Relatives abroad by last name. scattered nest

Sometimes, out of boredom, a person tries to create a family tree of his family and discovers a lot of mysterious and interesting things. Finding out the fate of your relatives and meeting their descendants is a way to get to know your surroundings and even yourself better. How to find living relatives and find distant ancestors by last name?

How to make a family tree

Time cannot be contained, but you can find iconic things and recorded memories from past decades and centuries. How to find ancestors by last name to create a family tree:

1. Home archive. Such an archive stores: photographs, albums, records, documents. If this is a close circle, then there will be a certificate of marriage, birth, death. Documents confirming the receipt of education are valuable when collecting information: certificates, diplomas, certificates. To immediately simplify your task, consider the two branches of genealogy - maternal and paternal - separately. Collect all information in two folders to avoid confusion. You should not carry the originals with you; store them in a safe place, and it is better to make photocopies of the documents for yourself.
2. Interview with relatives. To get as much information as possible, this procedure is carried out in an informal setting: an evening of family memories, a holiday. A voice recorder and a pre-compiled list of questions are your best helpers, because relatives can argue or interrupt in the desire to tell something, so it is important not to miss the little things.
3. Archives. Such databases still exist, but to clarify the information in them, you need to know the person’s full name, year of birth, and place of birth.
4. Internet sources. Social networks and all kinds of relative search sites can lead you to your loved one.

How to find relatives by last name

If surveys and searches in home archives do not reveal the necessary information, then it is worth trying more modern methods. How to find ancestors by last name on the Internet:

1. FamilySpace. This portal has a lot of tips for finding information about loved ones. A site specially created for these purposes will tell you how to quickly find ancestors by last name, and their children and grandchildren by profession, region in which a person lives, works, or previously lived. If the search is unsuccessful, you just need to check again regularly, the site is updated frequently.
2. Social media. Nowadays, many people of different ages create pages on popular resources. Such resources include the following websites: Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Vkontakte, Mail.ru, Instagram.
3. Online directories. Here, information about the location of the person you are looking for will be more relevant. Such directories are not very focused on searching by name.

How to find your roots by last name using books

The family tree can be significantly expanded with information about more ancient ancestors. They were often outstanding people who experienced ups and downs not only in the context of their personal lives, but also of the entire state. The most famous sources that preserve eternal memory are large publications. Which archive of deceased people by last name who participated in significant events is worth viewing:

1. The All-Russian Book of Memory is the largest source of ancestors not only of residents of the Russian Federation, but also of the collapsed USSR. This book contains a huge database of citizens who participated in the hostilities of 1941-1945. The surnames of ancestors were grouped according to the places of conscription. There you can also learn about military and life achievements, and the person’s burial place. More than 750 volumes reveal important information about those who fought.
2. Book of memory of victims of political repression. The collection of volumes covers 25 regions of the former USSR and includes information about people of Polish and Jewish nationality.
3. Reference publications and materials: “Appendices to the works of the editorial commissions for drawing up the Code on peasants emerging from serfdom”, “Calendar, or Monthly with the list of officials in the state for the summer... from the birth of Christ”, “All Moscow. Address and reference book", "All Russia. Russian book of industry, trade, agriculture and administration."

How to find your ancestors in the archives

The procedure for independent work in the archive on the question of how to find missing ancestors by last name:

1. Specify the search period and go to the registry office archive. There you need to submit a request to search for the necessary information or come in person; there is no reading room in this institution.
2. Archives are available not only at the registry office, but also in educational and medical institutions.
3. Carefully study the sources: metrics, confessional lists, inventories of those living in the house, population census of different years, rank books (appointments to places of work), summary documents, chronicles.

In the registry office

The archives of the registry office should also be studied if you have already carefully searched for ancestors by last name in the archives. You need to know the exact name, patronymic, and last name of the person. The request must be sent to the region in which the citizen was or is located. The institution provides information about:

• the person’s date of birth, place, his parents;
• marriage registration;
• presence of children;
• place of registration;
• death of a wanted person.

Searching for relatives by last name abroad

If the search for ancestors in the archives dates back to more distant periods, now you can find relatives who went to live abroad. How to do this:

1. Check whether you really have relatives abroad, their last names, time of departure abroad, marital status, presence of children and the region where they went. If you don’t know the country, then start with the most popular ones, where compatriots go (USA, Canada, Israel).
2. To search, you need a good knowledge of a foreign language.
3. You can find relatives through worldwide search engines (Google), social networks (Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki).

