Ukraine Church Records

For information about records for non-Christian religions in the Ukraine, go to the Religious Records page.

Vast holdings of church records for Ukraine are preserved in archives today. The church records are primarily from 1721 to 1917. Contrary to popular belief, church records were not systematically destroyed in the former Soviet Union, but they were centralized and preserved in government archives.

Many Christian churches existed in Ukraine for which records exist today, including Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic (Uniate), Lutheran, Mennonite, Armenian Catholic, and some others. (For information about non-Christian records in Ukraine see Ukraine Jewish Records and Ukraine Muslim Records.)

Church records for many areas have been microfilmed by FamilySearch and some have been digitized. Many other websites have also published indexes of church records. See below for links to selected online resources for church records and church records indexes. For information about microfilm records available from FamilySearch, search by place in the FamilySearch Catalog.

Online Church Records

 * 1600-1937 - at FamilySearch — index and images
 * 1734-1930 - at FamilySearch — index and images
 * 1799-1911 - at FamilySearch — partial index and images
 * 1833-1885 - Grossliebental - 1833-1885 BMD's from the St. Petersburg Lutheran Evangelical Archives
 * 1703-1953 - Virtual Archives of Polish Armenians -- index and images of Armenian Catholic church records from Chernivtsi, Horodenka, Kuty, Sniatyn, Stanisławów, Suceava, Tyśmienica, and Zolochiv.
 * Some Greek Orthodox and and Roman Catholic Church records are online at: Genealogy of Halychyna.
 * Ukraine Jewish records.

Metrical Books
These records can be used to uniquely identify individuals and link multiple generations over time. Transcripts are difficult to research because generally all parishes in a district are filed together for each year. Consequently, a researcher must refer to many volumes to identify the entries for a single parish.

These church records were kept by parish priests of births/baptisms, marriages, and deaths/burials. The term is also used to refer to the records of denominations that had jurisdictions other than parishes. The Church acted as both a religious and civil agent in recording vital events and church sacraments such as baptism and burial. Peter the Great mandated the keeping of Orthodox church registers in 1722. The format was standardized in 1724. Printed forms were introduced in 1806. In 1838 a format was introduced that prevailed until 1920 when civil registration began. Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, and Evangelical Lutheran books may exist for earlier dates than Orthodox records. The priest made a transcript for the ecclesiastical court (dukhovnaia konsistoriia) having jurisdiction. Jewish transcripts were filed with the local town council (gorodskaia duma). Old Believer and Baptist transcripts were sent to the provincial administration (gubernskoe upravlenie). The distinction between the original and the transcript is often ignored by Ukrainian record keepers.

In general, records begin approximately at these times: Orthodox, 1722; Greek Catholic, 1607; Roman Catholic, 1563 (transcripts begin in 1826); Evangelical/other Protestant, 1641 (transcripts begin in 1833); Muslim, 1828; Jews, 1835; Old Believers, 1874; Baptists, 1879–all to about 1930.

Records generally contain the names of the person and other family members, residence, relationships, dates and place of birth and baptism, marriage, death and burial. Baptisms include names of godparents; marriages include the ages of the bride and groom; burials include the age of the deceased and cause of death.

Records can be found at the state archives and civil registration offices. Population coverage varies by time and cultural group. Earliest records cover about 70% of the population, 90% from about 1830 through the destruction of most churches in the 1930s, 50% among minority religions and dissident groups such as Old Believers and Baptists.

In 1825 the Holy Synod, the governmental body over the Orthodox Church, ordered bishops to eradicate bribery of priests to falsify the books, suggesting that this problem existed. Ethnic minorities avoided registration to avert military service later in life.

Confession Lists
These records contain lists of members of orthodox parishes attending Easter confession. Attendance at confession and communion was required of the family members over the age of seven. These records can be used to identify family groups and person's ages. They are easier to use than the revision lists because they include all classes of society. They are also a metrical book substitute. Sometimes they are interfiled with metrical books in a record group or collection. Records begin in approximately 1723 and were kept until about 1930. Records can be found at the state archives.

The lists contain the name of the head of household, family members (including children not attending confession), their ages and relationship to head of household, residence (number of house or other identification), and whether or not they attended confession.