The entire immigration from the Russian Empire (that would include Poland and Finland) in 1880-1910 years counted about 2 million people.  It was almost pure Jewish immigration - more than 80% immigrant each year were Jews.  Before 1880, this percent was around 10%, after 1910 percent fell to 30 ... then 50% according to a submission to JewishGen by Dr. Roman Tunkel on 2/25/1999 where he asked why?

There were more than a dozen emigrant control stations established by Germany along its Russian border.  In "Fame, Fortune and Sweet Liberty", an excellent book on the "Great European Emigration" published in Bremen in both English and German, the authors write:  "Health inspections stations were set up at points where the Russian and Prussian railroad lines met, and all emigrants were required to use the special trains or cars, which were now often uncomfortable". 

On June 22, 1941, the German army invaded Soviet territory.  They did not enter alone - small units of SS and police, some three thousand men in all, were also dispatched on special assignments.  Their task to kill the Jews on the spot - Jews, but not only Jews; communists, Gypsies, political leaders, and the intelligentsia were also killed.  Order police battalions, Waffen SS units, the Higher SS, and Police Leaders also carried out the mass executions. Additional commentary can be found at
http://www.pgonline.com/electriczen/ 

Today, with the latest developments in Russia, the estimated 600,000 to 2 million Jews know little of Jewish life and what is left and it is becoming less stable as it becomes more tied to personal relationships between powerful Jews and the Kremlin.  There are 240 Jewish congregations registered with Russia's Justice Ministry.

There is a more descriptive detail in Bernard Horwich's
"My First Eighty Years" (excerpts available at:
www.uic.edu/depts/hist/nearwest/docs/jews/horwich/horwich.html 

Russia's Czar Nicholas I in April 1835, created the 'Pale of Settlement'.  At least one third of Russia's Jews were forced to live in the Pale.  The Pale of Settlement was a demarcated area in Russia beyond which Jewish settlement and permanent residences were forbidden.  The only exceptions were merchants of the first guild, doctors, lawyers, members of the free professions and several other Jewish groups of insignificant size.  The Pale encompassed fifteen provinces in the Polish Kingdom, Lithuania, Byelorussia, Bessarabia, Kourland and most of Ukraine.  See Leonid Smilovitsky,

Search Europe
An excellent site to find information about most European countries - type in the name of the country you wish to research in the search field.  This site is a great source to find information for almost every European country. 
http://searcheurope.com  

Another valuable site to help find a person, maps, etc.  type in the name of any country you wish to research. This service is free.
http://www.webhelp.com/home  

Global Gazetteer
A directory of  2,880,532 of the world's cities and towns, sorted by country and linked to a map for each town.  A tab separated list is available for each country. 
www.calle.com/world/ 

"A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire"
Authored by Alexander Beider  

"A World of Secrets"
Authored by Leonard H. Berman.  The Gilded Age in Europe and in America is the backdrop to the dramatic events that will reveal the secrets they hid to survive.  Marta Birkov suckles an infant whose mother is sentenced to be hanged for complicity in the Czar's assassination.  Jonah Chernov agonizes over his twin sister's fate.  Secretly, his sister is being spirited away in a coffin to Copenhagen. Available from author at 21 Chathan Drive, Voorhees, NJ 08043. $20 plus $5.00 shipping

"Atlas of Russian History"
Authored by Martin Gilbert and published in 1993 by Oxford University Press in New York
ISBN 0-19-521061-1

"Book of Memories"
A number of veterans and researchers collected and verified the names, vital data and causes of death for Jewish members of the Red Army and Soviet Navy.

The Brokgauz & Efron Encyclopedia
Originally edited and published from 1890-1907 by the German Brokgauz and the Jewish Efron (with others too).  The information and perspective of the online encyclopedia reflect this timeframe.  That is what makes this encyclopedia useful to genealogists.  There are purportedly around 50,000 subjects.  The encyclopedia is in Cyrillic, however there is a machine translator of Russian to English and this can give a sense of the content.
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/spx/class/Encyclopedias/Russia/russenc.htm

"Brothers Ashkenazi"
Authored by I. J. Singer and published by Forum Books in 1936 and by World Publishing Company of New York and Cleveland in 1963

"The Cantonists: The Jewish Children's Army of the Tsar"
Disturbing accounts of the Tsars' boy warriors Authored by Larry Domnitch and published by Devora.  Cantons were areas in Russia, where Peter the Great established barracks to house Jewish children and others who were press-ganged into his army.  Some children could be exempted -- those studying at yeshiva and those who were married.  This caused many under-age marriages.

"Carved Memories: Heritage in Stone from the Russian Jewish Pale"
Authored by David Noevich Goberman

"Common Places; Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia"
Authored by Svetlana Boym and published in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Harvard University Press in 1994

"Evreiskaya Encyclopedia" - (Russian Jewish Encyclopedia)
Printed in the Russian language and produced in St. Petersburg between 1908 and 1916.  There are sets at YIVO; the Library of Congress and at Dropsie in Philadelphia.

"Dispelling Myths, Book Shows Jewish Role In Soviet War Effort"
Authored by Lev Krichevsky.  It took a group of veterans and researchers 10 years to collect and verify the names, vital data and causes of death for Jewish members of the Red Army and Soviet navy who died during  WW II
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-79388772.html  

"A History of Ukraine"
Authored by Paul Robert Magocsi in 1996.

"Istoriya Khazar"
Artamonov's Russian-language book - released by Gosudarstvennyi Ermitazh, Filologicheskii Fakul'tet SPbGU.  This 549 page book covers the history and culture of Khazar kingdom.
ISBN 5846500323

"Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories"
Authored by Miriam Weiner 

"The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk: Identity, Anti-Semitism, Emigration"
Authored by Rozalina Ryvkina

"Khaklaim Yehudiim Bearvot Russia" (Jewish agriculturalists on the Russian Steppe) Published in Tel Aviv 1965 is a major source of information about Jewish agricultural colonies.

"Knopf Guides. St. Petersburg"
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1995 is a fantastically rich and colorful tour guide of the Russian city.

"The Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia"
Authored by John Channon with Rob Hudson and published by Penguin Books in 1995. (Timeline, maps plus a synopsis of major events in Russia's history with many pictures.

"Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History"
Edited by John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza and published by Cambridge University Press.

"Revival of the Historiography of Byelorussian Jews 1992 - 1995" 
Author Leonid Smilovitsky smilov@netvision.net.il 

"Russia and the Russians: A History"
Authored by Geoffrey Hosking and published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2001.  On page 12 it discusses a 16th century increase in the number of taverns as being a concern of the Church - "promoted licentious and immoral behavior sometimes associated with pagan celebrations."  The book also mentions limiting intoxicating drinking and refers to "While in the 18th century, liquor tax was 50% of the treasury's indirect tax revenue, for most of the 19th century it was 1/3.  A footnote indicates: R.E.F. Smith and David Christian, Bread and Salt: Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia published by Cambridge University Press in 1984.

"Secrets and Spies The Harbin Files"
Authored by Mara Moustafine and published by Random House in Australia.  The book documents Mara Moustafine's family's history and fate from Tsarist Russia to Harbin and under the 1937/38 Stalin Terror in Hailar and Harbin in Russian Manchuria, and back to the former USSR, Shanghai and eventually Australia
ISBN 1 74051 091 7

"A Travel Guide to Jewish Russia & Ukraine"
Authored by Ben G. Frank and published by Pelican Books.  Useful information for the Jewish traveler. Describes the Jewish communities the author encountered as he traveled in the footsteps of a twelfth century rabbi and includes numerous photographs and an index.

"Ruska"
Authored by Edward Rutherfurd and published by Ballentine Books Edition in New York in1991
ISBN 0-8041-0972-9

"Yevreiski Zemlyedeltsi" (Jewish Agriculturalists)
Authored by Nikitin and published in St. Petersburg, 1887

Alexander Axelrod is in the Moscow office.
http://www.adl.ru/page/en/3016

ArcheoBibliobase information system on archival repositories in the Russian Federation, maintained in Moscow under the direction of Patricia Kennedy Grimsted in collaboration with the Federal Archival Service of Russia (Rosarkhiv).  This site offers links to addresses and other contact information for : Federal Archives under Rosarkhiv; Archives under Federal Agencies other than Rosarkhiv; Local State Archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg - and is available in English  
http://www.iisg.nl/abb/

Archives - State Archive of Ancient Bills
Click on English version 
http://www.devletarsivleri.gov.tr/Forms/pgArticle.aspx?Id=661c6491-7ddb-4dd7-a086-20798ed97830

Grossman Project, Military Conscription
http://grossmanproject.net/Military%20Conscription.htm

Military Records
The RBVIA serves as the centralized archive for military records of the Russian Empire, consolidating the holdings from various pre-revolutionary Russian military archives and other repositories throughout the former Soviet Union.  RGVIA retains documentation produced from the activities of highest, central, and local military administration and military agencies of the Russian Empire from the end of the seventeenth century until March of 1918.

