiple (more than one kin-linked conjugal family unit). Judging by kinship terms in the source, the kin system tilted toward patrilineality, as would be expected. These characteristics need to be compared to other Jewish communities before and after 1834—in the Baltic area and surrounding regions—but the paucity of local studies suggests that some time will pass before the Mitau findings can be placed in an adequate comparative framework.     

The Commission of Historians in Latvia: 1999 to the present

In 1999, the President of Latvia, Guntis Ulmanis, created a Commission of Historians and charged it with investigating the nature and consequences for Latvians and Latvia of the two occupations (the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany) the country experienced during the years of World War Two and afterwards. Special focus was to be direct to the Holocaust and to the multiple forms of repression practiced by the Soviet Communist regime. The Commission consisted of some 13-15 local, regional, and international scholars with specialized knowledge and, in some cases, personal experience, with the double occupation. The findings of the Commission were to be published in the form of a book series, with each volume devoted to a particular topic and containing reports delivered at international conferences or generated by ongoing research. The historical knowledge thus accumulated was to be disseminated widely, in the hope that it would become a basis for further research on this crucial and still-controversial period of Latvian history. A quantitative analysis of the twenty-seven Commission volumes published to date offers a capsule view of the Commission’s research efforts and research strategies, describes the subjects covered so far, and summarizes some of the criticism attracted by the Commission as well as its contributions to the sum total of Latvian history.