Wiki site details records of Ukrainian archives on a user-friendly and searchable site

On February 24, 2024 By Vera MillerIn Discovering Documents, Genealogy, Technical Help3 Comments

Trying to figure out the records that exist at Ukrainian archives is challenging for those who don’t know Ukrainian. Archives in Ukraine don’t have a standard format for how they set up their websites.

Thanks to this Wiki site, the struggle is much easier. The website is in Ukrainian but it is the easiest way to view the lists of fonds (sets of records) at many Ukrainian archives.

(This Wiki site can be easily viewed in English by downloading Google Translate as an extension to your web browser or use this link to view the site in English. The only disadvantage of using Google Translate is that too many times places and surnames will be translated into common words, not into the letter-by-letter transliteration for English.)

Thankfully, the Wiki site has a search engine to make it even easier to use the resource. A search engine is available for the entire Wiki, in addition to search engines for archives within the Wiki. Keep a window open with Google Translate next to the Wiki site to translate keywords into Ukrainian for the search engines.

The lists of fonds are broken into three groups: record sets before the Soviet period, the period after 1917 and communist party and Komsomol organizations. Not all archives have lists of fonds for the communist party and Komsomol organizations.

Once a fond of interest is found, copy and paste the fond listing in Ukrainian and English into a Word document. Then post in Ukrainian genealogy groups on Facebook to see if any members are familiar with the records from the fonds. For a thorough list of Eastern European-themed genealogy groups, check out the Genealogy on Facebook page.

The simple way to get the site to switch back and forth between Ukrainian and English is to click on the Google Translate app symbol at the end of the address bar and click on Ukrainian or English.

If nothing is found with the above tips, use the find tool in your web browser to locate keyword matches within a particular page. On Windows-based computers, press Ctrl F together and copy and paste keywords in Ukrainian into the search box.

When results are not found, start taking one letter at a time from the end of each keyword. The grammar case of the keywords translated on Google Translate could be different from what the grammar case being used on the Wiki page. Up to the last three letters could be within the spelling difference, causing nothing to be found. For example, Kaniv district likely will be translated by Google Translate as Канівський повіт but the listing of a fond on the Wiki site will have it written as Канівського повіту.

Besides the fonds being listed for Ukrainian archives, the Wiki also has a list of fonds for the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, a thorough section for Jewish genealogy resources and scans of audit tales (records similar to census records) for Volyn Province and Kyiv Province.

I know it is challenging to use websites in Ukrainian but it is well worth developing a comfort level with these websites. It saves money on genealogy research and the joy of being the one to find the discoveries, not paid researchers, is priceless.

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A look into a Ukrainian archive’s struggle to keep its posted records online

On November 25, 2023November 25, 2023 By Vera MillerIn Communist era records, Digitizing Efforts in Ukraine, Discovering Documents10 Comments

It was almost two years ago when I began following more closely the archives in Ukraine and Russia that were posting scanned records online. The State Archives of Kharkiv Region was one archive that got my attention for posting its records online.

Now, the efforts of the State Archives of Kharkiv Region will be mostly unseen because the archive has run out of space for its website. I knew something was up at the Kharkiv archive one month ago when my links to Kharkiv Jewish birth, marriage, divorce and death records from 1854-1915, Kharkiv Metric Records, and Auditing Tales of Kharkiv Province came back as pages with “ERROR 404. PAGE NOT FOUND”.

I was hoping all those scanned records were just moved to another page but nope. The records are permanently gone from the archive’s website. I stopped myself from impulsively posting on this blog to just announce these records vanished from the archive’s website. (The Kharkiv archive still has pedigree books, S oviet-era persecution records, alphabetical catalogs of births, marriages, divorces and deaths for the 1920s-1930s and the year 1940 on this page and another, and Nazi occupation records. Descriptions of archive record cases up until 1917 can be found here and descriptions of record cases for the Soviet era can be found here.)