Military Conscription in Russia in the 19th Century
http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/ru-mil.txt

YIVO, Military Service in Russia
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org

http://www.roots-saknes.lv/Army/military_service_.htm

More than 20 million Soviet citizens died in what was called "The Great Patriot War" about 50 times the number of American deaths - including well over one million Jews.
http://jhsum.org/exhibits/

Click on Russian Veterans Oral History Project

Moscow Military Archives
http://feefhs.org/members/blitz/archives-russia.html

Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voenno-Istoricheskii Arkhiv (RGVIA) 
Russia 107864 Moscow  
2nd Bauman Street, 3  
Phone +7 095 261 20 70
http://www.idc.nl/faid/497/B4findingaids.html

For records from 1918 - 1941 (In Russian)
Rossiyskiy Gosudarstvenniy Voyenniy Arkhiv
Rossiya, 125212 Moskva
U1. Adm. Makarov, 29
http://forum.vgd.ru/132/8604/

Russian State Military Archive
Russia, 125212 Moscow
Adm. Makarov St. 29
http://www.gale.cengage.com/pdf/facts/russian.pdf

KGB Archive

Moscow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB

http://seansrussiablog.org/2009/01/29/ukraine-throws-kgb-archive-doors-open/

National Library of Russia
18 Sadovaya Street
191069 St. Petersburg
Russia
Telephone: 00 7 812 110 6253
Fax: 00 7 812 310 6148
E-mail mb@glas.apc.org
http://www.nlr.ru/eng/

National Library of Russia
Vozdvigenka 3
101000 Moscow
Russia
Telephone: +7 495-2023565
Fax: +7 095 200 22 55
E-mail: main@irgb.msk.su 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_Russia

The Russian Archive is your link to ALL archival collections found in Russia's archives, libraries and museums, including those recently declassified and open to all scholars.
http://www.aha.ru/~russarch/eng/indexe.html

Russian State Archives  (In Russian)
http://garf.narod.ru/ 

They do research in Russia and have special privileges into the archives. The cost is $80 for a preliminary search whether they find anything or not. I haven't explored this particular page in any depth, but it looks pretty interesting.
http://feefhs.org/BLITZ/FRGBLITZ.HTML

http://feefhs.org/members/blitz/frgblitz.html

There are approximately 1,206,000 Byelorussians in Russia as of 1993.  There is a large community in the Komi Republic (27,000 currently live in Komi, the republic's fourth largest ethnic community after Russians, Komi and Ukrainians. and approximately 12,000 Byelorussians in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). 
http://www.belaurs-misc.org/bel-diasp.htm

http://russia.rin.ru/guides_e/4327.html

Komi is a republic in the Russian Federation. It was an autonomous republic of the USSR from 1936 to 1991. It occupies a large portion of northeast European Russia, bounded on the east by the Ural Mountains and extending slightly north of the Arctic Circle.  the Pechora river flows through the middle of the republic.  It has a population of about 2.2 million and its capital is Syktyvkar.  The Komi (Zyrien) people, whose language belongs to the Permian subgroup of the Ural-Altaic family, comprise about 23 percent of the population, Russians nearly 58%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komi_Republic

http://www.kosherdelight.com/Russia_Komi_Republic.shtml

The Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, devised the Cantonist system.  Tsar Nicholas Pavolovich (1827-1855) used this system as a vehicle to force Jewish children to accept baptism.  More information available in "Kantonisten" - written in Yiddish by Abraham Lewin. 

Soviet era
http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/translations.html

http://www.ovguide.com/black-book-9202a8c04000641f8000000000289613

This poster implores Soviets to "beat the fascist reptile".

Here is a page on Cyrillic handwriting
http://www.colby.edu/library/collections/technical_services/wp/Cyrillic.html

http://winrus.com/screen_e.htm

http://www.shevchenko.org/vk.htm

A searchable database, titled "Phoenix Project" and created by Professor John Garrard, Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Arizona, is available
http://www.jewishgen.org/   

The first phase of this project is a list of more than 12,000 persons 14 years and older who were required by the   Nazis to obtain photo identification cards in order to live in the Brest ghetto.  Dr. Garrard plans to recover Holocaust victims' names and as much information as possible about them and their families.  The database includes direct hyperlinks to the original source documents as retrieved from the archives, which are stored in  scanned image files.  The Brest passport photos are not digitized and are available at Yad Vashem and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. 
http://www.brestonline.com/ 

Meest-Boston delivers US dollars, sea and air parcels, food parcels, equipment and electronics, letters and small packages to Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Poland and other countries. More services are available 
www.meestboston.com

From the United Kingdom
http://www.parcel2ship.co.uk/

Institute For National Relations and Politology Of The Ukrainian Academy Of Sciences - Dr. Alexander Zaremba is a chair of the Department   
http://www.jewish-heritage.org/ipnoe.htm 

Volunteer genealogists have set up a network of web sites to help answer the sometimes daunting questions about research in different countries.  Most European countries and information about each are available
http://www.rootsweb.com/ 

Executive director is Rabbi Avrohom Berkowitz
http://www.fjc.ru/communities/institution.asp?AID=94791

These were the wealthiest class of business (1859-).  The cut-off date for this group is ambiguous; some lost their right of residency during the wave of expulsions in 1893, others found life increasingly uncomfortable and left, voluntarily or not, during the years up to 1917.
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Moscow

In order to receive best results of genealogical search in Russia one has to know exact spelling of surname in Cyrillic letters - there are thousands of Russian surnames and many of them sounds alike. The surnames may change while transliterating to a great extent. Therefore, the best way is to try to find people with similar or sound-alike surnames and talk with them - that way one can find out how his/her ancestors were called in Russia.  When you enter this site, click on the English hyperlink if you cannot read Cyrillic 
http://www.vgd.ru/ 

Set up in the 1920s, partly as a way of turning Jews without trades or professions into productive occupations, partly as a way of harnessing the enthusiasm of young Jews who had been inspired by ideas such as A D Gordon's or Borochov to become pioneers, as an alternative to their emigrating to Eretz Yisrael.  Indeed, in the late 1920s, amid setbacks and trouble in mandate Palestine, some chalutzim did return to Russia believing they would be taking part in building a socialist Gan Eden.  Unfortunately, some met a grim fate at the hands of Stalin.

One settlement attained fame in the song "Zhankoye" in the Crimea ("not far from Simferopol")  From a posting by Charles Pottins

Sources for the Jewish Agricultural Colonies, located at various times in Southern Russia, Bessarabia, Podolia and      the Crimea, are relatively hard to find in one resource.  This site is an attempt to gather as much data about the individual settlements, the points of origin of these settlers and to recount their stories. 
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Colonies_of_Ukraine 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_Russian_Empire

#20 Agricultural Village
Located in the Katrinislaw area of Dneteprevoski

Vaad-Federation of Jewish Organizations and Communities
Moscow 113556, Russia
http://www.vaadua.org/VaadENG/newsENG.htm

Idud Hasadim
Saint Petersburg 194044, Russia
http://old.hokma.ru/db/links/volunt.htm

International Jewish Community of Moscow
Moscow 129110, Russia
http://www.jewishmoscow.com/

The Russian Jewish Congress
Moscow 121205, Russia
http://www.moshekantor.com/en/community/rus_congress.php

71, Varshavskoye Street
Moscow 113556 Russia;
Phone: 7 095 110 4853; Fax: 7 095 110 8611;
Answering Machine: 7 095 451 33 82;
Email: jgsm51@glas.apc.org

Warren Blatt has answered many questions you want answers to
http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/#Russia 

An excellent site, in English for the most part,  for researchers  
http://prorus.ru/  

(note the English hyperlink on the left side of page in small print ) and
http://www.jewish-heritage.org/starte.htm   

Here, you will find in addition to links of internet resources on Jews in Eastern Europe, access to JHS publications and a Russian language web site. Also check (In Russian)
http://litera.ru.ru    

Sergei Malichin offers his free services  to attempt to answer any questions that you might have about the Moscow region.  Sergei lives in Moscow.  His E-mail address is:skomarov@narod.ru 

Locate your town (shtetl)
http://www.jewishgen.org/shtetlseeker/loctown.htm

Jewish Problem In the Principality of Moscow

Khazars 

Much of the following information was obtained from the April 13, 2001 issue of the KHAZARIA.COM NEWS and is attributed to Kevin Brook
www.khazaria.com

Khazaria, a world power in eastern Europe that flourished as an independent state from the 7th to the 11th  centuries.  In the 9th century, the Khazarian royalty  and nobility, as well as a significant portion of the Khazar   Turkic population, embraced the Jewish religion. After the fall of the Khazarian Empire in the 10th century, they dispersed throughout what became Russia, Poland and Lithuania.  They mixed with Sephardic Jews as offering  safe haven and later mixed with arriving Jews from Germanic and European areas, becoming what we think of now as Eastern European Jews.
http://www.da.aaanet.ru/exped/exped_en_fr.htm

The word Kagan comes to our lexicon from the Chussar Nation which was located between the Black and Caspian  Seas. The leaders of the Chussars were called Kagans. Some time in the 5th Century, the "Big Kagan" of the   Chussars decided to unify the nation by imposing a single religion. After consultation with Clergy of the 3 religions, he decided that the Jewish religion was the one for them (the aristocracy). The Princes (Kagans) became Cohanim. When the Attila the Hun invaded their territory, the Chussars moved West (most to Hungary) some to Russia. The ones that arrived in Russia adapted the Russian way of life but not the religion. (for more on that, read the book  "The 13th Tribe). You'll find that a Russian Cohen will most likely be called Kagan or Kaganowicz. From a posting by Arie Wishnia on 1/28/04

Khazars at Kevin Alan Brooks web site 
www.Khazaria.com 

Khazaria.com
A resource for Turkic and Jewish History in Russia and Ukraine.  The site offers a free
subscription for their E-mail newsletter
http://www.khazaria.com

The Khazaria-announce list will help you to learn all about the religions, languages, burial practices, arts and crafts, agriculture, horticulture, military affairs and immigrations of the Khazars.   And there is much information available   in the new Alexander Beider book on the "Origin of Ashkenazic Names"

The list mainly consists of occasional mailings of information in the following categories:
1.) reviews and announcements of new books and articles in the subject area; 2.) news about relevant new conferences, television programs, museum exhibitions and discoveries; and 3.) news about significant updates or additions to the
http://Khazaria.com

Khazaria
The Jewish Kingdom of Khazaria in the twelfth century.  On the banks of the Don, recently, were discovered  Khazarian dishes bearing the word 'Israel' in Hebrew and a new Khazar fortress, next to the one at Sarkel, has also been announced and excavations are underway on the banks of the big reservoir of Tsimlyansk.