In 1902, my grandmother’s sisters left Belarus for the USA. Communication with them was severed. I want to find them. Where in Belarus can I contact about this issue? Where to start searching? E. Stasov, Bykhov

You can try to find a person on specialized American sites with catalogs of telephone numbers. But for this you need to know how the name and surname of the wanted person are written in Latin letters. Most likely, the spelling will correspond to the rules for spelling the name in the international passport. If a telephone number is registered in this person's name, you can find it on www.whitepages.com, a free US telephone directory. You can search websites that post US Census results. For example, you can find the 1940 Census results at this link: https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2442. In addition, you can advertise the search for relatives on certain American sites. The most convenient is the Russian-language portal https://www.americaru.com. There are also paid services where you can request information about immigrants: https://www.uscis.gov. Using this link you can download lists of those buried in Russian cemeteries in San Francisco: https://cloud.mail.ru/public/0...otoes.xlsm. To search through these resources, you will need knowledge of English. For advisory and translation assistance, you can turn to Belarusian diasporas abroad. Their coordinates, including email addresses, are located on the website of the Belarusian public association “Belarusian Light “Father” zbsb.org in the “Belarusian Interchange” section.

You can contact the “Wait for me” program at the address: 127427, Moscow, st. Academician Koroleva, 12, tel.  (499) 391-98-88. On the program website https://poisk.vid.ru you can leave a request for a search. The Belarusian Red Cross Society has extensive search capabilities. But in your case it is not suitable, since this organization is engaged in searching for those missing as a result of armed conflicts and emergency situations. For example, they can help find relatives who emigrated as a result of the First World War or the Civil War. The period of emigration is not important. The Red Cross will also provide assistance in searching for people missing as a result of modern conflicts, for example, in Ukraine.

They were taken to Germany

My grandmother was taken to Germany during the Great Patriotic War, and to this day we know nothing about her. Where can I make inquiries? S. Krylovich, Gomel

In this case, you need to contact the International Tracing Service (ITS), which is managed by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Today, the archives of the International Tracing Service contain more than 30 million documents from the Hitler regime and the first post-war years. It contains documents from numerous concentration camps and ghettos, evidence of the use of forced labor and deportation, post-war emigration of former Ostarbeiters (“Eastern workers”), etc. Submitting a request to the International Tracing Service is free. The request can be sent either by mail or electronically, through the Tracing Service of the Belarusian Red Cross (220030, Minsk, K. Marksa St., 35) or independently. Postal address: MSR: Internationaler Suchdienst (ITS), 34454, Grosse Allee, 5-9, Bad Arolsen, Germany. Email address - More information can be found on the website www.its-arolsen.org, which has a Russian version. Your request should include as much information as possible about the person you are looking for. In addition to the first and last name, date of birth, it is recommended to also indicate the details of his mother and father, describe what happened to the wanted person and when, and indicate the purpose of the search. You can write in Russian.  The search for information on received humanitarian requests takes an average of 8 weeks.

Disappeared after captivity

My uncle was a prisoner of war and was in a displaced persons camp. As a rule, they were subsequently repatriated. But he did not return to his homeland. I would like to know where he died so I can visit the grave.P. Zemyalkov, Brest

Lists of displaced persons can also be found on the website of the International Tracing Service or by sending a request there. The bulk of displaced persons were Soviet civilians, deported for forced labor in Germany and other countries, and Soviet prisoners of war. It was found that by the end of the war, about 5 million Soviet citizens who found themselves outside the Soviet Union were alive. An agreement on the mandatory repatriation of Soviet citizens was reached at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, but from September-October 1945, Soviet citizens were given the right to voluntary repatriation. Many prisoners of war could take advantage of this right, knowing that reprisals awaited them in their homeland for being in captivity.

As historians point out, by the fall of 1946 there were still many displaced persons who did not return to their homeland. In 1947-1953. the majority were accepted into different countries: such as Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Israel (since 1948), France, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, French Morocco, Norway, USA.

The MSR archive contains data on displaced persons who applied to international refugee assistance organizations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and England after the war. There are documents on the repatriation of displaced persons, including immigration records, various lists, medical records, questionnaires. Some of the information was provided personally by displaced persons.

