Russia Civil Registration

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Russia

Civil Registration

How to Find the Records

Online Collections

• 1755-1917 : Russia Births and Baptisms - index
• 1793-1919 : Russia Marriages - index
• 1815-1917 : Russia Deaths and Burials - index

Wiki articles describing the above online FamilySearch collections are found at:

• Russia Births and Baptisms - FamilySearch Historical Records
• Russia Marriages - FamilySearch Historical Records
• Russia Death and Burials - FamilySearch Historical Records

Offices to Contact

Civil registration records are kept by civil registration offices in cities and towns.

• List of Russian Civil Registration Offices

Historical Background

Civil registration was instituted after the Russian Revolution. The acronym for the civil registration office was ZAGS, standing for acts of civil status.

These offices were established in the cities by 1919, then later in rural localities. Gaps in registration persisted until 1926. ZAGS offices often gathered original metriki back to the beginning of the century into their collections to have an earlier record of vital events and to supplement the civil registration. These are normally the local copy of the parish register.

Russian law requires that the vital records be transferred to regional archives 75 years after the date of creation. This has occurred in many instances but not always because of the limited space in the archives and bureaucratic inertia.

The czarist government issued a requirement in 1826 that rabbis, generally elected by a variety of Jewish communities, keep registration books of births, marriages, divorces and death. Russian Orthodox churches were under the same obligation.

Jews in Kovno and Vilna Guberniya were required to go to the synagogue to which they were assigned to register life events, and each year, the government authorities went to the synagogues to copy these registers. The records were written in Russian (Cyrillic.) Some, but not all records were then duplicated in Hebrew or Yiddish. Today all vital records stored in archives are copies. The original records, kept in synagogues, were destroyed by 1942, primarily by the Germans.

Vital records (births, deaths and marriages) are called Acts of civil state or Acts of civil status (акты гражданского состояния - akty grazhdankogo sostoyaniya) in Russia. These records are available only for relatives of a died person. Acts of civil status replaced Metricheskiye knigi (Parish registers) in 1918. All registers before 1918 are open for everyone.

Births, deaths and marriages must be registered by register office called Body of registration of acts of civil status (орган записи актов гражданского состояния - organ zapisi aktov grazhdanskogo sostoyaniya or орган ЗАГС - organ ZAGS for short) or the Palace of Marriages (Дворец бракосочетаний) for civil marriage ceremonies. The system is decentralized. Each Russian federal subject has its own regional body as a part of regional government.

The Unified state register of acts of civil status (EGR ZAGS, Единый государственный реестр записей актов гражданского состояния - ЕГР ЗАГС) maintained by the Federal Tax Service of Russia began operations since October 1, 2018.

The system of resident registration in Russia (and former propiska) maintained by centralized federal body is not related to this system.

Information Recorded in the Records

Births

• Name of the child
• Gender
• Date and place of birth and/or christening
• Names of the parents

Marriages

• Name
• Birth Date
• Age
• Spouse's Name
• Date
• Place

Deaths

• Name
• Gender
• Burial Date
• Burial Place
• Death Date
• Age
• Birth Date

References

In other languages: English | русский |