The Khazars are generally viewed as a Turkic-speaking people.  The Khazar kingdom was an important regional    power that controlled the steppe lands and several important rivers -- the Volga and the Don.  An active north-south trade existed through the kingdom.  Exiles, including persecuted Jews, were welcomed to the Khazar country.

It has been argued by one Murad Magomedov (Makhachkala) that the first political centers of Khazaria were located in Dagestan (Balanjar and Samandar) and after that, probably from the second half of the 8th century onwards, in Itil on Volga delta.  He did not agree with the interpretations of some colleagues who put forward the   idea of some early (from the middle/the second half of the 7th century) center of Khazaria between Don and Dnieper, during that time it was the Bulgars of Kubrat who controlled this area.  Some of the burials in this region (Voznesenka, etc.) dated from the end of the 7th century to the first decade of the 8th century, could mark the western frontier of the Khaganate.

The Kingdom was destroyed in 965 by Prince Svyatoslav of the Rus, but a small Khazar state might have still existed around Itil until the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Russia.  To some, the Caspian Sea remained called the 'Khazar Sea' long after Khazaria disappeared.

Itil (Atil) was the capital of the Khazars and was considered the 'jewel' of the Volga, the white city of Al-Khazar,   where all religions cohabited in peace, where each minority was judged according to its own laws. At its height, the Khazar State and its tributaries controlled much of what is now southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern  Ukraine, Azerbaijan and large parts of Russia's North Caucasus region. The king (Kagan) possessed a big city that spreads on two banks of the Volga (Itil).  They (the Khazars) are all Jewish, wrote the Arab ambassador Ahmed ibn Fadian in 922. For further information see the December 30, 2008 issue of Khazaria News
http://khazaria.com

"A thousand years ago, Khazaria, ruled by Turkish converts to Judaism, was the superpower of the age, spanning  lands from the Ukraine to Kazakhstan.  In the 10th century, its cities were destroyed by the Rus, the Scandinavian raiders who formed the original nobility of Russia; with little physical evidence of its existence, Khazaria faded into legend.

In September 2008 two Russian archeologists found the capital of Khazaria, in Astrakhan's Samosdelskoyee ruins.  They uncovered several layers of ruins, including a Golden Horde town and a Bulgur city.  Beneath them were the remains of a Khazar metropolis burnt down in the 10th century; the Rus set fire to Itil in the 960s. The ruins, a city bisected by riverbeds with a central island citadel of fired brick, match written accounts of Itil.  Only the kings used brick, noted the archeologists.

A specialist of the Khazars, Constantin Zuckerman who is the director of the Centre of Byzantine Studies at the College of France, thinks that the Khazars were of partially Israelite ancestry and had, over time, lost elements of  their observance of Judaism.  Zuckerman also thinks that the earliest that the earliest Khazars were partly of Finno-Ugric origin, like the Hungarians and after coming southwest they assimilated the Barsil people and resettled in the Caspian Sea region.  The Khazars did not reach the Tran Caucasus before the 7th century.  Jewish exiles had an impact upon Khazaria's governmental system, religion and way of life, and Byzantine-Khazar relations deteriorated after the Khazars converted to Judaism, a religion that the Byzantines did not tolerate.

Zuckerman feels that the real conversion of the Khazars to Judaism took place in the year 861 rather than earlier.  The early Rus look to Khazaria for inspiration and designate their king as a Kagan, just like the Khazars. 'The Russians are then the emulators of the Khazars' summarizes Constantin Zuckerman.

A number of reference books are mentioned in this issue and should be of interest to anyone studying the Khazar Nation.

Here's a page, thanks to the information supplied by Kevin Brooks, a noted authority and author of several books and articles on the subject.  Kevin Brook's site has references to Khazarian Given names commonly found in Jewish families 
http://www.khazaria.com/brook.html

There is a khazaria-announce group at Yahoo which makes it easy to participate in E-mail discussions, coordinate events, share photos and other files and more.  To learn more about the khazaria-announce group,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/khazaria-announce

Photographs of the Turkic-Jewish bricks from Sarkel fortress containing engravings of Khazarian Turkic Tamgas (tribe symbols) 
http://www.khazaria.com/images/sarkbric.jpg

Informational Link
There are Regional Special Interest Groups that have Khazaria information and links.  The site includes links to Bohemia-Moravia SIG, Denmark SIG, German-Jewish SIG, Hungary SIG and Stammbaum - German SIG at
http://www.jewishgen.org/Shtetlinks/W_Europe.html

2002 Classic Hermitage Edition. Initially published in 1962, the 549 page book covers the history and culture of the Khazar kingdom with special attention paid to archaeological discoveries, especially those   at the Sarkel fortress on the lower Don.  Its coverage of the histories of the histories of the Huns, Avars, Sabers, Khazars and other medieval tribes is comprehensive but it reflects the status of research four decades ago.
ISBN 5846500323
http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-research.html

"Jews of Khazaria: Book Review"

"Panorama of Russia"
E-mail: orders@panrus.com
http://www.panrus.com/books/

"Two-tiered Relexification in Yiddish: Jews, Sorbs, Khazars and the Kiev-Polessian Dialect"
Authored by Paul Wexler and published in 2002 by Mouton de Gruyter.  Wexler claims that Yiddish was created     when Judaized Sorbs first relexified their language to High German between the 9th-12th centuries; by the 15th century, the descendants of the Judaized Khazars also allegedly relexified their Kiev-Polessian (northern Ukrainian  and southern Belarusian) speech to Yiddish and German.  Yiddish thus uses a mixed West-East Slavic grammar, according to Wexler.

"The Wind of the Khazars"
Authored by Marek Halter and translated from French by Michael Bernard.  Published by The Toby Press.  This historical novel tells two stories.  One in the present, is about a writer named Marc Sofer who is researching the Khazars and the second story is based on a true incident that took place toward the end of the kingdom in the years around 955.

These books, along with over 180 other books on countries and subjects of possible interest to you is available by clicking here > Jewish Genealogy

Khazars at Clio
A historical and cultural agency in Paris, France
http://www.khazaria.com/brookcv.html

http://www.khazaria.com/gottesmancv.html

Khazarian Historic Maps
Maps of the Khazar Kingdom from 300 C.E. to 1000 C.E.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_khazar03.htm

Other sites of interest in studying Khazars
http://www.da.aaanet.ru/exped/exped_en_fr.htm

WJC
Jews in Russia Homepage of the Institute for Jewish Studies in CIS Jewish Heritage Society, Moscow Association of Jewish Studies Students, Moscow center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization "Sefer" Russian Jewish   Congress ... and so much more
http://www.khazaria.com/jewishlinks.html

During the 16th century, Jews moved into Poland-Lithuania, protected by the Poland-Lithuanian Crown, serving for   the convenience of the szlachta who offered patronage, employment as tavern keepers.

Note: a fabulous source for maps of almost any country and region of the Russian Empire and the former Soviet    Union can be found at the Maps of Russia and the FSU site below.