Back in the day, I was a newspaper reporter so I knew this situation needed more understanding about what is happening at the archive. My goal for writing about this situation is for people to understand the struggle involved to modernize the Ukrainian archives.

Thankfully, the State Archive of Kharkiv Region and Anatloii Khromov, the director of State Archive Service of Ukraine, have been gracious enough to answer my questions about this situation.

Before I contacted Khromov, I saw that the State Archive Service of Ukraine announced that “Due to the fact that the limit of filling the website of the State Archive of the Kharkiv region has actually been exhausted…” on Oct. 30 as part of a press release on the archives’ digitizing efforts for the month of October. I appreciated that there was honesty about the situation.

I learned that the State Archives of Kharkiv Region’s web server is a mere 200 megabytes, way smaller than hard drives of laptops sold on Amazon.

Thankfully the State Archives of Kharkiv Region is participating in the Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online project. Wasabi Cloud Storage is providing the archive with free unlimited storage for three years. Almost 158,000 digitized documents that consume 8.6 terabytes are safe in cloud storage that only state archives employees only can access.

Now Khromov and the State Archives of Kharkiv Region say a significant portion of metrical books and revision lists (census-like documents) are posted on FamilySearch but I struggled to find the Jewish records on FamilySearch. (Thankfully, a reader found the Jewish records on FamilySearch here.)Both told me that any individual or organization can acquire any scanned records through requests to the Kharkiv archive.

The State Archives of Kharkiv Region still hasn’t signed an agreement to have FamilySearch International digitize its record. FamilySearch did photograph some records of the archive about 20 years but more work needs to be completed. Hopefully, a contract will be signed in the near future, especially when Kharkiv is the second largest city of Ukraine.

The situation at the State Archives of Kharkiv Region gives insight why it has taken so long to get Ukrainian archives records online. It makes me wonder how many more archives in Ukraine just don’t have the technology to get many of its records online. I wonder when the archives will ever have the budgets to get better technology, thanks to the war from Russia.

That’s why the efforts of FamilySearch, Alex Krakovsky, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have been so vital to getting Ukrainian archives into the 21st century. Millions of records are online for free thanks to this combined effort.

Khromov also deserves a lot of credit for working with the archives to sign contracts with FamilySearch and acquiring equipment and supplies from foreign partners to modernize Ukrainian archives and securing the records during the war.

The struggle at the State Archives of Kharkiv Region shows the importance of appreciating how much already has been posted online from Ukrainian archives. Also, let’s not forget that these archives were once closed to the public for too long and now the archives are releasing records from the Soviet era that reveal the horrors that put fear into the hearts of the Ukrainian people.

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Newly added records and databases offer some treasures for Russian genealogy

On October 21, 2023 By Vera MillerIn Communist era records, Discovering Documents4 Comments

Some treasures of records and databases are finally online, thanks to the work of Russian archives and other ongoing independent projects. It’s been a slow process to move Russian archives into the 21st century but it’s a gift to find more online records and databases from Russia.

It is highly recommended to use a language translator app for your web browser such as Google Translate, a free app, to view these websites. The free records and information on the below websites will not be found on any subscription genealogy websites. Searching these databases is as simple as translating names of people and places on Google Translate, copying the translations and pasting them into the search boxes.

The effort to find these new online records and databases took a week of searching each region of Russia. I picked the most useful ones for Russian genealogy.

Here are the great finds from Russia:

The Yandex Archive’s project has expanded to almost 7 million records that are scanned and transcribed by artificial intelligence onto a searchable database. Now records from the State Archive of Novgorod Region, Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, State Archive of Saratov Region and the Republic of Mordovia can be found on this database, which already had records from regions of Moscow, Orenburg and Novgorod. Learn more about this database and how to use the database without knowing Russian from this post.
The Great Inventory database has almost doubled in size since this blog reported about the project back in May. Now more than 550,000 listings of fonds (sets of records) at archives in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania can be found in this database. The listings from Ukrainian archives for the regions of Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Chernihiv were recently added to the database. Learn more about this database and how to use the database without knowing Russian from this post.
The Central State Archives of Moscow Region has introduced two important databases. One has more than 95,000 indexed records from the registry offices, which have been documenting births, marriages, divorces and deaths since the 1920s. The database provides the following information: date of event, place of event, parents of individual documented and the exact file location within archives. The second database is indexed records of births, marriages and deaths from parish books. There are almost 20,000 people in this database.

