Russian Genealogist in the USA
Find your Russian roots and learn more about yourself.
Discover Your Russian Ancestry
Did your grandmother leave Russia during the 1917 Revolution? Was your grandfather a prisoner of war in Europe who later emigrated to the United States? Do you want to know who they were back home, but don't know where to start? I can help.
Many Russian archives take requests from researchers, many records are already online, and some are even indexed. If you know how to search, you can find ancestors who were foundlings, didn't speak Russian or didn't belong to the Orthodox Church.
If you're ready to learn more about the Russian side of your family, fill out the form for a free case evaluation, and I'll get back to you within 48 hours.
Meet Your Russian Ancestry Researcher
My name is Anastasiia Burukina. Like many of my colleagues, I started genealogy as a hobby, and it grew into a profession. When life got hard – first the pandemic, then the war – I asked myself: "Is it just now, or has it always been this hard? How did my ancestors cope?" To find out, I dug into the archives and learned more about myself than I ever did in therapy. It turned out I'm very much a product of my ancestors. Neither new technology, nor globalization, nor moving across the world had pulled me off the path they walked. That amazed me.
From then on, I started helping other people find their ancestors. And here's the remarkable part: everyone I worked with reached the same conclusion. Descendants of priests found their own way to faith. Great-great-great-grandchildren who had become emigrants discovered that their ancestors had moved again and again. Potters found potters in their family tree, and singers found singers. People who had divorced found great-grandparents who were happy in a second or even third marriage.
So even the things that may trouble you about your own life – your choice of career, a divorce, a move – may be something you inherited from the generations before you. Knowing that can be remarkably healing. I'm here to help you find it. Which grandparent shall we start with?
Why Am I Your Go-To Russian Genealogy Researcher
Genealogy research in Russia isn't as developed as it is in the US. However, you can find experts from different regions, and some even speak English. So why trust this work to me?
I'm a Texas resident.
I live in Irving (DFW) with my family, pay taxes here and follow local law.
You pay a US business, in US dollars. You don't have to worry about payments going astray, about me disappearing, or about your personal information ending up in the wrong hands. You're in safe hands with me.
I was born and raised in Russia.
I lived there most of my life and earned my degree with a major in Russian language and literature. I also grew up attending the Orthodox Church and finished parish school.
So I don't just speak and read Russian – I know how to read parish registers, revision lists, old Russian cursive and Church Slavonic script.
I know Russian history.
In Russia, literature is taught hand in hand with history, and I keep studying it on my own.
That matters, because the same town or village could belong to different administrative regions in different years, and your ancestors could belong to different social classes – and all of this matters for a genealogy search.
I research ordinary families, not just the nobility.
Most similar services work only with descendants of the nobility, whose ancestors were written up in the newspapers of the Tsarist era.
I help you find ordinary peasants – including serfs who didn't even have surnames, where finding an ancestor often turns into a puzzle – and families who weren't Orthodox Christians, such as Baptists and Old Believers, who have their own pre-revolutionary registers.
I have people on the ground.
Russia's archives are enormous, and only a small part of them is digitized. Finding your ancestors often means going to the archive in person or filing a request.
Usually it isn't one archive but several, in different cities, because people from European Russia moved steadily to central Russia and on east. You may need someone in Siberia and someone in St. Petersburg to visit the local archives.
I'll find those researchers for you and handle the correspondence, the archive requests and the payments to archives and researchers in Russia, in compliance with US sanctions rules.
You choose how you get your results.
I can create a designed book with everything we find about your family. I can plan a trip through Russia to the places connected with your family's story.
Or I can simply give you the raw data with instructions on how to continue the search yourself – and you'll have a new hobby for your evenings.
I'm a small business, not a corporation.
You work with me directly, and your payments help me take care of my family and my children.
Why Russian Research Is Different
In the US, you can buy Ancestry access online and see the ticket your relative sailed on 100 years ago. Russia doesn't work that way. Often you have to book a slot to view a register and send a person to the archive – ideally someone who already has an appointment there. Some archives take months to answer and don't let anyone photograph the records.
And the registers are handwritten in old script, where letters look different from today's. Even people who read Russian find this hard. It gets easier once you know a place: when I know which hamlets belong to a parish and which surnames live there, I can read entries others can't.
What Records Can Tell You
Records that may survive about your ancestors include parish registers (births, marriages, deaths), revision lists (who lived in the household, who farmed, who was away working or had been recruited into the army), censuses (land and livestock – some survived, some didn't), confession registers, police reports, petitions, court records, and Peasants' Land Bank loans for buying land. If your ancestors were clergy, you're in luck: clergy families are often very well documented, from parish transfers to church household books.
For World War I, there are online military archives and German sites with POW data: wounds, profession, literacy, age and birthplace. And knowing the history helps you read between the lines: a wound to the left hand, for example, can tell a story of its own.
My Approach
Genealogy is detective work: I investigate based on what you already know. Any small detail can turn out to be the key – a family story, the area where your family lived, or a memory that there was a pond near the village. So the more you tell me, the better.
We start with a free case evaluation. Tell me what information you have, attach all the documents you have, and I'll tell you whether we can find something. If we can, I make a plan: which files we need to see, in which archives.