1942 Maps of Russia showing the "Eastern Front
Map of German gains"
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/Maps.html

1944 Map of Balkans, Carpathian Mountains Terrain Map
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/Maps.html

Map of Old Russia
The Growth of Russia in Europe, 1300-1796 (and Partitions of Poland) in color http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/reference/maps/freeimages.asp?ImageID=257 

Maps of Russia and the FSU Republics (Former Soviet Union)
Be prepared to stay online for quite some time, if you want to see one of the largest collections of different types of maps.  This site is fabulous and offers a huge variety of maps that include such titles as Bukovina Maps; Ukraine   Maps and Distances; Ex-USSR map; Maps of Europe in different eras; Russian Far East Maps; Belarus Maps; Ukraine Maps; Kazakhstan Maps:  Georgia Maps; Tajikistan Maps; Crimea Maps; Uzbekistan Maps; Azerbaijan Maps; Kyrgyzstan Maps; Moldova Maps; Turkmenistan Maps; Armenia Maps; Caucuses Region Maps; Baltic States Maps including Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia; and more
http://users.aimnet.com/~ksyrah/ekskurs/maps.html

Map of Volhynia Guberniya
http://www.angelfire.com/or/yizkor/volhyn.html 

Old Maps of Russia
Source for many maps of not only Russia, but Russian areas in the past 
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~feefhs/maps/ruse/ 

Poland Border Maps
A list of surnames for researching genealogy in the former historical Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Moravia, Hungary
http://www.maxpages.com/poland

Russian Empire Map
1902 map of Russia's Polish Provinces 
http://feefhs.org/maps/ruse/re-polan.html

"The May Laws introduced by Tsar Alexander III of Russia in 1882 banned Jews from rural areas and towns of fewer than ten thousand people". Although the focus is on anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia during the 18th and 19th centuries, the tradition of Russian anti-Jewish feeling dates back to the middle ages, being a legacy of the influx of Eastern Orthodox Christianity into the Muscovite Empire. Jews were in fact banned from entering the heartland of Muscovy (stretching from Kiev to Moscow). As a result, Jews did not have a significant presence in Muscovite controlled territories until the 15th century. The expulsion of Jews from several countries in western Europe drove large numbers of Jews eastward to places like the kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania, which were generally more open to Jewish settlement. However, as Russian Tsars pushed westward, conquering territory from Poland, Estonia, and Lithuania, the number of Jews which fell under Russian administration grew.
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Religion/Antisemitism%20Russia.htm

Desyatina is 1.09 hectares or 2.07 acres

Military (Russian)

Czar's army faced 1914-1917 50% of the German Army and Lost.  The Czar's army, in 1916, more or less destroyed Austro-Hungary's ability to continue the war with the Brusilov Offensive.  It also pioneered the storm trooper tactics the Germans would use with some effectiveness in 1918.  It was by no means, an incapable army.  Rather, it was one that lacked good senior leadership.  With that was the manifested (i.e. in Brusilov), the Imperial Army scored great successes.  By 1916, however, the catastrophe on the home front was to denude the Russian efforts on the field of meaning.

Jewish Military Conscription
During the late 18th century, a sizeable Jewish population came under Russian authority. From 1794 until 1827,  Jews were exempt from conscription.  This was a privilege they had to pay for, (as did some other social groups) at   the rate of 500 rubles per recruit.  But the privilege was extended to Jews for negative reasons:  they were  considered to be cowards, weaklings, and religious fanatics as well as potential spies.

When Nicholas I came to power in 1825, he believed that Russia's problems could be solved through the    militarization of civil society.  Nicholas published a law that replaced the traditional head tax with 25 years of compulsory military service for young Jews.  Jews (among others) would be 'improved' through the strict discipline  and subordination in a rigid hierarchy of the military, with miserable results.

Standard terms of service, in those days, were 25 years.  According to the law, Jews were to enjoy absolute religious freedom while serving in the army.  But in fact, conscription was used to force conversion.

The forced conversions were demoralizing enough for the Jewish communities, but the story gets worse.  Jewish communities had the right to chose who to send as recruits (4 recruits per 1000 males).  Like Russian serf   communes, they sent off trouble-makers, but they also sent children: approximately 50,000 out of the 70,000 Jews conscripted during Nicholas I's reign were between the ages of 6 and 18.  The government had given them a debilitating choice:  either send young fathers and heads of households, which would further disrupt the already  deeply shattered communities of the Pale, or send their children.

When Nicholas died in 1855, (there was celebration throughout the Pale), and his son  Alexander II repealed some of the worst laws, including dumping the Jewish conscription laws.  In 1856, he exempted Jews from the military and he abolished the recruitment of young children and military service generally was reduced to 15 years.

In 1861, Jews were allowed to serve both in the elite Guards units and they were allowed to become  non-commissioned officers.  In 1874, Alexander introduced universal conscription, which was supposed  to apply equally to everyone.  Exemptions could be had for some categories of students, others could buy their way out.  French Jews enjoyed greater equality in the military, but most Western European Jews served in equivalent circumstances.  But the good times wouldn't last.

When Alexander II was killed by terrorists in 1881, his reactionary and deeply anti-Semitic son, Alexander III and grandson, Nicholas, used this as an excuse to resume Universal Conscription, however, and Jews served.  Perfunctory conversion for career purposes was rare, but not unknown among offices.  However, some Jews found ways to buy their way out of the draft or pay for substitute recruits, which, were, of course, interpreted negatively to mean that Jews were 'shirkers'.  In fact, although Jews equaled 4.13% of the population of the empire, they made up 5.73% of the military at the turn of the century.  The above is based on Michael Stanislawsi book.  See below.

Books  
          

"Jewish Role in Soviet War Effort"
Authored by Lev Krichevsky honors the memory of Soviet Jewish soldiers during WW II who died defending their country.  It took ten years to collect and verify the names, vital data and causes of death for Jewish members of the Red Army and Soviet navy who died during the war.  The book - seven volumes about 500 pages each - contains nearly 100,000 individual entries.  An estimated 200,000 Soviet Jews died on the battlefield, in captivity or of   wounds received - but information could not be found on many of these casualties, so they aren't listed in the book.   In the search box of this site, type in Jewish Role in Soviet War Effort
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-79388772.html

Russia required all male Russian immigrants in USA and Canada to register at a Russian Consulate during WWI. Not sure if they did the same during the Russo-Japanese War.  These can be located through the American Society of Germans from Russia Historical Society
http://www.ahsgr.org,

Colonel Faivel Sverdlov helped acquire Russian Documentation on the 150 Russian Jewish heroes of WW II which are now located at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Los Angeles, CA.

Military Records
The RBVIA serves as the centralized archive for military records of the Russian Empire, consolidating the holdings  from various pre-revolutionary Russian military archives and other repositories throughout the former Soviet Union.  RGVIA retains documentation produced from the activities of highest, central, and local military   administration and military agencies of the Russian Empire from the end of the seventeenth century until March of 1918.

Approximately a half a million Jews served in the Red Army, and many volunteered for service at the front. A total  of 161,000 Jews received medals and awards for bravery. One hundred and forty Jews were awarded the highest Soviet decoration - the Golden Star and the honorary title of "Hero of the Soviet Union". An estimated 200,000 Soviet Jews died on the battlefield, in captivity or of wounds received at the front - but information could not be found on many of these casualties.

News and posts from Russia. About a quarter of the posts are in Russian.  alt.current-events.russia
http://www.jrtelegraph.com/

That area that the Russians determined where Jews could live.  To make sure that the Jews stayed within that arbitrary boundary, Jews were issued papers that clearly stated they were Jews.  To this day, a Russian passport still indicates that a person is a Jew.  

Most emigrating Jews had no identity papers 100 years or more ago.  They snuck out of Russia (or other countries)  and got to a port.  That was it!  If they had money for a ticket, no one cared if they were named Itzkowitz or Jones.  The US took in any immigrants who were healthy and had just a few dollars.  If they had an internal Russian passport, it was not good for much outside Russia.

 
This is an internal pass of a Russian Jew issued by the Minsk City Council in 1850. Temporary residence outside the Pale was strictly limited to six to eight weeks, and only for legal and commercial transactions. 
www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/eng_captions/29-4.html   

In tsarist times, throughout the Soviet era, and even now,  an "internal" passport (propiska) was issued to virtually every Russian resident. Such passports were needed by Russians and Ukrainians and those of other  resident nationalities (Germans, Poles, etc.) to get on a train, to visit another town of city or to establish residence in another town or city, to gain entry into educational institutions, to sign a lease, buy a business or a property, to obtain employment, to get married, etc..

A propiska was also needed to obtain whatever privileges or benefits were being offered by the Tsarist government  and successive governments. As might be expected, a lot of "hanky-panky"  (bribery, theft, forgery) was sometimes involved.

There is much on the internet about Russian internal passports, but one of the most informative sites is one with an explanation by Susan Brazier, at:
http://www.nelegal.net/articles/propiska.htm

Directory of 25 Russian Pale Provinces
http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/ru-pale.txt

http://home.earthlink.net/~cherlinfamily/Ref/Maps/Frm/pale-f1.html

"Beyond The Pale"
An exhibition on the Internet
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/index.html

The Pale remained Russian policy until 1917 when the Bolshevik Revolution removed it from law.  The Jews within the Pale were 11.6% of the Russian population (4,899,300) Jews.  Articles about the circumstances surrounding the pogroms can be found at
http://www.iea.org.il/blueprint/PAGE005.HTM

This site offers a map of the Pale of Settlement, 1835-1917; Articles in The Jewish Chronicle (London) describing pogroms in Russia, May 1881; Broadsheet by Rabbi Isaac Ruelf of Memel appealing for help for the victims of the pogroms in Russia, May 1881.