Information about prisoners of war can also be found on the website of the KGB of Belarus: kgb.gov.by. Here you can download lists of Soviet prisoners of war - natives of Belarus and Belarusians - natives of the republics of the former Soviet Union. These lists are the result of joint search work by the KGB of Belarus with the German association “Saxon Memorials” to establish the fate of prisoners of war during the Second World War and their burial places. The KGB Central Archives processed more than 25 thousand archival documents of more than 15 thousand prisoners of war - natives and residents of Belarus. If you see the names of your relatives and friends in this list, you can contact the address: 220030, Minsk, Independence Avenue, 17 - Central Archive of the KGB of the Republic of Belarus, indicating the full name of the deceased relative, personal information (full name, address, phone number, copies of documents confirming relationship with the deceased, degree of relationship). Archive staff are ready to provide copies of available archival documents regarding the deceased.

Captured Red Army soldiers carry a comrade wounded in the leg on a pole (photo from the National Archives of the Netherlands).

Today in Russia, a real boom has become the massive search for pedigree information and the compilation of a family tree. There are probably very few people left who can be described as “Ivans who do not remember their kinship.” The country's turbulent past contributed to the fact that many of our relatives found themselves scattered across all countries and continents. Under such circumstances, inheriting foreign property or the assets of a relative becomes a reality for a considerable number of Russians, and information on how to find out about the inheritance and accept it is an urgent need.

Since the inheritance estate can be equivalently expressed as a sum with six zeros in hard currency, it is advisable not only to know how to be promptly notified of an opened inheritance and how to accept it, but also to navigate the peculiarities of the legal regulation of international inheritance. Such information will help to avoid many problems when inheriting from abroad.

How to find out about the presence of an inheritance abroad

Do not lose touch with family and friends living abroad, as well as their surroundings, this is obviously the easiest and most reliable way to find out if there is an inheritance abroad. The other side of his coin is human nature. Ruthless wars for inheritance between close relatives are commonplace for people in all countries, including those that are a priori considered civilized. In rare cases, one of the heirs will be glad to have an “extra mouth”, moreover, living in wild Russia. There is even less chance that they will try to get rid of this superfluous, in the literal sense of the word, heir by all available means.

It should be borne in mind that the testator will deign to include in his will only those people whom he knows or is aware of their existence. If the testator is unaware of the presence of heirs in Russia, the latter can only count on the fact that the inheritance will be carried out not according to a will (which simply does not exist), but according to the law.

No matter how mercantile people are by nature, if there is a connection with relatives, one of them will definitely notify the heir from another country about the death of the testator. A notary who draws up documents related to the opening of an inheritance, in the presence of a will, due to the requirements of local legislation (and in this part it is the same for most countries), is obliged to find all the heirs specified in the will and send them the appropriate written notification.

However, upon receiving news of the death of the testator, it is advisable to send, as soon as possible, to the notary office at his place of residence a letter certified by a Russian notary indicating his personal data and degree of relationship.

How to register an inheritance abroad, what documents are needed, where to apply, terms of inheritance

Upon receipt of a written notification from a foreign notary office about the opening of an inheritance, the most preferable would be the personal participation of the heir in the registration of all documents related to the acceptance of the inheritance with a notary. However, for a number of reasons, such a presence of an heir in a distant foreign country in many cases turns out to be impossible. In such circumstances, the heir should contact a local lawyer to represent him under a power of attorney. The heir must justify the validity of the reason that did not allow him to come to the notary office at the place of residence of the testator and personally defend his interests.

In any case, the heir must write a statement in the prescribed form and send it to a foreign notary as soon as possible after receiving notification of the opening of the inheritance.

Acceptance of an inheritance is carried out upon provision of the following basic documents:

• passport of the person accepting the inheritance;
• death certificate of the testator, established by the jurisdiction of the country of residence;
• documents confirming the rights to inheritance and relationship with the testator;
• documents of title for inheritance.

The legislation of different countries may provide for the submission of additional documents, the specifics of which will be communicated to the heir by an authorized notary.

As you know, it is very important to accept an inheritance within the period prescribed by law. According to Article 1154 of the Civil Code for the Russian Federation, the period for accepting an inheritance is limited to six months from the date of opening of the inheritance. In the jurisdiction of other states, this period varies from 3 to 6 months. According to the legislation of very few countries, the period for accepting an inheritance is one year. Accepting an inheritance outside the established period in most states is associated with significant difficulties and is only possible if certain conditions are met and additional procedural procedures are completed. And only a very few countries, for example Bulgaria, turn a blind eye to violations of this deadline, accepting overdue, within reasonable limits, applications from heirs for inheritance.

One should not forget about the tax policies of different countries regarding inheritance. In some states there is no statutory inheritance tax. Other countries require payment of inheritance tax. For example, in France and England the tax rate is 40% for close relatives, and 60% (France) for persons who are indirectly related to the testator. Spaniards pay inheritance taxes according to a progressive system, depending on the value of the inherited property.

