How was Soviet record keeping?

by ToaMexx

I was getting drinks with a friend a while back and we were talking about ancestry. She explained that her parents grew up under the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia. After the Soviet Union fell her parents were quick to get out of Europe and come to America. She told me that when she went to look up records online she was unable to find anything about her family before or during Soviet times.

I understand that maybe records were destroyed during the fall of the Soviet Union but from what I understand Czechoslovakia was a peaceful break away. If it were peaceful than the records should still be around right?

Morozow

I apologize, as I understand Your question.

In the USSR engaged in the Organs recording acts of civil status (short — ZAGS). This organization was engaged in manufacturing of the state registration of acts of civil status, which includes: birth, marriage or dissolution of marriage, adoption (adoption), paternity, name change and death.

Probably in socialist Czechoslovakia was in a similar organisation.

I do not think that such information is someone deliberately destroyed, in the fall socialisticheskogo system. Could destroy the personal lives of security agents and party leaders. But it's the other archives.

What your friend found information online, I do not see anything strange. At the end of the socialist regimes there was no Internet. Records were kept on paper. Appropriately, not necessarily that these archives have been digitized. And most importantly, not necessarily that they are in the public domain. For example, in Russia, ZAGS provides information from the files only upon request and only to relatives.

  • in the Soviet Union were still considering the population at the place of residence. I.e., that at such and such address lived like a citizen. So - called Houses books.
  • records in the passport office, Soviet citizens have a passport. And there are records on the issuance of citizen passports. But that is sensitive information, and -- it seems, has a short shelf life.

In Russia there is an open online database of world war II soldiers.