Other Pale of Settlement sources
Ignore the password request if one comes up - click cancel.  At this site you will find 'Pale of Settlement - Life in the Pale of Settlement, an extensive exhibition of Russian Jewry' - a Map of the Pale and Articles in The Jewish Chronicle (London) describing pogroms in Russia, May 1881. 
http://tevye.net/links/Pale_of_Settlement/index.html 

http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/english/guide-cond.html 

http://www.friends-partners.org/friends/absent.html(opt,mozilla,pc,english,,new

http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/english/28.html

Pale of Settlement
Map and Articles in The Jewish Chronicle (London) describing pogroms in Russia, May 1881
http://tevye.net/links/Pale_of_Settlement/index.html 

Russian Pale, Past and Present Jurisdictions
http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/ru-pale.txt

Exceptions to Residency in the Pale
There were several exception to the law which barred Jews from residing outside of the Pale.  These were:

Certified artisans (1865; subject to frequent police harassment and expulsion)
Discharged soldiers (1867-1885)
University graduates (1861-1893)
Holders of diplomas (1879-1893)
First guild merchants

Petersburg Jewish University (PJU)

Established in November, 1989.and offers many publications dealing with Jewish themes 
http://www.jewish-heritage.org/peue.htm 

Books  
         

"Megilat Hatevakh"
A  book, in Hebrew,  which lists some of the pogroms that took place during the Civil War in Russia (C. 1918-1921) - authored  by A.D. Rosental, Jerusalem-Tel Aviv, published by "Khavurah" in1927

The list is according to the Hebrew alphabet, but only goes up to the letter tet. It includes descriptions of the pogroms and in many cases lists of the victims.

Pogrom in Russia of 1881
http://www.wzo.org.il/home/politic/pale.htm

The Pogroms of 1903-1906
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-aple/english/28.html

Berezovka, Ukraine - April 4

Elizabethgrad,  - April 27
http://www.brainyhistory.com/years/1881.html

First Name Last Name

Slovechno Pogrom
"Slaughter of the Jews in Ukraine"
http://books.google.com/books?id=gSkEAAAAYAAJ&dq=slovechno+jew&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Recognizing the need for a person-to-person exchange with the Jewish community in the former Soviet Union, Project Kesher arranges Jewish home stays and contact with leaders in Jewish communities in Russia and the former Republics.
http://projectkesher.org

"Common poor people without cataclysms of wars, pogroms, hanger, etc. and with general restrictions on residence and travel (not only for Jews, but for most of Russian Empire population) lived and died in the same towns.   Sometime they moved to nearby town (marriage, etc.). Their trades and small business people learned at home and use it in the same place."  

"Of course it is just a generalization. Also well visible is the trend for more rich people found spouses for their   children far from home. There they could find another rich family and the same time possible partners and not competitors. But it was not so many rich people there."  

"To became a rabbi (again in generally!) it was necessary to leave his home and home town. And not necessary to come back. Even not only for "poorer rabbis, moving from one impoverished town to another" but it wouldn't be very easy to find a rich rabbi who was born and died spending life in the same town, especially if he wasn't born in a big town or a town with a yeshiva."

"Again in generally the mobility of Russian Empire population increase toward beginning of 20c after liberal reforms of Aleksandr (Alexander) II."

"Read memoirs, documents, research on the topic. Not everything available in English, but all the time are appearing new books." 

"Try recent translation: "Rememberings: The World of a Russian-Jewish Woman in the Nineteenth Century"
Authored by Pauline Wengeroff  (Vengerov, nee Epshtein/Epstein). Born in Bobruisk 1833 - died in Minsk 1916. Lived in Brest, Vilna, St. Petersburg, etc." Posted by Vitaly Charny Vcharny@aol.com 

RAGAS (Russian-American Genealogical Archival Service) 

FEEFHS U.S. Representative:
Patricia Eames, Director RAGAS U.S. 
4900 Rockmere Court 
Bethesda, Maryland 20816

RAGAS originally was a joint US-Russian activity with a main Moscow office supported in the Washington, D.C. area   by volunteers from a U.S. National Archives support group.  The volunteers served as a clearinghouse and intermediary early on.  Now, according to U.S. Director Pat Eames, "The Russian-American Genealogical Archival Service (RAGAS) is an independent, self-supporting organization for assisting persons with a USSR/Russian Empire background in obtaining information concerning their ancestors from archives in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and  Estonia. 
http://feefhs.org/ragas/frgragas.html 

During WWII and as well before and after, the Red Star ("Krasnaya Zvezda") was the official daily newspaper of the Soviet Army.  Red Star was a central newspaper of Ministry of Defence of the USSR. It was issued from January    1924 and wrote about Red Army news also during WWII. You may look for the old samples of this newspaper in libraries, or write to a museum of WWII, or look for a list of people, that worked in that newspaper. From a posting by Elina Smirnova    
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnaya_Zvezda 

Research in Ukraine and Belarus
http://www.mtu-net.ru/rrr/ukraine.htm

In 1895 to 1905, the average monthly worker could purchase 1 sheep for 4 rubles; 1 bushel of wheat for 1 ruble, 51 kopeks; 1 bushel of Rye for 1 ruble and 18 kopeks or for 64 kopeks, he could buy a bushel of Barley.

Books  
         

"Our People"
Written by Paul Magocsi
http://www.carpatho-rusyn.org/crrc/pubs.htm

From 1898 to 1922 for Russians and East Europeans accessible at 
http://www.archives.ca/www/svcs/english/Genealogy.html

Also other countries and subjects
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cgaunt/gen_web.html

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cgaunt/russia.html

Pre-1918 photographs of Russia

http://www.prokudin-gorsky.ru/database.php3?first=0

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?121733-Color-photographs-of-Russian-Empire&s=50a0de3ade1b9d47afc0f4636ce1dad3 

The site is in Russian
http://vgd105.valuehost.ru/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi

The JGS of Greater Philadelphia
http://www.jewishgen.org/jgsp/bylaws.htm

http://phs.prs.k12.nj.us/ewood/Russia/interestgroups.htm

http://aatia.net/blog/sigs/russian-special-interest-group/

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=112532262128422 

http://russian.meetup.com/cities/us/ca/los_angeles/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/igrena

Vladimir Goussinsky was the former President, but has recently resigned and living in Spain.
http://www.moshekantor.com/en/community/rus_congress.php

Russian Era Indexing of Poland Project
http://www.uscj.org/metny/middletown/tzadik.htm

http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/english/29.html

Russia On The Web
http://members.valley.net/~transnat/

Teach your computer to read Russian.  Forget all the problems of different Russian codings and Russian fonts; all   you need is easily downloaded from this site.
http://www.glasnet.ru/glasweb/readrus.html

The Lower East Side Restoration Project
A large collection of old and antique Jewish items besides samovars  
www.russiansamovars.com 

Moscow & St. Petersburg White Pages.  Site is only in Russian.
http://interweb.spb.ru/phone/  

Russian Search Engine (In Russian)
http://search.avanport.com/rus/default.asp

Search Engines for Russia
Scroll down to 'Search Engines'
http://slavic.ohio-state.edu/people/yoo/links/default.htm

Slavophilia
A comprehensive guide to Internet resources on Russia and Central/Eastern Europe 
http://www.slavophilia.com/

A huge conglomeration of even more web links to help you research Russia, and includes a Learner WWW Guide 
http://www.websher.net/inx/link.html  

Soviet Union - Chornaya Kniga (The Black Book)

Topics in Soviet Civilization - Stalinist Culture in Russia 1928-1997 - a seminar by Professor Gregory Freidin which includes many recommended readings about the subject and Internet links 
http://www.stanford.edu/~gfreidin/courses/240/slavic240syl.htm 

Both Tax and Census Records were recorded by government appointed officials.  Jewish Vital Records were recorded by a Rabbi.  Tax/Census records were far more important to government officials than were vital records.

Jewish Census Records are known to exist as early as 1765, but not Jewish Vital Records. A possible scenario as to  why Jewish Records are non-existent is that they were kept in the hands of the Rabbi and most likely kept in the synagogue office.  Many synagogues were built of wood and many were burnt along with their records.
http://www.freesurnamesearch.com/search/europe.html

http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1448

https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Jewish_Census

Translating   Languages

The Bucknell Russian Program - here you will original materials on the history of Russia, the Russian language, and lots of links to information about every other aspect of the Russian life and society.  
http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/ russian/russian.html

"In Their Words, Volume 2:
Russian, the guide to translating Russian language documents
Authored by Jonathan Shea and William Fred Hoffman  
http://langline.com 

Translation Service
A commercial site offering many language translating programs
http://www.worldlanguage.com

Teach your computer to read Russian. It would be of great help if you are able to read and write a bit of the Russian/Cyrillic words, but how do you find an easy way to learn the language?  
http://www.aha.ru/~russarch/  

http://www.glasnet.ru/glasweb/readrus.html

Just in case you didn't think of it, contact a nearby university or college's foreign language department.  They may offer to write letters and translate letters into English.  A nominal fee is usually charged.

A secular Jewish organization of which Roman Spector, is a leader.
http://www.thevaad.com/

Checking Vsia Rossiya is a very important step before researching the archives across the world.  The directory (let alone other sources) can reveal additional surname variations, it can confirm that a family did live in the city we believe they lived in, it can point towards other cities to be researched.  It can broaden the scope of search in the former USSR and, perhaps, increase one's chances of a positive outcome.  However, according to Boris Feldblyum (owner of Fast Genealogy Service), it will reveal itself only to those who know Russian.  If you do not know it yet, there are two ways; one is to hire a Genealogy Service such as FAST and two - is to learn the Russian alphabet which consists of 33 letters and is not difficult to learn.