Evacuated Children– About 1,500 children from boarding schools in Moscow and the Moscow region are documented in this database. These children were evacuated during World War II from 1941-1945 to the Komi-Permyak National District. The database provides the following information on the children: year of birth/age, gender, place of residence before evacuation, place of relocation, parents’ information and exact file location within archives.
The State Archive of Oryol Region has created a searchable database, Participants in the Oryol-Kursk Battle, with more than 900 soldiers documented. The database, introduced in July, has the full name, birth year, birthplace, residence, awards and exact file location within archives, in addition to photos of some soldiers. The information also can be viewed in an alphabetical index.
Lists of settlements in the Vyatka province, Kirov Province, 1905– The database can be searched by village names and other criteria through advanced searches. The results will identify the exact location of villages by neighborhood and parish and where village records are located within the Central State Archive of Kirov Region.
The State Archive of Kemerovo Oblast– The archive has opened an online portal for its scanned records, which can be viewed for free after completing registration. Scanned records are listed here but they must be viewed in the portal.
Electronic local history encyclopedia of the Lipetsk Region– The information on villages is organized by alphabetical order. Users can find the sources of information in the State Archive of Lipetsk Region from the database.
The State Archive of Ivanovo Region has the goal of uploading more than 300,000 pages of records online this year on its electronic archives portal. The list of digitized records can be found here.
The State Archive of Tomsk Region is maintaining a database of evacuees of World War II that can be searched.
The State Archive of the Altai Republic has digitized metric books from Maima of the Gorno-Altai Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church for 1875-1899. The project involved more than 3,000 sheets of records. This effort is part of a bigger project to digitize about 29,000 sheets of records (mostly birth, marriage and death records) for the archive’s electronic database of records that is still in the works.
The State Archive of the Altai Republic will release a database on its website in early 2024 on more than 2,000 residents who faced Soviet-era persecutions.
The State Archive of the Altai Republic has updated its database of more than 4,000 citizens of the former USSR citizens who were relocated to the region during WWII. The database has Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Estonians. Citizens came as far as Latvia, Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) and Kursk.
More than 2.4 million records on Soviet-era persecution victims have been declassified by Kazakhstan officials. The records are dated from 1929 to 1956. The process to make these records public took a three-year process with the help of a state commission created in fall 2020 to give all the victims rehabilitation (exoneration from the false crimes), according to a Deutsche Welle article. To learn more about the significance of Kazakhstan in Soviet-era persecutions, see this article in English for more information.

The variety of information and records going online from Russia is impressive. Tomorrow, Oct. 22, is the 12th anniversary of Find Lost Russian & Ukrainian Family blog going online. I never imagined that so much would be online from Russia, which is breaking my heart with the war in Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine, the birthplace of my wonderful mother!

Don’t forget to check out Scanned Russian and Ukrainian Archive Records and Free Databases, which are both completely updated with new resources.

Stay tuned to more updates on Russian and Ukrainian archive records and databases going online by following this blog with the top right button.

Birth record gives important details on family’s WWII escape from the Soviet Union

On July 29, 2023 By Vera MillerIn Communist era records, Discovering Documents, My Journey8 Comments

I have been impatiently waiting for my mother’s birth record to arrive at the city archive for Kyiv. The record still hasn’t arrived at the archive but I got the record this week for free without a hassle.