Abuses in inheritance abroad

Traditionally, in all countries, procedures for accepting inheritance are extremely criminalized. The criminal schemes used by scammers in order to deceive and deprive some heirs of their inheritance are so diverse that familiarization with them will require writing a separate article. Taking into account the long-standing connection between the foreign and domestic criminal world, one should exercise increased caution, attention and prudence when interacting with various people directly or indirectly related to the procedures for processing documents for accepting an inheritance.

For example, you should only enter into contact with persons whose position is duly certified, and their participation in inheritance is expressly provided for by law. One of the most primitive and common methods of deception is the following. People knock on the door of the heir, who has not yet received a notarial notification, introduce themselves as lawyers from the country and city of residence of the testator, and report his death. They show the confused heir a pile of papers, immediately fill out some of them, and offer to contribute a certain amount of money supposedly necessary to accept the inheritance.

To avoid becoming a victim of deception, it is recommended that the heir immediately enter into an agreement with an experienced, reputable lawyer from the city in which the testator lived to represent his interests in an inheritance case abroad.

The first thing I have to say sounds extraordinarily stupid, but it is necessary to say it, judging by the questions asked to me. To find relatives abroad, you need them to be there. You must know exactly who you are looking for, how and at what time he could have gotten abroad, how old he was then and whether he is alive, presumably now. Trying to find some relatives who come from nowhere is pointless. It is useless to write to Prince Golitsyn that your surname is also Golitsyn and therefore you think that you are his relative, he will not answer you.
The second necessary, although self-evident statement: in order to find relatives abroad, you need to know foreign languages, at least English. The legend that the descendants of emigrants preserved the language was not confirmed upon closer examination - they do not know it, and if they do know it, it is so bad that they do not understand half the words.
One of my very nice subscribers said that I write newsletters as a kindergarten teacher for my not exactly mentally retarded, but not brilliant, students. Sorry, I don't want to offend anyone, I respond to letters.
When looking for relatives abroad - descendants of former emigrants - consider all possible spellings of the surname, including ridiculous and abbreviated ones. The incompatibility of the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet has made it impossible to guess how the emigrant wrote down his last name. In addition, he could change it more than once, either to make it sound exactly the way he wanted, or in order not to stand out among the inhabitants of the country where he settled. This happened not only with Slavic surnames, here is a real example: Claus Heinrich Lange was Henry Lange on the passenger list, and 25 years later in the USA it became Charles Lang. If an emigrant found himself in a new homeland among a mass of other similar emigrants, they did not compile the lists themselves, but the officials who were entrusted with this. I know of several cases when a patronymic was written down instead of a surname or first name.
The simplest method, however, requires a huge amount of labor.
Go to http://www.google.com.ru/. Type white pages there, go to all countries in a row and look for your last name (or one if you are sure that your relative is there). Then type e-mail search, and then also people search - in all resulting pages, look for your last name in all variants. You can come up with some of the options by reading an old newsletter about transliteration, and come up with the rest yourself, adding stupid typos, abbreviated versions and any distortions that come to your mind. And start writing letters.
Don’t have a complex, most foreigners view searching for relatives as a fun adventure that allows them to communicate with interesting people, so feel free to tell the story of how exactly your relative could have gotten abroad, and send emails and regular letters. Practice shows that approximately 30% respond. Many of them will be happy to help you in your search by entering into correspondence.
And, of course, the same letter needs to be posted on all genealogical bulletin boards and updated there periodically.
Well, now let's move on to more complex methods.

Let's start with the USA.