The Vsia Rossiya provides loads of information for learning about names, families, occupations, etc.  These directories will be of great help in anyone's research. There are five sets of Vsia Rossiya in the Library of Congress.  They are for 1895, 1899, 1902, 1911-12 and 1923.  There is a listing by industries; provinces; towns; districts.  The 1911 set contains  listings by provinces; towns; districts and industries.  The listings for each town present a reader with a socio-economic snapshot.  Even if there are no surnames of interest, these listings present an invaluable reference source according to  posting by Boris Feldblyum in a posting.  The 1923 set was compiled after the Bolshevik revolution and is useless for genealogists, as it shows no names.  There are two types of microfilm readers at Library of Congress, with and without printing capabilities.

It is easier to start reviewing the 1899 and 1902 sets.  The first step is to find the name index and print each page with a surname of interest.  There are page/column numbers printed next to each surname, as well as given names and patronymics.  Therese are the guides to columns with more detailed information.  It is much easier to read paper copies later and you save time at the machine this way. There is no name index for 1895 and 1911.

In the catalogue, there are three reference books on microfilm and in the stacks - two on Kremenchug and one on Poltava province.  The books turned out to be amazing sources, as they contained lists of professionals, e.g. Jewish doctors and teachers.  In the Poltava book, there was a list of homeowners.

Other suggested reference sources are: Residential Telephone books

Here is information on the 1895 All Russia Directory
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/vsiaweb.htm 

http://www.avotaynu.com/wwwsites.html

Vital and Marriage Records (From Greek Catholic and Orthodox Parishes in Former Austrian Galicia,  Former Malo
                                                          Rus, Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus (former Byelorussia)

Available through The Mormon Family History Library (FHL)
http://lemko.org/genealogy/galiciapl.html

Jewish births, deaths, marriages, and divorces in the Russian Empire were recorded in synagogue ledgers. Here are some examples of the information that was recorded and how it appears in the records. Russian headings and entries were often accompanied by ones in Hebrew, either on the same page or on an adjacent page. 
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ukrodess/page8.html 

I would suggest to the researcher of the following sites, to also check the other two Baltic Country sites, including Estonia and Lithuania, as well as Poland and Belarus and Russia as there may very well be some cross references as  the country borders changed many times between wars.

Since the Soviet Union (USSR, CCCP) is no longer, the republics decided to change the names of some of their cities back to their pre-Soviet titles.

ShtetlSeeker
This site gives variant spellings of towns and villages, as well as map co-ordinates  
http://www.jewishgen.org/ShtetlSeeker/loctown.htm

Russian Cities on the Web
Traveling to Russia or within Russia?  Get information on your destination from the many links shown on the site.
http://www.city.ru/

A town in Voronezh Oblast.  Actually there are two with this name. http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/S2385.html

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya.  1907 Lists available

Principal town of the area known as Zaglebie (Zaglembye), of ex-Russian Empire.  Area is adjacent to ex-Prussian   and Austro-Hungarian Imperial borders.

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd, Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Borzhomi is a small town in the Caucasus Mountains in the interior of what is now the Republic of Georgia. Noted for its mineral waters, it was a fashionable spa at the end of the nineteenth century. The region is divided into 11 administrative districts. It includes 11 cities, 8 towns, 398 villages. The regional center is the city of Chernivtsi with population of 240,6 thousand and which occupies the territory of 15,3 thousand hectares on both sides of the Prut river.
http://laputan.blogspot.com/2002_11_10_archive.html

http://www.rada.com.ua/eng/RegionsPotential/Chernivtsi/

Zvenigorod [ka] Uyezd (district) Kiev Guberniya

Brezhnev (new name: Naberezhnye Chelny)

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Radomysl' Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located in southernmost Ukraine.  In Turkish it is known as Akkerman and in Russian as Belgorod-Dnestrovsky.  There is a lot of historical information available at 
http://www.britannica.com/seo/b/bilhorod-dnistrovskyy/

Jews first came in large numbers to this city around WW II, when Stalin moved large arms factories here from Nazi occupied parts of the Soviet Union.  Today, there are about 10,000 Jews who have long been active in the economic life of the city.  It is near Troitsk.

Synagogue
The old synagogue was closed during the Communist ear and Jewish religious life was virtually absent until the past five years.  Now in 2001, a new synagogue was recently dedicated, and was heralded as being an example of rare cooperation between rival Jewish groups and local politicians.

A Jewish Community Center is being planned near the synagogue, which can house 300 worshipers, according to Yakov Oks, a local construction magnate.  The Lubavitch Rabbi Meir Kirsch now runs a day school for 50 Jewish children as well as a Yeshiva.

Radomysl' Uyezd Kiev Guberniya.  Known now because of the nuclear power plant disaster.  The fallout was 400   times greater than that of the Hiroshima bombing. More than 300,000 people were evacuated.  Following the   disaster, a 17 mile zone of exclusion was created around the city.  The land can't be used because of contamination. Photos, taken by Swiss photographer Timm Suess can be seen at this site.  The subjects are bleak, but the photos    are beautiful.  Many are high-dynamic range images.  Nobody is supposed to live in the zone of exclusion, but people do still live there.  Remember that when you view the photos.
http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-04-26/Chernobyl__23_years_later.html?gclid=CNi7tcD84ZsCFQtN5QodD1Bc-w

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya. 

Records
1907 Lists available

Located in Kiev Guberniya
http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsys~shtetm~-1038422

Located near the agricultural village #20
http://genforum.genealogy.com/hein/page2.html

http://www.mennonitechurch.ca/programs/archives/holdings/Schroeder_maps/mapindex.htm  

http://www.afhs.ab.ca/registry/regmb_cemetery_c.html

Note: if you read German, you will find many more documents using Google in either DOC or PDF format

Index to Surnames from Ekaterinoslav and surrounding towns.
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Colonies_of_Ukraine/surnamelist.htm

Zvenigorod [ka] Uyezd (district) Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

During the communist period, the city went back to its original name of Nizhni Novgorod.  It was named Gorky in honor of the author between 1935 and 1990.  It is approximately 250 miles east of Moscow.
http://www.unn.runnet.ru/nn/

Radomysl' Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

There was a Jewish presence

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya. 1907 Lists available

Radomysl' Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Jonava (Yanovo)

Located in the Kovno Uyezd.  In JewishGen's ShtetlSeeker, there are Yanovo's/Janowa's in Belarus, Bulgaria, the  Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Russia.  There are also many towns named Janow in Poland, including a Janow Podlaski and a Janow Lubelskie.  There is even another Yonavo in Lithuania other than the one in Kovno Uyezd -   today it is called Jokavai.  Ada Green offered a listing of Jonava Societies and Associations associated with the JGSNY Cemetery Project from a posting on December 10, 2000

Zvenigorod [ka] Uyezd (district) Kiev Guberniya

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya.  1907 Lists available

Kalinin  (New name: Tver)

This strategic part of ex East Prussia, is situated alongside the Baltic shores and is separated from the rest of the Russian mainland by Lithuania and Latvia, or Belarus.  There is some talk in Russia about the restoration of the town's original Prussian name, Koenigsberg, as it was done already with renaming Leningrad, Sverdlovsk and several other towns in Russia.

The synagogue hopefully will be returned to the Jewish community according to Rabbi Berel Lazar, one of Russia's chief rabbis and who is also the Chairman of the Rabbinical Alliance of the CIS. His E-mail address is rabbinical@fjc.ru 

Located in the Voronezh oblast (Guberniya). Kamenka means 'stone' and there are probably 50 towns with this name in Russia. Another one - Kamenka in Moldova, on the Dnestr river. Kamenka Voronezhskoj Guberniya is approx 90-100 km South of Voronezh.

A map of the area surrounding the city of Kazan, including Yudin, Zelenodolsk, Pestretsy and Shali.   
http://uk2.multimap.com/

Kazennaya

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Radomysl' Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Entrance to one of the many Museums.  Note the ancient statues
Photo taken by Ted Margulis

Kievskie Guberniskie Vedomosti
An old Russian official newspaper. Microfilms are available in the Harvard University Library in Boston.
http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/newspapers/part5.html

Voters List for elections of State Duma in 1906, 1907 and 1912 of Kiev Guberniya in Harvard Library

Kirov  (New name: Vyatka)

Viktoria Lanovaya is the president of the Kislovodsk Jewish Community and the Jewish Agency coordinator for this spa town which has about 200 Jews.  It is about 45 minutes west of Pyatigorsk.

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya.  1907 Lists available

Located near Moscow.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/310211/Korolyov

Kanev Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Tarashcha Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Jews still live in this town (July,2001)  according to a JTA news item that stated that 'unidentified arsonists placed wooden planks against the side of the synagogue and set them ablaze.'  "But synagogue employees noticed the fire and helped bring it under control."

