The thing that is most amazing about genealogy research in Russia, is that it is even possible at all.

Given the many times that the country has undergone some radical change, wars, upheavals or various other issues, the fact that you can actually in many cases find the records that you need is both amazing and gratifying.

Many countries have a wide array of information available to those who want to research their roots, transcribed and up online so that it is within easy reach of even the most amateur researcher.  However unfortunate it may be, Russia is not one of them.

There are records preserved, surprisingly, and some are actually findable. Though many did make it through the various issues intact,  they are not always where you think they should be, nor in fact did all of them survive the numerous upheavals that took place in the country.

In all honesty, because of the classes, the wrong name, the wrong party, or simply politics, it wasn’t until fairly recent times that Russian’s cared overmuch about preserving their family history and in many cases, they preferred to forget it, as it could be problematic to have a name that was not well liked in the country.

Researching your Russian ancestors from another country isn’t going to be easy and in some cases will cost you a bit to have translations done, or other things looked up or accomplished, but  it can be done.

Today, the use of the internet in Russia doesn’t come near to approaching that of the United States, and those records which do exist are not for the most part, compiled and put into the databases that exist online, although a few of them have been.
For the most part however, the records you will need exist, if they do exist as paper documents that will need to be directly accessed and copied, then either faxed or emailed to you.

When contacting the particular part of the country where you think an ancestor may have lived, it is smarter to use a researcher or a librarian and to ask them to do the research for you and pay the fees.

Simply put, they know what they are searching for, are familiar with the issues that have taken place in the country and even, should you travel to Russia and find those documents you need, its likely that, given that many of them are written in Cyrillic, you would not know what you held in your hand.

There is one very good site which will give you a plethora of information on Russian research, which will help you in determining where to write to, how to accomplish best what you need to do and where to find some online family trees of Russia.

Researching Russian Roots, is a compilation by a man called Mikhail Kroutikhin, who has collected a vast array of information about the offices in Russia, as well as added addresses for your convenience.

To make things a bit easier, Genealogy.com has also begun a Russian genealogy forum to assist you in finding your Russian ancestors.

Tags:  finding your ancestors in Russian Russian genealogy Russian genealogy research.