Everything goes into one file: what we found, where, when, and which files confirm it. Then I add the context – the town's history, and why people there lived the way they did.
One Record Opens a Whole Branch
Once I find a birth record, I have the parents' names. Their marriage record gives me the mother's maiden name – and a new branch opens. Say she was Anna Petrovna Kuznetsova: now we're looking for her father, Pyotr Kuznetsov, and his wife, and another surname appears. Where it leads, no one knows in advance. For some families it goes fast, for others it's slower.
Russian Genealogy Research Packages
We start with a free case evaluation. Based on your details, I check whether we can find something and whether I can take on your case.
If the information you give me is enough to start a search, we can set up a free 15-minute call to see whether I'm the right fit for your search. On that call, I'll ask you more about the goals of your search, what you'd like to learn and what other information you can share.
Your Personal Research Roadmap – $250
Not ready for a package? Start with a roadmap. I take a free first look at the documents and information you share – the more you send, the better. Then, on a one-hour video call, I tell you where your family's records are likely kept – which church, which archive, which websites, down to the fond, opis and delo references – and what it would take to get them. I'll also send you a written research plan showing what we can find with the information we have, and which archive collections to search. Then you can search on your own, or have me do it. The $250 is credited toward any package you buy later.
If you'd rather hand the whole process over to me, I have two packages. They're priced by how many ancestors we search for, and the costs of the search are included.
Starter Search
$1,500
We find two of your ancestors – for example, if you have your grandmother's birth record, her parents – and establish their social class, occupation and everything else we can find, such as records of their birth dates and marriages. Before you pay, I'll try to tell you whether records likely exist.
Interim results every two weeks
Deep Search
starting at $2,850
We work through parish registers back to the start of the revision lists, up to three generations, and collect information on the births, marriages and deaths of your direct ancestors. We also search other available records, such as censuses, clergy records, and military archive records of wounded and lost soldiers in World War I.
Where possible, I also give you a short report on their social class, living conditions and the historical events during their lives.
The number of records and ancestors we find is different in every case. It depends on which documents survived in the archive and how long it takes to find them.
Monthly interim results
Every package includes:
- A free case evaluation before you pay
- A research plan: which records to look at, in which archives
- Online searches, plus archive requests and visits by researchers on the ground where needed – all included in the price
- A calendar with check-in dates for interim results
- A report with what we found and links to the documents that support it
- All information in English, with scans or photos of the original documents in Russian
If your search keeps opening new branches, we can keep going month by month. Each month, I tell you what I plan to search next.
The format of your results depends on the option you choose and is priced separately, on request, based on how much we find. In the basic option, I share a report with what we found and links to the documents that support it.
Beyond the data, I can turn what we find into a colorful photo book about your family – where each branch lived, what they did, and what their village was known for, since villages often had their own crafts. If you'd like to travel to Russia, we can separately put together a Google Map or list of places for your heritage trip – the villages, churches and places where your ancestors lived, studied and worked.
Package prices include archive requests, copies and researchers' visits to the archives.
If you live in Texas, I add Texas sales tax to the listed price. By state rules, the tax applies to 80% of the price.
Five Steps to Understanding Your Russian Roots
Fill out the form on the site and describe what you're looking for. You'll get a free case evaluation.
If the information you give is enough to start a search, I'll get back to you to set up a free 15-minute call, where we'll see whether I can help.
- You choose a package that fits your search and pay for it.
If you'd rather not start with a package, I take a free first look at the documents and information you share. Then you can book an optional one-hour call – $250.
On the call, I tell you where your records are likely kept, down to the fond, opis and delo references, and I send you a written research plan: which records to look at, in which archives, and roughly how long it will take. After that, you can search on your own or choose a package. If you choose a package later, the $250 is credited toward it.
- For packages, I set up a calendar with check-in dates for interim results.
- I start the search and send you interim results on that schedule.
Russian Genealogy Research FAQ
Can I find my ancestors if they were ordinary peasants who couldn't read or write?
Yes.
Can I find ancestors who weren't Christian – for example, Jewish families, or Muslims who wrote in Arabic script?
Yes, but I don't specialize in Jewish or Muslim research.
How will I receive the results?
At the start, we'll set up a calendar with an estimated timeline. For Starter Search, I'll send interim results every two weeks; for Deep Search, once a month. They come as a report, with links to folders of scanned records. And if something comes up in between – a major find, a dead end or a question for you – I'll write to you right away, and we can set up a call if needed. You'll get all the information in English, and scans or photos of the original documents in Russian.
Can we meet in person so I can hand over documents?
Yes, if you live in Texas.
Do you keep my information?
Yes. I don't delete your files automatically after I hand everything over to you. You can ask me to delete them at any time.
Can you find living relatives or heirs?
No. I research ancestors through archive and public records, and I don't search for living people.
Contact Form
Please send me as much information as you can – documents, such as a passport issued in the Russian Empire, an extract from a parish register or an Ellis Island record, and anything your family remembers. Every detail can help. Place names in immigration records are often unofficial or misheard – a town written as "Berezovsk" may not exist under that name – and that's part of what I sort out. The first step is a free case evaluation: I'll look at what you send and tell you whether we can find something.