Kuibyshev (New name: Samara)

Located on the eastern border of Volhynia Guberniya.  Currently Kupel is located in the Rivenska Oblast (near the Zhytomyrska Oblast border) Rokytnyansky District.
http://www.angelfire.com/or/yizkor/volhyn.html 

Leningrad  (New name: St Petersburg - see below)

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

A town located 128.8 miles N of Chisinau in Moldova.   Once located in Romania, later Bessarabia, and eventually in Russia.
http://www.brainyhistory.com/events/1944/august_6_1944_104408.html

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Tarashcha Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Zvenigorod [ka] Uyezd (district) Kiev Guberniya

There was a Jewish presence

Synagogue
Located in the Moscow area is a still functioning shtetl synagogue.  To get to the synagogue, you would be dropped   off on a main road, and then have to walk quite a distance on a dirt road.  The synagogue was built in 1932 and has never been empty.  There is a Minyan every Shabbat with sometimes as many as 30-40 people.

Radomysl' Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Kanev Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Kanev Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

In a catalog publication offered by Avotaynu in June, 2000, the front cover had a reproduction of Irving Berlin's WW I Draft Registration Card on its cover and he answered that he was born in Mogilev, Russia

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya. 

Records
1907 Lists available

Moscow
There is a new Jewish cultural center that was recently opened (2001).  Mikhail Kunin is the center's director.

There are nine million people living in Moscow of which there are a minimum of one million Jews.  More than 40 percent of Moscow's 250,000 Jewish community make up the professional classes in the city. 

Marina Roscha synagogue
Located in Moscow 

Moscow Times Newspaper
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/index.php        

This site offers telephone numbers and full addresses for both business and private telephones and also has search capabilities.
http://rit.minsk.by/cgi-bin/mhones.pl    

Photo of Moscow synagogues
http://www.heritagefilms.com/Synagogues.htm 

 
Moscow Synagogue
On May 16, 2001, the gilded Star of David was restored to view on the dome of the capital's main synagogue, the Grand Choral Synagogue.  The dome and star graced the Choral Synagogue for a short time in the early 1890s, when Czar Alexander III bent to the will of the Russian Orthodox Church and ordered them taken down.

This decree started a period of persecution for the Moscow Jewish community.  Thousands of Jews were evicted from the city between 1892 and 1897, and the Jewish population of Moscow dwindled from 26,000 to a mere 5,000.

The Choral Synagogue was closed down.  It was re-opened in 1906, but for the past century, it has had only a plain roof.  According to legend, the church's opposition to the dome in the 1890s began after the then mayor of Moscow saw the dome, thought it was an Orthodox church and crossed himself.

Pinchas Goldschmidt was Moscow's Chief Rabbi.  Rabbi Adolph Shayevich, (Rabbi Berel Lazar is also considered the Chief Rabbi) Chief Rabbi, and the Mayor of Moscow together laid a cornerstone for a new Jewish community center.  A second synagogue, Marina Roscha Synagogue, which burned down in 1994, has also been restored.

The Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, has offered city funds to help pay for a replica of the Western Wall to be built outside the synagogue.  The wall will become part of the new Jewish community center adjacent to the synagogue.  This information is attributed to an article by Lev Gorodetsky (JTA)

Izmailovo Synagogue
Located in Moscow, is a carpeted room and built-in to the side of a sports stadium and holds former Mountain Jews as members.  The Rabbi is Mark Pinkhasov, a Mountain Jew from Derbent, Russia.

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located near Katowice of Gorny Slask (Oberschliessen) on the Czarna Przemsza River was actually known as the point where all three Empires (Prussia, Austro-Hungarian and Russian) have met.

Kanev Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Jews settled here in the latter years of the 18th century.  There were six Jews there when the Russians captured it from the Turks.  It is not impossible that some/all of these Jews were Sfardim.  Odessa was an important port and it   is also possible that Jews from Constantinople or Greece or Bulgaria, or even Persia, Bukhara etc., were among the traders in  later years. 
http://jewish-history.com/Occident/volume2/nov1844/odessa.html

Zvenigorod [ka] Uyezd (district) Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Jews have lived here for many years. It is located about 200-300 Kms northeast from Stalingrad (Volgograd)
http://www.fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=331737

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Poltava is both known as a city and as an oblast.  The city is about 180 miles southeast of Kiev and north of Dnepropetrovsk.  It is located on the right bank of the Vorskla River and is an agricultural center of a region rich from sugar and wheat.  In 1939 it had a population of 130,305. According to a posting by Boris Feldblyum on September 21, 1995, who was working with a European genealogist interested in Kremenchug, almost no records exist because 90% of the Poltava archival holdings went up in flame in 1941. The 10% evacuated by the Soviet government in the beginning of the German invasion, were documents of the Soviet period.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=424&letter=P

http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Tavrig/tavrig2.html

http://www.betham.org/poltava/

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0016_0_15950.html

Reuven Margulis (I don't know if we are related -- yet!) is the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel.  Located in southern Russia which still has about 66,000 Jews.

Located in the Tarashcha Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Rechitza (now in Belarus)

'Rostover' is an adjective for the two towns with this name - one of these is Rostov on Don and is located 25 miles from the mouth of the Don river which empties into the Sea of Azov. 

The other Rostov is south southwest of the city of Yaroslav.

A significant group of Litvaks emigrated from Kaunas Guberniya in the 1870s and 1980s to Southern Russia - in a chain of migration, many ended up in Rostov-on-Don, which was still outside the Pale of Settlement.  There is a   Jewish woman who will help with genealogical research.  Contact David Hoffman DBH12345@aol.com for further information about having her help you in your research.

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Ivan_Chernyakhovsky

http://www.viswiki.com/en/Semyon_Krivoshein

http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/vilna/vilna_pages/vilna_stories_ivan.html

Rovno (Rovna, Rivne)

Located in Volhynia, Russia, is now called Rivne, in Ukraine
http://www.fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=325327

http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/rovno/rovno.html

http://www.binenbaum.org/Cities_Ukraine_Rovno.shtml

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Rabbi Israel Friedmann was the patriarch of the Ruzhiner, later Sadagorer, dynasty of Hasidic Rabbis.  He moved to Sadagora, Austria (now Sadgura, Ukraine) in the mid 1800s.  
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/sadgura/sadgura.html   

Historical account:  
http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/sadgura.html  

The Scholarly Work by Dr. Assaf of Tel Aviv
http://spinoza.tau.ac.il/hci/vip/David-assaf.html 

Located 180 Kilometers southeast of Moscow, there are nearly 2,000 Jews living in this city, according to Leonid Reznikov a resident.

The restored synagogue building, which dates from 1903, was returned to Ryazan's Jewish community in 2000.  It has been slated to open its doors in the fall of 2001 to serve as a Jewish community center.  The federation of Jewish Communities plans to send a rabbi to lead High Holiday services.

In a news article in the Forward (Volume, CV, No. 31.355) dated August 24, 2001, it was noted that arsonists  gutted the synagogue in this provincial city last week.

There was recently an "incident" at a Jewish school where 15 youths, armed with chains, broke furniture, smashed windows and destroyed children's drawings on Sept. 17, 2000.  Five teachers and 25 students between the ages of 6 and 13 were at the school during the raid.

Located in the  Tver oblast (region), northwestern Russia. It lies along the upper Volga River.  A little known battle was fought here in 1942 and 1943, in which more than a million Soviet soldiers were killed.  German survivors said that the Red army's human-wave attacks used Soviet troops as little more than "cannon fodder."

1911 Movie of Rzhev on YouTube. 
If link doesn't work with your operating system, do a search on You Tube for Rzhev, Russia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD9kc7SYik0

Zvenigorod [ka] Uyezd (district) Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Kanev Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Zvenigorod [ka] Uyezd (district) Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

The final Partition of Poland was 1795.  That portion annexed by Russia became the Pale Of settlement.  Smolensk   was outside of the Eastern Borders of the Pale, and thus not part of the pale.  However, in 1891, many Jews living  east of the pale were forced to live within the Pale borders.  This probably included residents of Smolensk. From a posting by Larry Gaum

Located in Kiev Guberniya. "Sokolievka/Justingrad" - authored by Leo and Diana Miller and published in English in New York in 1983

Principal town of the area known as Zaglebie (Zaglembye), of ex-Russian Empire.  Area is adjacent to ex-Prussian and Austro-Hungarian Imperial borders.

http://stpetersburg-guide.com/history/index.shtml

Petrograd was the name for St. Petersburg in 1930) it's old name was restored to St. Petersburg in 1991. This is the city that was built by Peter the Great in 1703 on the marshes of the Gulf of Finland.  Peter knew to invite Jews who could help him i.e. financiers, doctors, contractors and industrialists, and so 'real Jews' came to St. Petersburg even though it was out of the Pale of Settlement. 

Why were Jews living in this city?  "After the partitions of Poland, when huge areas of Jewish settlement became included in Russia, Jews were required to stay in this area and were prohibited to live in the rest of Russia.  As is well known, this area was called the 'Pale of Settlement'.  Obviously there were exceptions.  Jews had talents that were needed by the government and they and their families sometimes with the payment of substantial fees, were given special written permission to live in the otherwise prohibited areas.  This is where the expression, which has come   into the English language, 'Beyond the Pale', has come from.  Perhaps, people will want to tell why their families were permitted to live in St. Petersburg, if they know.  Of course, after the Revolution, all of this changed and people had  no location limits."  From a posting by Joe Fibel

Today it is Russia's cultural capital and the home of 100,000 Jews.  After the February Revolution in 1917, there   were about 2000,000 Jews living in the city before WW II.

