Finding your Ukrainian ancestors

First, find the village, its old province and its archive

Ukrainian records are filed by place: first the parish, synagogue or registry office that kept the books, then the archive that holds them today. That is usually the state archive of the present oblast, or one of the two central historical archives in Kyiv and Lviv. Before you search, you need the village's name, the province it belonged to before 1918, and the oblast it is in today.

Two empires, then four states. FamilySearch notes that in the late 18th century most Ukrainian territory was absorbed by the Russian Empire, while the western areas of Bukovina, Galicia and Transcarpathia were part of Austria-Hungary. In 1914 the Russian Empire had ten provinces (gubernias) on Ukrainian territory: Chernihiv, Katerynoslav (Ekaterinoslav), Kharkiv, Kherson, Kholm, Kyiv, Podolia, Poltava, Taurida and Volhynia. Between the wars the map changed again:

• Galicia and Volhynia were in Poland: the Polish State Archives describe the voivodeships of Lwów, Stanisławów, Tarnopol and Wołyń as pre-war Polish provinces now in Ukraine. Read our Poland guide too.
• Bukovina was part of Austria from 1774 to 1918, then of Romania (1918 to 1940 and 1941 to 1944); the Chernivtsi region was formed on 7 August 1940.
• Transcarpathia (Carpathian Ruthenia) belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary; after 1920 it went to Czechoslovakia, and in 1945 that part was ceded to Soviet Ukraine. For the Hungarian period, read our Hungary guide.
• The rest was a republic of the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1991, when Ukraine became independent.

A family paper may therefore call your ancestor Russian, Austrian, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian or Czechoslovak, and the arrival tables did the same (see Emigrants).

One village, several names. FamilySearch notes that Galicia is Halychyna in Ukrainian and Galizien in German, and that Ukrainian names have two common English spellings (traditional, such as Kyiv, and the Library of Congress system, such as Kyïv); records from the Russian Empire use the Russian form (Kiev, Chernigov, Kharkov). For Galicia and Bukovina, the Austrian Gemeindelexikon (volume 12 Galizien, volume 13 Bukowina) gives the German, Polish and Romanian names; the FamilySearch Wiki on Ukraine gazetteers links to it and to other gazetteers and maps. Search under every form you have.

Which archive. The State Archival Service asks family historians to contact the central and regional archives according to where the ancestors were born, lived, married or died:

Metrical books (metrychni knyhy): church records before about 1920

Before civil registration began around 1920, births, marriages and deaths were recorded by the clergy of each faith in metrical books (metrychni knyhy). FamilySearch gives these approximate starting dates: Orthodox registers from 1722, when Peter the Great made them compulsory, Greek Catholic from 1607 and Roman Catholic from 1563; Russia required Lutheran registers from 1832, and Jewish transcripts were filed with the town council. The priest also made a copy for the church consistory, which is why many books survive as consistory duplicates.

What the archives hold.

• Kyiv: the Central State Historical Archive in Kyiv (TsDIAK) holds the metrical books of the religious institutions of Kyiv and the present Kyiv region up to 1919–1920, the Orthodox books of the former Kyiv gubernia up to 1874, and some Catholic and synagogue books from places now in the Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Poltava and Cherkasy regions that once belonged to Kyiv gubernia. In June 2026 it reported that it had digitised all its primary genealogical documents of Orthodox churches, Roman Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues.
• Lviv: the Central State Historical Archive in Lviv (TsDIAL) publishes catalogues of its Roman Catholic metrical books of Galicia, 1600–1946 (2026) and of its Orthodox metrical books, 1711–1944 (2018), most of them kept in the fond of the Greek Catholic Metropolitan Consistory. The Roman Catholic catalogue notes that there is no database of names: the catalogue is the finding aid.
• Warsaw: the Polish Central Archives of Historical Records (AGAD) keeps almost 8,500 metrical books from the pre-war voivodeships of Lwów, Stanisławów, Tarnopol and Wołyń: Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, Orthodox and others. More books from these areas, handed over by the Soviet authorities in 1949, are at the Warsaw civil registry office. See our Poland guide.
• Elsewhere: the state archive of each oblast. Some books are only now reaching the archives: in June 2026 the civil registry department for the Zhytomyr region handed TsDIAK the 1875–1915 metrical books of the Orthodox and Jewish communities of Berdychiv district.

To find an entry you need, as TsDIAK puts it, the settlement where the birth, marriage or death took place, the person's full name (a woman's maiden name) and the year.

Read the records online

Ukraine's state archives publish their finding aids and scans on e-resources built on the ARCHIUM platform. The State Archival Service's Interarchival Search Portal searches 13 of them at once; in October 2026 it showed 1,285,065 files and 25,423,729 digital images. Search for the village or the parish, open the file for the right years, and read the entry yourself.

