Ukrainian archives

Records at Central State Historical Archives in Kyiv can be found in these boxes.

The network of Ukrainian archives is officially known as the State Archival Service of Ukraine. The organization oversees a network of 2,284 institutions that are located throughout Ukraine.

The network includes nine central state archives, 24 state archives for the Ukrainian regions, a state archive in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and two state archives for Kyiv and Sevastopol, in addition to archival divisions for district administrations, city councils, and other archival organizations.

Archives in Ukraine possess valuable records from churches, censuses, educational institutions, historical events, and businesses, in addition to records that document the cultural history of Ukraine.

Since November 2017, Anatolii Khromov has been the head of the State Archival Service of Ukraine.

History of Ukrainian archives

The creation of Ukrainian archives began in 1917. That is when the Department of Arts of the General Secretariat of Education of the Ukrainian Central Rada organized the Library and Archival Department.

Control of Ukrainian archives has moved around over the years. Currently, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine overseas the archives, a duty since 1999. From 1947 to 1960, the archives were controlled by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, also known as the NKVD.

Since 1947, the Ukrainian archives have published Archives of Ukraine, a scientific and practical journal.

In more recent years, Ukrainian archives have faced losses of records. A fire at the Kamianets-Podilskyi archive in 2003 led to the loss of five major fonds dated from late 18^th century to the 20^th century from the Podolia Gubernia.

Moving Ukrainian archives into the 21^st century

Many Ukrainian archives that contain records of interest to those studying their ancestry have websites and email addresses to make those records accessible to the public. A sampling of scanned records and descriptions of archival fonds were available on Ukrainian archive websites before the Russian war with Ukraine.

Since the war started in February 2022, many descriptions of archival fonds and scanned records have been posted on Ukrainian archive websites. FamilySearch International of Salt Lake City, Utah, began digitizing archive records in May 2021 to help Ukrainian archives modernize. As of July 2023, 17 state archives have signed agreements with FamilySearch to digitize their archive records.

Besides records being opened for digitizing, Ukrainian archives have made records accessible to Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center of Kyiv and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of Washington, D.C., both of which already have posted millions of records online.

A significant number of collections from Ukraine are also available on MyHeritage. These collections include the Kyiv Orthodox Consistory Church Book Duplicates from 1840-1845, birth records and death records of the Jewish community in Ukraine, as well as memorial records of Ukrainian soldiers who fought alongside the Red Army, Soviet Resistance and other independent organizations. These soldiers either died or went missing during World War II.

Another step toward modernizing the archives has been the introduction of a central portal of digitized archive records in 2022. So far, six archives have uploaded records to the central portal.

Ukrainian archive officials do not know whether they will be able to digitize some records from the archives of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, in addition to other areas, as these records are believed to have been seized by individuals who support Russia's war with Ukraine.

Finding records in Ukrainian archives

Those seeking records from Ukrainian archives should begin their searches on the websites at the state archives of the regions or cities of interest. Some archives will have listings of their records on a page called fonds. If a listing of fonds cannot be found, look for a page that gives a background on the archive such as “About this archive”.

This map shows the borders of Ukraine from 1922. The borders of Ukraine have changed since then.

To contact archives about particular records, look for an email address on the main page, contact pageת or staff page. It is best to write in Ukrainian to an archive office and provide your full name and postal mailing address in the email message.

Important tip: If you are unfamiliar with Ukrainian, download Google Translate to your web browser or use a web browser that has a language translation app available to view the archives' websites in English. But remember that Google Translate will not transliterate all words so some Ukrainian words could translate into common words, such as cabbage and bear.

Search Ukrainian records on MyHeritage

Search

Explore more on Ukrainian archives

• Ukraine, Kyiv Orthodox Consistory Church Book Duplicates, 1840-1845, at MyHeritage

• Ukraine, Births and Baptisms, 1784-1879, at MyHeritage

• Ukrainian archives' official webportal in English

• Babyn Yar's Ukrainian archives- More than 3.4 million records from 13 archives have been posted on the diverse population of Ukraine.

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Ukrainian Archives- The database continues to be updated and can be searched.
• 107 Years Late for Dinner: How I Uncovered My Grandmother’s Lost Identity on the MyHeritage blog.

References

Authors template (click twice to edit)