Russia Notarial Records

Notarial records are records prepared by a notary. Notaries are important officials in Quebec, Louisiana, France, and other countries where a civil code based on Roman law is in force. Among other matters, notarial records deal with estates and inheritances. They are somewhat equivalent to probate records of North American states and, having to do with private property, were not needed in Communist Russia. '

The function of a notary has early beginnings in Czarist Russia. Neither the assembly nor the village elder had any judicial authority; but the village elder exercised, to a certain extent, the functions of a public notary, for he gave legal validity to private documents and deeds by affixing to them the village seal.