Main Repositories of Soviet WWII Records

As I described in this blog post, online resources on Soviet WWII records are very comprehensive. But, they are not complete. Having done your online research, you may want to turn to archives if:

1. you did not find your ancestor in the databases, or
2. you found your ancestor, but would like to have further details

Soviet WWII documents are spread throughout various archives and countries. Here are the main repositories holding such records.

• Central Archive of Ministry of Defense (known as TsAMO - Центральный архив Министерства Обороны РФ) holds a massive collection of records, such as Soviet military personnel cards, lists of casualties, German cards of Soviet prisoners of war. I wrote in detail on how to make an inquiry at this archive here. 

Soviet military card, source: Wikipedia

• State Archive of Russian Federation (known as GARF - Государственный архив Российской Федерации) has collections of the Extraordinary Public Committee on investigating the crimes of German Nazi occupants and the damage they caused to Soviet citizens, collective farms, public organizations, state enterprises and institutions of the USSR, of separate camps, as well as collections on repatriation. Inquiry form can be found here.

• Russian State Military archive (known as RGVA - Российский государственный военный архив) holds so-called "filtration cases" on the Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers, who returned to Soviet Union. Some of this type of records can also be found at regional state archives or archives of security services in Russia and other ex-Soviet countries, usually, in the region where the "filtrated" person was born or lived before the time of war. Inquiry form is found here.  

Filtration case cover, source: Gulag Museum

• National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Second World War (Національний музей історії України в Другій Світовій війні) in Kyiv, Ukraine, accepts inquiries about Ukrainian WWII soldiers and officers. 

• Federal Archive of Germany (Bundesarchiv) will help you establish the fate of Soviet military personnel, who were captured by the Nazi army. Inquiry form in Russian and German is found here. 

Soviet WWII Military Cards from Central Archive of Russian Ministry of Defense

In this blog post I presented the most important online resources for Soviet Second World War research. Once you have done your Internet research, you may want to extend your search to archives. In this post I would like to share with you my tips on getting WWII military records from Central Archives of the Russian Ministry of Defense (TsAMO - Центральный архив Министерства обороны Российской Федерации). Its official website has no information in English, so I hope this will be helpful.

What Information You Can Find at TsAMO

The archive, located in Podolsk, Moscow region, holds a massive collection of Soviet/Russian military records since 1941 until nowadays. It is one of the largest archives in Russia, boasting the total of 20 244 243 files, including 10 951 948 from WWII period. They include documents on casualties among soldiers and officers, awards of the surviving military personnel, as well as their detailed path in the war.

Recently, I requested military records on a WWII veteran from Kyiv, Ukraine, for one of my projects. Although my client was confident that his grandfather was a captain during WWII, he did not appear in any online database. We had to turn to good old archives. And sure enough, his files (8 pages!) were found at TsAMO, including a tiny, but precious photograph.

Here are some examples of the records we received.

Military card, listing the years and places of military service, along with a photograph

Registration card, listing birth date and place, ethnicity, education, social status, military rank and service details, awards, spouse's name and address

How to Make an Inquiry at TsAMO

There are two ways to make an inquiry: in person and by regular mail. No emails, unfortunately.

Here is how you do it, if you cannot visit the archive:

1. Download and fill in an application form.

There are three types of forms, depending on the person's military rank: for a civilian, for a conscripted soldier or for an officer. If you don't know this information, make the best guess you can.

You can fill in a form online here or download and fill it offline: for a civilian working in a military unit; for a soldier serving in the conscription service or an officer. In both cases, the form needs to be printed out, signed and mailed. 

For the offline forms there are two additional options: a form to request a search for a burial place or a person's destiny or a form to request information about a wound or disease while on military service.

The forms are in Russian language, so if your Russian is not good enough, it is important to have someone help you with this step.

What to include in your request:

• Full name of the person
• Number of the military unit (omit, if you don't know it)
• Years of military service
• What you are looking to find (be specific what you want to learn: for example, awards, military actions, wounds etc.) 
• Purpose (e.g. genealogy, family research)
• Full name of the applicant 
• Address of the applicant

2. Attach documents proving family relationships, as well as an authorization from a relative, if the applicant is not a relative him/herself.

3. Mail the request form to the following address:
Центральный архив Министерства обороны Российской Федерации
142100, Московская обл., Подольск, ул. Кирова, д. 74.

Correspondence and Payment

As a general rule, Russian archives have to respond within 30 days after registering the request, but the mailing time is added. If you are corresponding from outside Russia, the mail may go via respective Consulate of Russian Federation, which would add more time. On average, it would be about a month and a half for each round of correspondence.

The archivists will first inform you whether or not they found anything for your inquiry. If so, they will ask send you an invoice to pay for the services.

The payment process is tricky. The invoice you receive from the archive is not one that you can pay internationally. It is in Russian-specific format and the easiest way to pay it is to have someone in Russia make the payment in one of the local banks, and pay this person via one of the international payment systems. This adds to the cost, but it is still very affordable. The fee for my inquiry was 292 Rub which is about 4-5 USD, so it is more about time and efforts, than money.

Within 15 days after receiving the money, the archive will forward the documents to you.

As you can see, this process requires patience, but it is totally worth trying, if you are determined in learning about your relative's path in Second World War.

More Ukrainian Records Go Online: #Covidscansharing Project

While archives are closed to public due to the current quarantine, there are some positive developments in Ukrainian genealogy. I would like to highlight one of them, #CovidScansharing project, launched by Ukrainian genealogist Serhiy Fazulianov (СергійФазульянов). Its scope is to share digital copies of genealogy-related documents from researchers' private collections. Most of these records are not available online elsewhere.

The website is in Ukrainian language, but it is fairly simple and can be used with an online translator or basic knowledge of Cyrillic script.

The website features links to useful social network accounts and archive-related projects.  But there are three most useful folders, which can be found just below the blue #CovidScansharing button:

ДРАЦС (Abbreviation of “Державна реєстрація актів цивільного стану”, Ukrainian for “Public civil registry”). This folder contains correspondence with civil registry offices concerning their holding of vital records, that are older than 75 years. The reason this is important is that many records that have exceeded their privacy restriction period are still held by civil registry offices of Western Ukraine (Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Rivne, Volyn oblasts/provinces). Some of them have responded with a list of such records, clarifying the situation for researchers.

Описи (Ukrainian for “Inventory”) folder contains various catalogs/inventories of Ukrainian archives. This is an important resource, especially in Ukraine, where historically there have been many administrative changes, and thus, it is sometimes a non-trivial task to locate the needed documents. Unfortunately, not all archives have their inventories online on the websites, so having them available save a lot of time and energy.

Фонди (Ukrainian for “Archival collections”) contains scans of records, primarily vital records, as well as other types of documents. For example, from Vinnytsia regional archive it includes so-called “filtration cases” of the forced laborers in Nazi Germany and victims of 1930s Soviet repressions (I wrote about this type of records in this post). Also, I am particularly excited about the 1921 Census for Transcarpathia (Ukrainian: Закарпаття). This collection is not complete, but it covers a large part of this area. Inside this folder, the scans are organized by repositories, where they have been made. Among those, Central Sate archives of Ukraine in Kyiv and in Lviv, various state regional archives and others.

Although the collection is not large at the moment, I think this is a good start and I hope the project will continue to grow. Anyone can contribute to the project with their scans, by filling out a form here.