Ukrainian birth, marriage and death records become public record after 75 years. I assumed that if the records weren’t at the archives, the records weren’t available to the public. Wrong.

Had I known this, I could have gotten my mother’s birth record 6 years ago. All the waiting has resulted in getting the birth record from the WWII era during another war in Ukraine.

My contact in Kyiv filled out a simple form and got the record on a photocopy the same day. I knew when my phone started dinging at 4:30 a.m. my contact was in the registry office. Thankfully, I also did the math for when my great-grandfather died to confirm 75 years had passed and his death record arrived in my email with my mother’s birth record from my contact.

My mother only just saw her original birth record. It’s a family mystery where her birth record went since she left Kyiv in 1943 as a baby and it’s a miracle the record hasn’t been destroyed during this war.

A few pieces of information on her birth record helps me complete the story of my mother’s escape out of Soviet Ukraine with her parents and maternal grandparents, aunt and uncle.

Her parents are listed as Volksdeutsche, people of German ancestry living outside of Germany. My grandfather’s parents were both Russian but my grandmother was half German from her mother and half Russian from her father. Noting both my grandparents as Volksdeutsche shows, I believe, that the Ukrainian government knew of my family’s plans to leave Ukraine or had marked them as Volksdeutsche to make them feel unwelcome in the city occupied by the Germans.

The birth record also lists the address of my grandparents, the apartment next to my maternal great-grandparents. I thought my grandparents were registered at another address six months earlier but a search on Google led me to a Wikipedia page that shows the street also was known by another name.

My mother’s birth record also identifies my grandfather as a construction engineer employed in a sculpture’s workshop and my grandparents’ marriage record number. Seeing the notation of the marriage record shows the importance of getting all possible records when struggling to find information.

My contact wasn’t surprised my mother’s birth record and great-grandfather’s death record were still sitting in the registry office. If the city archive in Kyiv had enough room to store these records, he said, they would have been moved years ago.

This is going to be the reality for many registry offices throughout Ukraine, not just Kyiv. When the Ukrainian government built these archives, they also were not thinking of foreigners and their citizens requesting records to work on their family trees.

This latest adventure started about two months ago when I annoyingly again contacted the city archive in Kyiv, asking if it had received birth records from 1942. The archive said not yet and offered the email address of the registry office, but I knew I couldn’t get the record by email from the registry office.

I found an email address for an office that could officially clarify the process for obtaining my mother’s birth record. An employee informed me that any Ukrainian citizen (read genealogy researchers, relatives or friends) can obtain my mother’s birth record from the registry office.

Now if I attempted to get the record on my own, I would have been directed to contact a consulate general/consular office and most likely asked to pay a fee.

It’s amazing that Ukraine has opened up this much for records. It was just 10 years ago that I could only get an extraction of an 1890 marriage record sitting in a registry office in eastern Ukraine.

What’s even crazier is that my family tree from the former USSR goes back to the 1500s on some lines but I have another 12 years of waiting to see my deceased father’s birth record from Russia.

Follow this blog with the top right button to see my journey in Ukrainian and Russian genealogy unfold and learn the tips needed to find records and information for Ukrainian and Russian genealogy.

Flow of Ukrainian archive records online speeds up for genealogy research

On June 24, 2023September 29, 2023 By Vera MillerIn Communist era records, Digitizing Efforts in Ukraine, Discovering Documents9 Comments

By now, I was hoping the Russian war in Ukraine would be over, but at least the efforts to digitize Ukrainian archive records are going strong.

Back in March, Anatolii Khromov, the director of State Archive Service of Ukraine, had a meeting with Alexander Sichkarenko, a FamilySearch official for Ukraine, and 17 directors of archives who have not signed agreements for FamilySearch to scan their genealogical records. The pressure is on the archives to get moving so the records are digitized for a modern Ukrainian archive system.

