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Asia Russia

Guide to Russia, family history and genealogy parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.



---LOCATION---

Russia is a country that spans two continents, and spans eleven time zones. At 17,075,400 square kilometers (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area.

From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait.

The two most widely separated points in Russia are about 8,000 km (4,971 mi) apart along a geodesic line. These points are: a 60 km (37 mi) long Vistula Spit the boundary with Poland separating the Gdańsk Bay from the Vistula Lagoon and the most southeastern point of the Kuril Islands. The points which are farthest separated in longitude are 6,600 km (4,101 mi) apart along a geodesic line. These points are: in the west, the same spit on the boundary with Poland, and in the east, the Big Diomede Island. The Russian Federation spans nine time zones.

Because Russia covers such a vast area, as well as being so diversified, it is hard to define a specific typology for the country. Also, because the country lies in 2 separate continents, there is a diversity that relates to both continents.

Most of Russia consists of vast stretches of plains that are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Russia possesses 10% of the world's arable land. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, which at 5,642 m (18,510 ft) is the highest point in both Russia and Europe) and the Altai (containing Mount Belukha, which at the 4,506 m (14,783 ft) is the highest point of Siberia outside of the Russian Far East); and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes of Kamchatka Peninsula (containing Klyuchevskaya Sopka, which at the 4,750 m (15,584 ft) is the highest active volcano in Eurasia as well as the highest point of Asian Russia).

Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 km (22,991 mi) along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as along the Baltic Sea, Sea of Azov, Black Sea and Caspian Sea.

---HISTORY---

The nation's history began with that of the East Slavs, who emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Rus' ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus' lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century.

The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde, and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland in Europe to Alaska in North America.

Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Soviet Union, the world's first constitutionally socialist state and a recognized superpower, which played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II.

The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite, and the first man in space. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and is recognized as the continuing legal personality (the sole successor state) of the Union state.

---RELIGION---

While there are many established religions in Russia, historically the country has been Christian for centuries. The Russian Orthodox Church is traditionally said to have been founded by the Apostle Andrew, who is thought to have visited Scythia and Greek colonies along the northern coast of the Black Sea.

Orthodox Christian Constantinople's greatest mission outreach was to areas known as Kievan Rus that are now the states of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Christianity was introduced into Kievan Rus by Greek missionaries from Byzantium in the 9th century. In 863–869, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius translated parts of the Bible into Old Church Slavonic language for the first time, paving the way for the Christianization of the Slavs.

There is evidence that the first Christian bishop was sent to Novgorod from Constantinople either by Patriarch Photius or Patriarch Ignatios, circa 866-867 AD. Princess Olga of Kiev was the first ruler of Kievan Rus to convert to Christianity, either in 945 or 957. Undoubtedly influenced by his Christian grandmother and by a proposed marriage alliance with the Byzantine imperial family, Olga's grandson Vladimir I (c. 956-1015) prince of Kiev, from among several options, chose the Byzantine rite. Baptized in 988, he led the Kievans to Christianity.

While Russia lay under Mongol rule from the 13th (Genghis Khan's army entered Russia in 1220s) through the 15th century, the Russian church enjoyed a favored position, obtaining immunity from taxation in 1270. This period saw a remarkable growth of monasticism.

During the 15th century the Russian Church was pivotal in the survival and life of the Russian state. Such holy figures as Sergius of Radonezh and Metropolitan Alexis helped the country to withstand years of Tatar oppression, and to expand both economically and spiritually.

In 1686 after patriarch Parthenius IV was succeeded by Dionysius IV it was agreed to subordinate the Metropolia of Kiev to Moscow.

During the final decades of the imperial order in Russia many educated Russians sought to return to the Church and revitalize their faith. No less evident were non-conformist paths of spiritual searching known as God-Seeking. Writers, artists, and intellectuals in large numbers were drawn to private prayer, mysticism, spiritualism, theosophy, and Eastern religions.

The year 1917 was a major turning point for the history of Russia, and also the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian empire was dissolved and the Tsarist government - which had granted the Church numerous privileges – was overthrown. After a few months of political turmoil, the Bolsheviks took power in October 1917 and declared a separation of church and state. The government seized all church lands. Thus the Russian Orthodox Church found itself without official state backing for the first time in its history.

After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. On September 4, 1943, Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexius (Simansky) and Nicholas (Yarushevich) were officially received by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. This started a period of rapprochement between the communist state and the church that continue until the dissolution of the USSR.

