Mr. Vlad Soshnikov from
Moscow is meeting with me in San Francisco at the end of this month (May 2007) to discuss his summer research trip to the Kars/Trans-Caucasus region including the Yerevan and Baku Archives where many documents on Molokan families are maintained. Please contact me immediately at
billiamcpa@aol.com if you are interested in having Mr. Soshnikov research your Molokan roots. So far, I have received genealogy records from two interested participants, but I would like to see more participation to make this more affordable for those involved since we will be sharing the cost.
For more information about Mr. Soshnikov and the proposed research project, please read Mr. Soshnikov's message below.
Sincerely,
Bill Kisseloff-McCulloch
Vlad Soshnikov's message to interested participants:
Thank you for your interest in the Yerevan & Baku research trip which I plan to complete in the coming summer together with my fellow university historian and genealogist Dmitry Panov. We have been cooperating on behalf of American genealogists for many years since 1991, when the Russian-American Genealogical Archival
Service was established with offices in
Moscow and
Washington, DC. It was a joint venture of the Russian State Committee for the Archives and the U.S. National Archives. I was the director from the Russian side since 1994 and visited the U.S. frequently for numerous genealogical conventions, etc. Nowadays we are independent genealogical researchers providing expert services in Russian and other ex-USSR archives.
In the summer of 2006, in cooperation with Yerevan archivists, we discovered and got copies of numerous historical records regarding the Kiselev and other Molokan families for the years 1860-1904. It makes us sure that upon further research in the same record groups we will discover more information in Yerevan and Baku archives regarding other Molokan families. In the future, we hope to trace those families back to the places of their origin in central provinces of Russia as far as in the early 1800s and 1700s.
As for records to be researched. These are official census records (so called Cameral records and Revision lists) and lists of villages and resettlers from the records groups of Tsar's governors and tax offices. Offical tax records show whole families for a certain year (for example, The Cameral records of 1860). List of settlers usually show only men. However, there are many details about how and where they moved in the process of resettlement. It gives lots of details for a family history: a saga of the Tsar protestants' expulsions, explorations and searches of better life.
The law of
Imperial Russia required every major denomination to keep birth, death and marriage records for annual report to the Ministry of the Interiour. However, for such groups of rural protestants as the Molokans,
there was no system for collection of such records. Therefore, in most cases there are no such records in the archives.
As for visiting the villages outside of Yerevan. Yes, it is possible to do for us during the research trip to Yerevan archives. Upon a visit, we can make a detailed report from a historian's point of view about what is there now, illustrated with professional quality photographs. I have done such visits and photographs on behalf of many U.S. clients in cities and villages in Ukraine, Belarus and various regions fo Russia. Samples and references may be provided upon request.
I look forward to your further interest in research and photo trips. Hope to make a progress for your family history.
Best regards,
Vlad Soshnikov
Historian/Archivist in cooperation with Roots-In-Russia (
Washington, D.C.)
