Russia Genealogy

Guide to Russia ancestry, family history, and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, and military records.

Getting Started


Country Information
Russia is a country in Eurasia bordered by Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It was known as the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1991. The official language is Russian.

Jurisdictions
Imperial Russia (Russian Empire) before 1917 was divided into governorates (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.

List of the governorates created in 1708:

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.

Autonomous Okrugs

 * Chukotka (Anadyr')
 * Khanty-Mansi (Khanty-Mansiysk)
 * Nenets (Nar'yan-Mar)
 * Yamalo-Nenets (Salekhard)

Federal Cities

 * Moscow (Moskva)
 * Saint Petersburg (Sankt-Peterburg)

Autonomous Oblast
Yevrey [Jewish] (Birobidzhan)

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

More Russia Research Strategies
Research strategies give guidance on how to research or what records to search for first. Below are additional research strategy Wiki articles for Russia.
 * Germans from Russia
 * Class on Russian Research

More Russia Research Tools
Research tools can include resources that assist in locating correct records to search and determining the correct locality to search in. Below are links and Wiki articles to research tools in Russia.
 * Class on Reading Russian Handwritten Records
 * Russian Empire Genealogical Primer
 * German Collections in Russian Archives
 * Russia
 * Hamburg Passenger Lists
 * Emigration Records of Europe
 * Archival Maps of Russia
 * Perm Archives Database includes birth, marriage, death records, revision lists.
 * In memory of the heroes of the Great War of 1914-1918 Portal dedicated to the events and heroes of the First World War 1914 - 1918.
 * Lost Russian Family Database of political-terror victims in the USSR

FamilySearch Resources
Below are FamilySearch resources that can assist you in researching your family.
 * FamilySearch Community -- Russian Empire Genealogy research group
 * Facebook Communities - Facebook groups discussing genealogy research
 * Historical Records
 * Family History Center locator map

Research Tutorials

 * Search page
 * Introduction to Russian Research
 * Russian Germans in the North Caucasus
 * On Eagle’s Wings: Records of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Republics
 * The Volga German Settlements in Russia
 * Bessarabia Then and Now: Researching our ancestors and locating Helpful Resources
 * Reading Russian Handwritten Records
 * Lesson 1: The Russian Alphabet
 * Lesson 2: Russian Words and Dates
 * Lesson 3: Reading Russian Records
 * Russian Alphabet, Language and Handwriting  - Parts 1 and 2
 * Russian History, Geography, Records and Resources - Parts 1 and 2
 * Co Kraj To Obyczaj: Records of the Polish Partitions