Artificial Intelligence makes more than 2.5 million Russian archive records accessible to all

Russian genealogy is moving into the 21st century with the use of artificial intelligence to transcribe archive records.

The latest development comes from Yandex.ru, the most popular search engine based in Russia. It has posted more than 2.5 million records online from the Central State Archive of the City of Moscow, Joint State Archive of the Orenburg Region and State Archive of the Novgorod Region here and the records are transcribed along aside.

Those who don’t know Russian can easily use this database by downloading a web browser translator app such as Google Translate. And no, these images cannot be found on an English-language genealogy website.

(Here’s a sample of the artificial intelligence at work, with translation from Google Translate. Neither technology is perfect, but this is a great move for 2023.)

Users can go directly to search  births, marriages, deaths, confession sheets and revision tales (comparable to censuses) from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. The database doesn’t require payment nor registration from users. Images can’t be downloaded but it is possible to take screen shots of the scanned archive records.

The database can be searched by full names and names of towns and villages and then filtered by years, fonds, inventories and case titles.

Here are some tips on getting better search results without knowing Russian:

1. Use Google Translate to switch names from English to Russian. If Google Translate doesn’t work with particular names, try Transliterating English to Russian in One Step.
2. Have Google Translate in the next window for translating names and places. The results can be copied and pasted for translation. Downloading the Google Translate app or another web browser translator for your device is highly recommended.
3. Start the search with as much information as possible. If results don’t appear, take away one search keyword at a time.
4. If too many results appear, try to filter results by town or village.
5. Use quotes to narrow down results.
6. When a patronymic name (middle name derived from the father’s first name) is not known, use an *.
7. Remember in the 18th century that patronymic names didn’t end with ich for males and ovna/evna for females. The patronymic names mostly ended with ov for males and ova for females.
8. Remember that towns and villages can be spelled different than personally known. The birthplace of my great-grandfather is listed spelled randomly with an o and a on the end in a Russian database.
9. Open a document for copying and pasting results. Also, keep a list of people, surnames and villages/towns searched in a document.
10. If results can’t be found on direct relatives, try searching for cousins, no matter how distant. It sometimes takes a random cousin to bring new life to research.
11.  When particular people can’t be found, look for people with the same surnames and patronymic names from the same village and town. Those people could be unknown siblings of relatives.
12. Make screen shots of positive and potential results.

If nothing worth pursuing is found on Yandex Archives, keep waiting. The database is expected to grow as time goes on. Just this week, the Central State Archive of the Republic of Mordovia was just announced as an addition to the project. Yandex Archives is a major step in the right direction for Russian genealogy.

In other news for Russian genealogy, database In the Memory of the Heroes of World War I has been updated with about 150,000 additional records. A guide on using this database on Russian Empire soldiers without knowing Russian is posted here.

Another stash of records that just went online is 200 cases of births, marriages, divorces and deaths from the State Archives of Kyiv Region. The scans cover records dated 1919–1933 from Boryspil, Brovar, Vasylkiv, Myroniv, Obukhiv , Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi, Poliskyi, Skvirskyi and Stavyshtanskyi. (Please be patient with this link, due to war issues.)

Even more records from Kyiv Region are expected to be posted online throughout this year, thanks to the efforts of Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.

Free download-FLRUF civilrecordsamplestranslated Here is a guide to understanding Ukrainian civil records for birth, marriage and death records, which have categories translated into English.

Follow this blog with the top right button to catch the latest news in Ukrainian and Russian genealogy. It is going to be a great year for your genealogy.

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Invaluable scanned records from Russian and Ukrainian archives posted online