In general, it makes sense to start with the USA, because many emigrants who first lived in Europe or, for example, in Harbin ended up there. You will still have to look for their descendants, most likely through direct mail, but at least you can establish whether they arrived there or not, and how their last name was recorded.
For emigrants coming to the United States, the main identification document was the passenger list, which was compiled at the port of entry and handwritten. Passenger lists abound online. Not only could the surname even then be greatly distorted during the initial recording, but it could have been written again with an error when these lists were digitized, especially since the originals of many of them are in poor condition.
The most important thing for finding a list of passengers is to know the port of arrival; they were compiled at the ports and are grouped specifically by port. In addition, to find passenger lists you need to know the approximate date of arrival, at least a year. Ages are often given on passenger lists, but this may well be inaccurate. The age of the child can be reduced - the fare for children under 10 years old was significantly lower. The person who compiled the lists most likely did not speak Russian and could have gotten the age wrong. In addition, when digitizing the lists, the operator could easily confuse, for example, 3 and 8.
Passenger lists from 1820 to 1891 were compiled by the captain of the ship and they were stored at customs at the port of arrival, called Customs Passenger Lists (I specifically write their name in English so that you can search for them using search engines). About 90 percent of these lists are microfilmed and stored in US archives, and about half are available on the Internet. For each passenger in these lists, as a rule, the place of birth is indicated (the city is indicated in approximately 10% of cases, most often only the country), date of arrival, family members arriving on the same ship, destination, age, gender, profession, name of the ship , its owner, home port.
From 1891 to 1957 these lists were called Immigration Passenger Lists. Personal information about each passenger included: full name, gender, age, marital status, specialty, last place of residence, purpose of arrival in the United States, if he was in the United States before - where and when. Since 1903 race has been included. Place of birth and other information appeared from 1906, and in 1907 the name and address of the next of kin in the country from which the passenger was traveling was added.
Until 1924, most emigrants arrived on Ellis Island, only first class passengers were searched on the ship and taken directly to shore. There are passenger lists for this place from 1897, not 1891 - there was a fire and everything burned down. After 1924, emigration quotas were introduced, it decreased sharply, and only emigrants who, according to the American authorities, required special consideration and attention, began to come to Ellis Island. As a rule, emigrants from Russia ended up there. In 1957, this order was changed, Ellis Island ceased to exist as a “settlement center” for emigrants. The page for this island is http://www.ellisisland.com/.
In 1986 they decided to open a museum there; there is also a wall of honor on which the names of more than five hundred thousand emigrants are written. Not all of them passed through this island or were particularly successful, but their descendants gave a hundred dollars or more to create this museum. This wall can be explored; its website is online - http://wallofhonor.com/.

Let's move on to archives and museums.

Information on the emigration of the first wave exists in a systematic form. By the end of the 30s, there were 14 museums and 10 archives outside the USSR, organized by Russian emigration. A number of them were based on collections of materials exported from Russia. The collecting activities of some of them were limited in nature and were aimed at receiving documents and materials on the history of individual branches of the military and military formations (Archive of the former Life Grenadier Erivan His Majesty Regiment) or documents reflecting individual events of emigrant life (Central Archive of the Day of Russian Culture in Prague).
The largest archive of Russian emigration on the European continent was the Russian Foreign Historical Archive in Prague, created and replenished according to a broad program providing for the collection and preservation of handwritten and printed materials on the history of the political and social movement in Russia in the 19th - 20th centuries, the First World War, the October revolution, civil war. In order to identify document holders, RZIA used an extensive network of its representatives and correspondents in many countries of the world.
Attempts were made to organize archives in Belgrade, Harbin, and Paris. Over time, the Russian Cultural Historical Museum in Prague and the Institute for the History of Social Movements in Amsterdam objectively became competitors of the RZIA.
After the war, a significant part of the archival materials moved to the USA (there are even revision tales from our archives, first taken by the Germans to Europe, to say nothing of European archives).
In the USA, documents related to Russian emigration are stored in the US National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Archive of Russian East European History and Culture at Columbia University, the Hoover Institution Library of War of Revolution and Peace, the Library of Harvard and other universities, the Museum of Russian Culture in San Francisco. Francisco, Museum and Archives of the Rodina Society, etc.
The Belgrade Committee to Perpetuate the Memory of the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, Major General P. N. Wrangel, transferred his documents to Stanford University (USA). The archive of the late general consisted of over 100 impressive volumes of documents, correspondence and other materials.
The Russian-Soviet and Eastern European collections in the Hoover Institution library have grown into one of the world's largest sources for the study of modern and contemporary history of Eastern European states. including Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Already by the mid-80s, the collection consisted of more than 400,000 volumes of book brochures. In addition, the archives of the Institute contained by this period a collection of personal funds and individual documents of prominent public and political figures of Russia and the white movement, such as A.F. Kerensky, generals L.G. Kornilov, N.N. Yudenich, Prince. G. E. Lvov. gr. V.N. Kokovtsev and many others.
The Archive of Russian and Eastern European History and Culture at Columbia University was created with the money of the former plenipotentiary ambassador of the Provisional Government in the USA B.A. Bakhmeteva. The archive collected and collects, first of all, documentary and also printed materials on the history of Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe from ancient times to the present day. Its holdings (there are more than 1,000 of them) grew due to the receipt of materials as gifts or transfers for temporary storage. Among the founders is A.N. Radishchev, A.A. Bestuzhev, S.Yu. Witte, A.I. Denikin, M.A. Aldanov and many others. Documents of institutions and organizations are presented by the funds of the Constituent Assembly, Publishing House named after. Chekhov and others. The archive contains a collection of letters from Emperor Alexander II, a collection of letters from P.L. Lavrova.
The archive of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad was kept until 1945 in the residence of the Synod in Sremski Karlovci. In 1945, the archive was taken by Soviet troops to the USSR and placed in the Special Archives. It had a difficult fate, but in 1996 the fund was renamed the “Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Sremski Karlovci Yugoslavia.” In 1992, 1998 Several files were added to the fund, formed from a scattering of documents received from the Library of Federal Archives. Currently, the fund of the Synod of Bishops includes 388 cases for 1917-1941.
Among foreign archives, the archives of the American Orthodox Church and the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad should be highlighted. The archives of the American Orthodox Church are kept in Sysset (New York State). Materials on the history of the settlement and development of Alaska by Russian people are well presented. The archive contains reports and historical information from all dioceses of the American Church. Access for researchers to archival collections of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad is difficult and not regulated in any way. The decision to allow access to certain materials depends solely on the degree of trust or distrust in a particular researcher.
In 1937, emigrants from Russia who settled in America organized the Russian Historical Society, whose activities were interrupted by the Second World War. In 1948, a small group of emigrants at the Russian Center in San Francisco proposed to found a Museum of Russian Culture and include in it what remained of the Russian Historical Society. It should be noted that, for example, the fund of the Russian Orthodox Spiritual Mission in Beijing is stored there, which includes documents for 1925-1945. You can read about what other materials there are on the page http://www.nature.ru/db/msg.html?mid=1187390&s=121300000. On the same site you can read, for example, about the Maritime Library and the archive of the Society of Former Russian Naval Officers in America http://www.nature.ru/db/msg.html?mid=1187217&s=121300000.

