Russian Letter Writing Guide

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Your letter should include:


 * The date (at the top)
 * The name and address of the addressee
 * A greeting
 * A brief introduction
 * Biographical information about your relative
 * A short, specific, genealogical request
 * Referral request(s)
 * A comment about payment
 * Closing remarks
 * Your signature
 * Your return address (including your country).

Be brief and simple. Do not ask for too much at one time.

The following English-to-Russian translations will help you compose your letter. Read the sentences in English and choose those that best express what you want to say. Be sure that your sentences are arranged logically. You may want to write your letter first in English using the following sentences, then replace the sentences with their Russian translations.

Do not use this guide as the letter itself! That might insult the recipient and lessen the chance of a reply.

Writing Dates
Write dates in the European style: day-month-year. Write the name of the month out and write the year in full. For example, write 10 декабрь 1889, not 12-10-89 or even 10-12-1889.


 * January - январь
 * February - февраль
 * March - март
 * April - апрель
 * May - май
 * June - июнь
 * July- июль
 * August- август
 * September- август
 * October-октябрь
 * November- октябрь
 * December-декабрь

Biographical Information
6. (Give information about your ancestor using the terms from the following list.)

Follow-up
(Use these sentences in follow-up letters as needed.)

Archival Terminology
During the period of Soviet rule, archives centralized and preserved a vast holding of church and vital records dating from 1721-1917. Access had now been granted to this material though the degree of availability varies from archive to archive.

In the archives of the former Soviet Union, material is filed by record group - fond. A record group contains the records of a specific organization, portion of an organization, or individual. Archives also create collections as opposed to record groups, in which records of different organizations or individuals are filed together on some logical or thematic basis. Thus, in some archives, vital records of different religions can be filed together.

A single volume, file, or even a single sheet of paper is an item - delo. Each item is given a title based upon the record type and contents. Items are usually filed chronologically by the ear liest year of information found in that item. Within a particular year, the items are supposed to be filed by degree of significance.

An inventory - opis is a list of items in a record group or collection. While filing by record group reflects authorship, description by inventory reflects content, equivalent to table of contents in a book. The inventory identifies title assigned to each item, the sequential number, and information on inclusive dates and number of pages. The inventory is the key to finding records in an archive. It usually is not available outside of the archive. There may be more than one inventory for a record group. These sometimes reflect different types of material or different accessions of records for the same institution. The decision as to what to include in an inventory will vary significantly from archive to archive.

The result of the above practices is that each item in an archive is defined by three numbers: fond, opis, and delo. The number at each level is simply a sequential number. Later insertions are given an alpha designation after the number such as 21a, 21b, etc.

akt official document, act aktovaia kniga register delo basic classification unit edinitsa khraneniia storage unit, smallest unit of a fond fond basic organizational grouping in an archive gramota a deed, charter, official document list folio, leaf, sheet opis’ subunit of a fond, series; or finding aid putevoditel’ finding aid to an archive rukopis’ manuscript sbornik collection (misc.) sobranie collection (artificial)

Writing to an Archive
Do not assume that archive employees will be able to speak and/or read English. As a general rule of thumb, you should write your request in the language of the archivist - for example, if you are writing to an archive in Russia, you should write your request in Russian. If you are writing to an archive in Ukraine, you should write your request in Ukrainian or Russian (or both!). You can include a copy of your letter in English below the Russian translation. If the archive writes back in English, you may correspond in English.

You do not have to speak Russian in order to write to a Russian archive. In general, online translators such as Google Translate can be useful as long as you use short, simple, and concise sentences. Complex ideas or flowery words can be difficult to translate. You may want to follow the general outline below and fill in the blanks with information specific to your situation. Some of the blanks require you to put words in genitive or prepositional case. To learn more about this, please see the Reading Russian Documents: Deciphering the Handwriting and Understanding the Grammar "How to" guide.

Archive Research Request Example
Директору архива ГАВО

От Джейн До (Jane Doe), janedoe@email.com

Заявление

Добрый день!

Прошу Вас мне помочь в генеалогическом поиске. Мой предок, Иоганн Шмидт/Johann Schmidt, eвангелического-лютеранского вероисповедания, родился в Гречинной Луке/Валтере/Walter, в 1 января 1860 г. Прошу, используя имеющиеся в Вашем архиве метрические книги в ф. 176, о. 1, ед. хр. 4, чтобы, сообщить мне сведения о его родителях. Пожалуйста, пришлите мне копии имеющихся документов. Оплату гарантирую.

С уважением,

Джейн До (Jane Doe)