Heritage AIFree, no registration
An ancestor search route for the former USSR
Eight steps from family memory to an archive record. The search goes from the known to the unknown: one person and one generation at a time.
The product is currently available in Russian for families in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Step 1. Start with what the family knows
Write down everything your relatives remember and gather the documents kept at home: certificates, military IDs, work record books, letters, notes on the back of photos. The most exact dates are often already here.
Step 2. Pick one person and one question
Not "find the whole family tree" but, say, "where and when was great-grandfather Ivan born". Go from the last reliably known event back in time, one generation at a time.
Step 3. Find the parish and the district for the date of the event
The borders of provinces, districts and regions changed many times. Find out which volost, district and parish the village belonged to in the year of the birth or wedding: that decides which archive and which book to look in.
Step 4. Match the records to the era
After 1918: civil registry (ZAGS) records and village council household books (from 1934). Before 1918: parish registers (metricheskie knigi) and confession lists of the parish. Earlier still: revision lists (reviskie skazki, 1719-1858) and the 1897 census. For the war years: the databases of the Ministry of Defence.
Step 5. Look at the original first
The order is: a scan of the document, then the finding aid and catalogue of the archive, then indexes and other people's trees. An index or a tree is a hint of where to look for the document, not proof.
Step 6. Write out everyone with the same surname
A village could have several families with one surname. Write them all out and tell them apart by house, parents, godparents and neighbours. Do not link people only because the names match.
Step 7. No record is not yet an answer
The book may not have survived, the record may have been made in a neighbouring parish, the surname may have been spelt differently. Check the nearby years, parishes and spellings, and do not conclude that the person did not exist.
Step 8. When open sources run out, write a request
Note what you found, what you did not and where you have already looked. Then come questions to relatives and a written request to a registry office or an archive. Stopping honestly is better than "drawing in" an ancestor by guesswork.
What we do not do
We do not search archives in your place and do not promise a record will be found: some books have not survived. What you find is convenient to keep in the ancestor's card in the family tree.
Walk the route one person at a time
Keep what you find next to the person: a free family tree needs no card.
Sources: Method based on the open project ex-ussr-kinship-research, (c) 2026 Denis Shiryaev, MIT licence