Russia Beginning Research
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This article is intended to provide the background needed to pursue an ancestry that extends back into the Russian Empire. Whether the person searching for their Russian ancestry does the work or has it done, he needs to have a basic understanding of what sources exist and where they are found in order to obtain and evaluate the information. We will look at the historical administrative environment, the archival environment, and the sources.
Localities
There are several geographic terms by which the records are organized because they represent the jurisdictions administered by government agencies. Click here for geographic terminology and to learn about various Russian jusrisdictions.
Often, the records of several modem provinces are found in the archive of a single province, whose capital happened to have been the capital of an imperial province.
Borders fluctuated greatly along the western edge of the Russian Empire. Click here for the table that identifies some of the more significant changes.
Gazetteers
There are several basic gazetteers that provided place name and jurisdictional information to make sense of these localities. To learn about them, see Gazetteers.
There are other gazeteers specific only to a certain region. Choose from the list below to find out more about what gazetter could be hlpful in your research.
- Baltic States
- Ukraine
- Western Ukraine
Research
The collection of the Family History Library is rapidly increasing for the area once comprised by the Russian Empire.
To research the microfilms, one needs to know some Russian. Other major languages of the records are Polish, German and Latin. With the assistance of gazetteers and other locality aids, one needs to determine the standard spelling of place names, determine the correct place if there are locations with the same name, and learn the intermediate jurisdiction. Once a filmed locality is identified in the catalog, a film can be retrieved from the collection.
The researcher can write to a Russian archive requesting information. A directory of archival addresses for all nations including Russia was published in 1992 by the International Council of Archives in volume 38 of Archivum. However, most archives are not staffed to do research for clients and only a few do it. The are limited reference aids and indices to help them find the records. The more provincial areas cannot read English and do not have copy machines.
Research can be conducted personally in the archives but the degree of success will depend largely on making prior arrangements so that the archive knows a researcher in coming. Even then access may be restricted by the disposition or mood of the archivist. Travel conditions and facilities are primitive in many areas-usually worse the further east one goes. Researchers are advised to hire a local guide/interpreter if they do not have native language skill. Research services may be available.