Search in Russia

In order to look for information about the first wave of emigrants, it is not at all necessary to go to America. The return of archives of emigration from abroad is carried out by the Federal Archive Service, museums and libraries. The leaders in this activity are the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), the Russian Culture Foundation, and the Russian Abroad Library-Fund.
The founders of the Library-Foundation Russian Abroad are the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Russian Public Foundation, the Moscow Government and YMCA-Press. Address: 109004 Russia, Moscow, st. Nizhnyaya Radishchevskaya, 2. Director of the library and publishing house Russian Way: Moskvin Viktor Aleksandrovich (tel. 915-10-47) Fax 915-27-97, e-mail: [email protected]. Reading room: 915-10-30 Subscription: 915-10-73 Bookstore: 915-11-45. Directions: Taganskaya metro station - ring (exit to the Taganka Theater).
Most often, emigrant materials are simply donated. The donors are Russian emigrants and their descendants who want to transfer their personal archives to their homeland. Among the major acquisitions, it is necessary to highlight the transfer to Russia of the largest archive of Russian abroad, the Archives and Museum of the Rodina Society from Lakewood. The Russian side also cooperates with state and university archives. Such cooperation usually takes the form of an exchange of microphotocopies. A striking example is the agreement between the Hoover Archives of War of Revolution and Peace and GARF.
I highly recommend the site http://xxx.irex.ru/db/zarub/ - there, in particular, there is a guide to archives containing materials about emigrants.
And in addition, I must answer the question about searching for descendants of Russian noble families abroad. Here we must take into account that these descendants for the most part have assimilated, they can happily say in conversation: “And I am a Russian count,” but they are not at all interested in their genealogy and do not want to communicate with distant relatives and researchers. I've encountered this. In addition, in our country, since it was only recently allowed, it is fashionable to look for noble roots, and for those who have calmly felt their noble roots as a given all their lives, this is often frankly uninteresting. For example, we were approached by a representative of a noble family, now living in England, whose ancestor once married a representative of a merchant family, and so he was specifically interested in relatives on the merchant line. So it is better to look for information about these descendants in Russia - from recognized representatives of these clans here, from professional genealogists who have studied the history of these clans.
You can write letters, but this is just less effective. For example, the address of Union de la Noblesse Russe is on the page http://www.rkb-law.com/RR/aristocracy/2aristocracy.htm. This address is also on our website, but where I am sending you now, there are also lists of noble surnames (in French transcription, very useful). It is advisable to write there in French; for example, I don’t know French.