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. In 1708 Peter the Great divided Imperial Russia into eight large provinces (gubernii). These were eventually subdivided into counties (uezd). In 1775 Catherine the Great increased the number of provinces to 40 (divided into an average of 10 counties). In 1797 each county (uezd) was divided into townships (volosti) and villages (derevnya or selo, distinguished by the fact that a selo normally had a church). This organization remained fairly stable though by the 20th century the number of states increased to 50 in European Russian (not including Finland, Poland, and the Caucasus). The provinces in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Far East corresponding to gubernii were called oblasti. In modem Russia, a district (oblast) is equivalent to an imperial province (guberniya). There are more districts in modem Russia than there were provinces in imperial Russia. Often, the records of several modem districts are found in the archive of a single district, whose capital happened to have been the capital of an imperial province. A region (raion) is the intermediate jurisdiction in modem Russia, taking the place of counties and town

Borders fluctuated greatly along the western edge of the Russian Empire. Click here for the table that identifies some of the more significant changes.