Today,religion in Russia is diverse, with a 1997 law naming Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism as important in Russian history. Orthodox Christianity is Russia's traditional and largest religion, deemed a part of Russia's "historical heritage" in the law passed in 1997. About 95% of the registered Orthodox parishes belong to the Russian Orthodox Church while there are a number of smaller Orthodox Churches. However, the vast majority of Orthodox believers do not attend church on a regular basis.

---ECONOMY---

For most of its history, Russia has been an agrarian economy. Especially during the early part of the industrial revolution, the only real involvement of Russia was to build railroads across its vast territories.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were times of crisis for Russia. Not only did technology and industry continue to develop more rapidly in the West, but also new, dynamic, competitive great powers appeared on the world scene: namely The British Empire, the new Germany, and especially the nascent United States of America.

Although Russia was an expanding regional giant in Central Asia, bordering the Ottoman, Persian, British Indian, and Chinese empires, it could not generate enough capital to support rapid industrial development or to compete with advanced countries on a commercial basis. Russia's fundamental dilemma was that accelerated domestic development risked upheaval at home, but slower progress risked full economic dependency on the faster-advancing countries to the east and west.

At the start of the twentieth century Russia finally started to develop industrially, until the time of the Bolshevik revolution, when the country imploded for a while.

WWII initiated major changes, with the need to defend the mother country from Nazi Germany. With major help from the west, primarily from the USA, Russia became an industrial powerhouse. However actual output per capita as compared to the West was still very low, due to communist management philosophies.

Today, while agriculture is still a major economic driver, Russia has a developed, high-income market economy with enormous natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas. It has the 15th largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and the 6th largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). Since the turn of the 21st century, higher domestic consumption and greater political stability have bolstered economic growth in Russia.

---JURISDICTIONS---

Imperial Russia (Russian Empire) before 1917 was divided into gubernias or provinces. These were sub-divided into several uyezds or districts. Russia and Ukraine and other former Soviet republics were, and are still, divided into oblasts/provinces which were and are divided into raions/districts. Peripheral areas like the Caucasus sometimes use krai instead of raion for district. It is generally good to know both the old and the new jurisdictions in which a smaller place is located, because currently the FamilySearch Catalog uses the new jurisdictions for Ukraine, but the old ones for Russia. Archives all over the former Soviet Union concentrate their holdings according to oblast borders. Old documents refer to the old jurisdictions, and most of our Russian and Ukrainian microfilms are from the old Imperial time.

Current administrative division consist of 46 oblasts (oblastey, singular - oblast), 21 republics (respublik, singular - respublika), 4 autonomous okrugs (avtonomnykh okrugov, singular - avtonomnyy okrug), 9 krays (krayev, singular - kray), 2 federal cities (goroda, singular - gorod), and 1 autonomous oblast (avtonomnaya oblast') as follows.Although retaining a lot of similarities, administrative-territorial division and regions boundaries undergo substantial changes during the 20th century, affecting the records storage sites.

Note: Administrative divisions have the same names as their administrative centers (exceptions have the administrative center name following in parentheses)

---RESEARCH TOOLS---


 * Beginning Russian Research
 * Join our group of Russia researchers on Facebook
 * See tutorials on FamilySearch Learning Center forRussian Research and Reading Russian Handwritten Records
 * Calendar: Soviet
 * Emigration Records of Europe
 * Finding Places in the Former Russian Empire
 * boxpis.ru/
 * German Collections in Russian Archives
 * Guide to reading Old Church Slavonic
 * Russian Genealogical Word List and Resources by BYU*Russian Empire Genealogical Primer
 * Websites
 * Word List

Wiki articles describing online collections are found at:


 * Russia Births and Baptisms (FamilySearch Historical Records)
 * Russia Deaths and Burials (FamilySearch Historical Records)
 * Russia, Lutheran Church Book Duplicates (FamilySearch Historical Records)
 * Russia Marriages (FamilySearch Historical Records)
 * Russia, Samara Province Orthodox Church Records (FamilySearch Historical Records)
 * Russia, Tver Province Orthodox Church Records (FamilySearch Historical Records)
 * Russia, Tver Province Orthodox Confession Lists (FamilySearch Historical Records)

---CEMETERIES AND GRAVEYARDS---

As a general introduction to available information on cemeteries in Russia, the following tools may be helpful:


 * Wikipedia listing of Russian cemeteries


 * Cemeteries of St. Petersburg


 * Find Russian Heritage

---GENEALOGY SOCIETIES---

Within Russia itself, there is yet not too much interest in Family Genealogies. The following web sites may be helpful as an introduction:


 * The Imperial Russian Historical Society


 * Family Search, Russian Genealogy


 * Federation of Family History Societies