Tracing Russian Roots

Tracing Russian roots isn't easy, but it's also less of an Olympian task than it used to be. These Russian genealogy tips are from our guide to tracing Russian roots in the January/February 2014 Family Tree Magazine (you can get just the Russian guide as a digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com). Or if you're also researching genealogy elsewhere in Europe, you might want the collection of guides in The Family Tree Guidebook to Europe.

“Russian roots” encompasses more than the present-day country. "Russian" is often used for heritage in places once part of the Russian Empire or the USSR, such as Ukraine and Belarus.

The largest influx of Russian immigrants came during the “great migration” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More than 2.3 million immigrants from czarist Russia entered the United States between 1871 and 1910, most from western areas of the empire (outside Russia's current borders) including nearly 750,000 Jews from the "Pale of Settlement."

Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians transliterated their names from the Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet, resulting in numerous variants. This website gives the example of the common surname Муравьёв, which has more than 15 English variants including Muravyov, Muravev, Muravjev and Mouravief. Immigrants might have further Americanized their transliterated names.

Here's a list of terms for administrative divisions (province, district, village, etc.) in Russia and areas once part of it. You'll find other key terms for Russian genealogy here.

The Russian government took 10 poll-tax censuses, referred to as revision lists (revizskie skazki) in the 1700s and 1800s. You can browse revision lists from 1744 to 1874 on FamilySearch.org.

See FamilySearch's other digitized Russian records here. The Family History Library also has microfilmed Russian resources that aren't yet digitized.

FamilyTreeMagazine.com has a list of resources for genealogy in the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Our Baltic roots genealogy guide (from the November 2010 Family Tree Magazine) is available as a download here and in the aforementioned Family Tree Guidebook to Europe.

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Dear Pascale,

maybe more details can help helping you: was Christian a foreigner or a citizen of the USSR? if citizen, what confession belonged his parents to? 1922 the birth had to be registered in a ZAGS, but sometimes they are in the churchbooks as before.

1922 is a bad time where churches had no more rights, but new ZAGS not always functioned well, so maybe you have to seek for earlier or later traces of a person (or his relatives).

I asked your question in the thread for the Brest region https://forum.vgd.ru/3450/5266/

Good luck to you!

I am looking for any information about the Russian family living in Poland:

Nikolai Charytonevich Babenko, born 1875/1876 in Deblin/Ivanograd, had 3 sisters. As fat as I know the Orthodox record from Ivanograd have not survived in Poland. Parents: Charyton Babenko and Julia Kirylenko. Nicolai was an Orthodox priest.

Nikolai married Anna Uspenskaya in 1899 in Zamość. We have not found her birth record in Zamość (checked Orthodox and Roman Catholic records). Parents: Wasily Uspensky and Maria (Vansitzkaya?)

Nikolai and his wife later moved to Byalynichy, Belarus.
Anna died probably in the 30s there.
Nikolai, was probably executed 1942 in Byalnichy , because he was against the soviet regime.
His daughter, Galina Babenko married Jevgeny Lukin in Byalynichy. Then they moved to St. Petersburg and my grandfather Yury Lukin was born 1938. Galinas brother Gregory moved to Dnipro.

Any suggestions about the research possibilities would be appreciated.

>> Ответ на сообщение пользователя lstasheen от 2 января 2021 22:09

Назарий Стасюк in Russian
Pronounced like Nazary Stasjuk

The -uk ending shows he had west ukrainian roots

I think it makes sense to establish a search topic here on CТасюк family.
With time colleagues may help)

>> Ответ на сообщение пользователя kbg_dnepr от 3 января 2021 10:56

Good Morning and thank you! I am excited now! I have a ton of documents, mainly from the United States... i can try to upload. I iwll upload the three that have the most information.