FamilySearch just began digitizing records in late April at the State Archives of Odesa Region to get 42 fonds (sets of records) online. Not only are records being digitized at Ukrainian archives and scans being posted onto Family Search, but the searchable databases of Ukrainian records on FamilySearch are being updated. Check out the progress here. Remember to double-click on “Last Updated” on the right to see the most recent additions.

Besides working with FamilySearch, the State Archive Service of Ukraine is collaborating with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to scan records. The museum has the goal of posting 10 million records from Ukrainian archives. The first million records were made available last summer on the museum’s website.

Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv also has an agreement to scan Ukrainian archive records. Its database of scanned records recently reached more than 3.2 million records. These records cover people of various backgrounds.

The latest addition of scans come from State Archives of Mykolaiv Region, State Archives of Chernihiv Region, State Archives of Sumy Region, State Archives of Mykolaiv Region and State Archives of Kyiv Region.

Meanwhile, the archives are busy with various projects.

The State Archive Service of Ukraine also continues to update its Ukrainian Martyrologist of the XXth Century, a database of more than 113,000 people to document persecution of Ukrainian citizens during the 1920s-1950s. The update includes records from state archives of Zhytomyr, Poltava and Sumy regions.

Just on June 16, the State Archive of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast began scanning records on Jewish communities from the interwar period and the time period of the Holocaust.

The State Archives of Kyiv Region have been hard to keep up with their posted scanned records. Just yesterday, 100 cases with birth, marriage, divorce and death records were posted for the former districts of Baryshivskyi, Borodyanskyi, Vyshhorodskyi, Volodarskyi, Zgurivskyi, Ivankivskyi , Kagarlytskyi, Makarivskyi and Myronivskyi for 1936–1937, in addition to Polisky district for 1936 and Fastiv district for 1933–1935.

Only on June 16, the archive posted 118 cases from the former districts of Bilotserkivskyi, Boryspilskyi, Brovarskyi, Vasylkivskyi, Obukhivskyi, Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi, Fastivskyi, Chornobylskyi and Yagotynskyi, in addition to Berezan for 1927–1935. These scans are among the more than 4,100 listings for scanned records from the State Archives of Kyiv Region posted here.

(Those who can’t read Ukrainian records should download this file (FLRUF civilrecordsamplestranslated) for keywords translated into English in the civil records.)

Here’s other important activities at the Ukrainian archives:

The State Archives of the Mykolaiv Region announced in February that it received 667 cases of Soviet era persecution files dated for the years 1938-1972. The location of the fond (set of records) is P-6342. Hopefully, these records will be posted or indexed online soon.
The State Archives of the Volyn Region now has more than 2,000 Soviet era persecution files available to view online. The cases are listed by the victims’ names and are available as PDF files here. The archive also posted more scans from Lutsk City Administration records.
The State Archives of Dnipropetrovsk Region posted scans from 1900-1920 for the Church of God’s Mother of All Sorrowful Joy at the Provincial City Hospital, Katerynoslav, scans from 1893-1900 for the Preobrazhenska Church, Tomakivka village, Katerynoslavsky District, and scans from 1884, 1885, 1889, 1890-1903 for the Mykolaiv Church, village of Trituzne, Katerynoslav District.
State Archives of Kharkiv Region posted birth, marriage, divorce and death records from Bogodukhiv and Shevchenkiv districts and records listing residents of Kharkiv during Nazi occupation.
Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Kyiv posted scans from the Kyiv Orthodox Consistory from the 1800s to the early 1900s, scans of records on the Cossack state from the 1700s and scanned books of the Zhytomyr Town Court for the 16th to 17th century.
Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv posted 50 books from the Zhydachiv city court (Fond 7) and 360 cases of metrical books of the Roman Catholic faith (Fond 618) since January. The records can be found here.

The best part of these efforts to modernize Ukrainian archives is that all these records are free and don’t involve registering for a complicated portal. More and more records will continue to come online. Stay tuned!

Follow this blog with the top right button to catch the latest news in Ukrainian and Russian genealogy.

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