I spent about ten days in Kiev, Ukraine, in September conducting research at archives. Most of the records relevant to genealogical research in Ukraine are kept in one of three types of archives:

• Central State Historical Archives;
• Oblast Archives;
• Local Civil Registry Offices (ZAGS Offices).

I visited all three types of archives mentioned above during the visit to Kiev. The local ZAGS offices usually have birth, marriage and death records going back about 75-100 years, after which they get transferred to the Oblast Archives or Central State Historical Archives. However, I was also interested to learn that there is a fourth kind of repository, the “ZAGS Archives,” where records may go between being at the ZAGS and being at one of the Oblast/Central archives. That could explain where some records are that cannot currently be found at the ZAGS or one of the Oblast/Central archives.

There are also oblast archives for notarial records, but I believe the notarial records didn’t start to be kept until about the 1940s. Each oblast in Ukraine has an Oblast Archives, so there is a Kiev Oblast Archives. The cities of Kiev and Lviv also both have a Central State Historical Archives. So, researching people who lived in the area that is now Kiev Oblast (and to some extent, the area of the old Kiev Gubernia of the Russian Empire) should take account the Kiev Oblast Archives and the Central state Historical Archives of Ukraine in Kiev.

I was researching a Jewish family, for example, and accessed metrical books (birth, marriage, and death) at the Central Archives in Kiev. I accessed the 1897 census and other revision and census lists for this family at the Kiev Oblast Archives.

Some Tips:

• Americans no longer need a VISA to visit Ukraine.
• At some archives in Ukraine, you can obtain books that you order on the same day that you order them. At other archives, you may not get them until the next day, or even 10 days later. There are also limits at some archives as to how many books, records, or pages you can look at in one day. You may be asked to fill out forms with your name, address, and other information in the Cyrillic alphabet.

An excellent book was recently published regarding source documents in Kiev archives relating to Jewish history and culture, as part of the Project Judaica series on records of Jewish people in the old Russian Empire. The book describes many documents relevant for genealogy. The book, by Efim Melamed and Mark Kopovetsky, is written in Russian, with an English foreword and table of contents. (see my blog entry on Project Judaica)