• Kyiv (TsDIAK): the e-resource has a collection called Мій родовід (My family tree): metrical records of the 18th to 20th centuries. The archive says its digital fund holds 260,270 files with 15,234,336 digital copies, and that about 20% of its holdings are digitised. Files not yet digitised can be ordered for the reading room through a personal account.
• Lviv (TsDIAL): the e-resource has a collection Метричні книги Галичини (metrical books of Galicia): records of birth, marriage and death.
• Kyiv region (DAKO): the e-resource shows the 1897 census sheets of Kyiv gubernia, revision lists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and civil registration books with their alphabetical indexes, 1919–1948.
• Khmelnytskyi region (Podolia): the e-resource has Архів родинної історії (family history archive): metrical books of Orthodox churches, Roman Catholic parishes and Jewish communities, and a separate collection of civil registration books.
• Other archives on the portal: the state archives of the Lviv, Poltava and Kirovohrad regions, among others. Archives not on the portal publish on their own websites.

FamilySearch also has free indexes and images, among them Ukraine, Kyiv, Orthodox Consistory Church Book Duplicates, 1723-1931 and Ukraine, Western Ukraine, Catholic Church Book Duplicates, 1600-1937 for Eastern Galicia, which uses the Austrian place names.

Revision lists, the 1897 census and other records

Revision lists (revizki kazky). FamilySearch describes them as tax records that look like a census: ten revisions were taken between 1719 and 1858, listing households with names, relationships and ages. The State Archival Service names them, with metrical books, among the main genealogical sources, from the end of the 18th to the middle of the 19th century. TsDIAK adds that a family tree also needs confession lists (spovidni rozpysy), and that these sources are often in different archives.

The 1897 census. The only general census of the Russian Empire was taken on 28 January 1897. Two copies were made; FamilySearch notes that the ministry's copy was destroyed, so only local copies survive. The State Archive of Kyiv Oblast shows the census sheets of Kyiv gubernia on its e-resource.

Galicia's court books. TsDIAL also shows a collection of the grod and land court books of Galicia.

From about 1920: civil registration (RAGS, today DRATS)

FamilySearch dates the start of civil registration to 1920; the State Archive of Kyiv Oblast's civil registration books begin in 1919. Under the Soviet Union these offices were known as ZAGS or RAGS; today they are the civil registry departments (DRATS) of the Ministry of Justice.

Older civil books are in the archives. The Ministry of Justice explains that metrical books and civil registration books may have been handed to a state archive, and that the archive then issues the certificate (arkhivna dovidka). Some are already online: DAKO shows the Kyiv region's civil registration books for 1919–1948, the Khmelnytskyi archive has a collection of civil registration books, and in 2024 the Lviv regional archive put online 316 books of the Lviv central civil registry department.

Newer records stay with the registry departments. No official page read explains how a descendant living abroad can obtain a copy of a recent entry; ask a Ukrainian consulate.

Emigrants: where they went and how they were counted

Before 1991 Ukraine had no line of its own in most arrival tables. Your ancestor will usually be counted under the state that ruled the village at the time: the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, Austria or Austria-Hungary, Poland, Romania or Czechoslovakia. None of the figures below are for Ukrainians only. The official tables shown on this site's map count:

Figures: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2019, table 2 (country of origin before 1906, country of last residence from 1906); Argentina, Dirección General de Inmigración (reports of 1904 and 1925); IBGE, Anuário Estatístico do Brasil 1959; Australian Government, Department of Home Affairs, Historical Migration Statistics (November 2025; numbers under 5 hidden in some decades); Quebec immigration ministry (MIFI), tables of permanent immigration. Borders changed over time: a country name may not cover the same territory in every decade. Each country uses its own definitions: compare with care.

Look first for the arrival record in the country where your ancestor landed: it often names the village, in its Russian, Polish, German or Hungarian form.

Writing to a Ukrainian state archive

Read the e-resources first: many metrical books, revision lists and early civil registration books are online. If you cannot find the entry, write to the state archive of the present oblast, or to TsDIAK in Kyiv or TsDIAL in Lviv, and ask for a search and an archival certificate (arkhivna dovidka) or a copy of the entry. Give the settlement, the province before 1918, the person's full name (a woman's maiden name), the approximate dates, the religion and your own postal and e-mail address.

Fees. Under the Rules of Archival Institutions, a genealogical request is a personal request, which archives carry out as a paid service; they may instead invite you to search yourself in the reading room, and large jobs need a contract. The State Archival Service says the fee follows each archive's price list: ask for it and for the way to pay from abroad. Someone in Ukraine can search for you with a notarised power of attorney.

What archives will not do. TsDIAK does not compile family trees or write genealogies, because the work would not fit the 30 days the law allows for a reply; it answers specific requests.

The war. Since the Russian invasion, TsDIAK has stopped all communication with institutions and citizens of Russia and Belarus and does not accept e-mail sent from domains such as @mail.ru or @yandex.ru: write from another address. Ukraine's defence intelligence reports that archives in the temporarily occupied territories are being placed under Russia's archival system, so records held there may be out of reach.

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