EVA
A welfare organization, Pavel Rubinchik pastes photographs of the many places in Eastern Europe where mass shootings of Jews took place during WW II and have no memorial.  Rubinchik is chairman of the St. Petersburg  Society of Jews - Former Prisoners of Fascist Concentration Camps and Ghettos.  The museum is located at
58 Moika Embankment
Phone: 311-2368
Open Monday through Friday from 10 to 5; tours in English must be booked in advance.

Grand Choral Synagogue
2 Lermontrovsky
Telephone-fax: 011-7-812=113-6209 
is the only synagogue in the city and was built in 1893. The Rabbi is Menachem Mendel Pewzner.  It is also called the Safra synagogue as the banker and philanthropist  helped fund the restoration of the main sanctuary. The synagogue has an all male choir and the main service is Ashkenazic.  A service for Georgian Jews takes place in another room and a Hasidic service is held in a side structure in the courtyard.  

Hermitage
34 Dvortsovaya Embankment:
Telephone: 311-8446; open Tuesday through Sunday 10:30 to 5
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org 

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/ndmarbelbatch86/attachments/folder/510767404/item/list

for the most beautiful photos of the Heritage and other points of interest.  Turn on your sound!

JDC
Building a $10 million center near the Chekalovskaya Metro station which will house the Jewish University, Hillel, welfare organizations, a sports center and a cultural center.

Jewish Cemetery 
First one was established in 1802

Jewish Community Center
Head of the center is Alexander Frenkel

Jewish Heritage Center aka Petersburg Judaica
Founded in 2000.  Director is Valry Dymshitz.
5 St. Isaac's Square
Telephone: 314-4034;  
www.judaica.spb.ru 

Russian Ethnographic Museum
4/1 Inzhenernaya
Telephone: 313-4420
Tours of the entire museum are for groups of seven or more.  Open Tuesday through Sunday 10 to 5. The museum holds Jewish artifacts made of fabric, wood and other materials.    There are Torah finials and Hanukkah menorahs as well as besamim (spice) boxes are held in the vault and tours  can be arranged on Monday and Saturday at 2 for groups of three or more and must be booked in advance.

Russian Museum
2 Inzhenernaya
Telephone 314-3448; Open Monday 10 to 5, Wednesday through Sunday 10 to 6
E-mail info@rusmuseum.ru 

Russian National Library
18 Sadovaya, Ostrovsky Square
Phone 310-2856
E-mail english@nir.ru   The library offers a collection of Jewish manuscripts and is one of the largest collections in the world.  The library collection includes a partial Torah manuscript, dating back to 929.  A tiny Torah presented to the Czar in 1888 is in a blue velvet case with the inscription "God Save the Czar". It is also the home of the earliest known complete Hebrew Bible is St. Petersburg, Russia.  It was written  in Egypt in 1008 to 1010 and is known as the Leningrad Codex.  The manuscript department   is not open to the general public, but anyone who can wheedle a visit will enjoy an unforgettable experience.

State Museum of the History of Religion
14 Pochtamtskaya
Telephone: 312-3596
Tours: 311-0495 and is located opposite the main post office near St. Isaac's Square.  Room 6 is devoted to the "religion of ancient Israel."  There is also a display of mainly nineteenth century Jewish ritual objects, including Torah finials and Hanukkah menorahs shown along with unrelated objects  from the ancient Near East.  Open daily, except Wednesday 11 to 6

St. Petersburg - Preobrazhensky Cemetery
Site allows visitors to the site to locate any one of the 80,000 graves in the cemetery.
http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/07/13/from_facebook_to_gravebook

Telephone numbers and  full addresses
For both business and private and also has search capabilities.  
http://rit.minsk.by/cgi-bin/mhones.pl  

Radomysl' Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Tarashcha Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Kanev Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Radomysl' Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Tetiev

Located in the Tarashcha Uyezd  Kiev Guberniya

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya. 1907 lists available

Located near Chelyabinsk.  Jews came here to escape the Nazis.  It is just north of the border with Kazakhstan.

There are about 15 different villages named Trostyanets, according to the ShtetlSeeker. The village where the 1919 pogrom took place is the one that was at that time in Russia, in Podolia (now in Eastern Ukraine).

Mind also that there are about 20 places (towns and villages) in Ukraine, which have the name Trostyanets. And about the same quantity of Troscianiec in Poland. Toponimists claim that these places got the name from the river names, near which they were established. At the administrative map of "Distrikt Galizien" (editor: professor of Cracow University Volodymyr Kubiyovych, 1942), the river which flows through Trostyanets is named "Zhuravytsia" (from `zhurav - crane`). So the theory that the name derives from the river is wrong. Most likely that the name come from "troshchi" (=thickets), which used to cover the river valley, which was quite swampy.

The site mentions a pogrom by Russian troops which occurred in 1915. The website also offers panoramic views of Trostyanets seen from the Sus mountain. Although the website was not created by a Jew, there is some information about the Jews of the town: in 1892 twenty one Jews lived there and in 1900 there were nineteen Jews. Only five Jews remained in 1939. The website's author remarks that the Jew of Trostyanets kept the Sabbath strictly, and used a Ukrainian neighbor ["Sabbath Goy'] to light the fire.  Information gleaned from an email exchange between Sharon Singer, Wayne N. Frankel and Naomi Fatouros
http://www.personal.ceu.hu/students/97/Roman_Zakharii/trostyanets.htm

Located in the Vasil'kov Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located 20 miles south of St. Petersburg.  Visitors en route to the palaces in this area pass the spot where a monument in the form of a kneeling, weeping woman serves as a Holocaust Memorial.  A broken Star of David completes the monument sculpted by Vadim Sidur and was erected in 1991.

There is a Jewish Community Center recently dedicated that houses a Hesed welfare center, Synagogues, a cultural center and a Jewish Agency for Israel center.  The facility includes both a Reform Temple and an Orthodox synagogue.

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya. 1907 Lists available

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Zvenigorod [ka] Uyezd (district) Kiev Guberniya

Vladimir (Wlodzimierz in Polish and Volodymyr in Ukraine)

Located in the Vladimirskaya Oblast and is on the Lug river

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Volgograd (Stalingrad)

A city in southwestern Russia, in the administrative center of Voronezh Oblast. It is located on both sides of the Voronezh River.
http://www.jewnet.ru/eng/orgs/?action=search

http://www.jewishvoronezh.com/2009/02/jews-of-voronezh_23.html

http://www.jewukr.org/observer/jo18_37/col03_e.php?q=10

Cemetery
Voronezh Jewish Community Funeral Services
Svaboda 75 Suite 309
Voronezh, 394006 Russia
Tel: +7-4732-713979
www.JewishVoronezh.blogspot.com

Rabbi Levi Stiefel, Co-director
Mrs. Brynie Stiefel, Co-director
http://wikimapia.org/16858924/Jewish-Cemetery

Synagogues
http://www.mavensearch.com/synagogues/C3429Y41988RX

Located in the Tarashcha Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Skvira Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

A Jewish community was founded in the 19th century and in 1876 there were about 430 Jews.
http://ceulmad.yaroslavl.ru/index_english.htm

Zvenigorod [ka] Uyezd (district) Kiev Guberniya, Tambovskaya oblast
http://www.tiptopglobe.com/city?i=2109274&n=Yekaterinopol#lat=52.27470&lon=42.75330&zoom=7

Yekaterinoslav  (Sicheslav)

http://djc.com.ua/index.aspx?page=content&mnu=1&type=History&lang=en

Located in southern Russia.  Many of the population originally came from Lithuania and were settled in this farming community, due to Russian efforts to resettle around the middle 1800s and later periods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yekaterinoslav_Governorate

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=30&letter=Y

History of Yekaterinoslav-Dnepropetrovsk Jewish Community
http://djc.com.ua/index.aspx?page=content&mnu=1&type=History&lang=en

Zagorsk  (New name: Sergiev Posad, Serghievo)

A village where most of the population were "petty" gentry --- people who were descended from nobility, but were, in fact, as poor as the local peasantry. Zastyenok apparently comes  from the Polish Zascianek, which as I understand it, could mean one of two things: either a settlement of minor nobility (retainers, petty officers), or a town of freeholder farmers.  Before 1918 Jews lived primarily in gorods, mestechko, and selos and derevnyas.
http://www.angelfire.com/or/yizkor/urechye.html

History
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/cmh/cmh517.html

Cherkassy Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Tarashcha Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Located in the Tarashcha Uyezd Kiev Guberniya

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya. 1907 Lists available

Lipovets Uyezd Kiev Guberniya.  1907 Lists available

Located in the Kiev Guberniya

Professional Jewish genealogist researchers recommended by the Jewish Heritage Society are listed below.  I have no knowledge of the abilities of any of these gentlemen or of the Jewish Heritage Society and am not responsible for any recommendations or services

Anatoly Chayesh (St. Petersburg) chayesh@pop3.rcom.ru

Vitaly Nachmanovich
23/1 Odesskaya ul., Apt. #43
Moscow 11303 Russia
jgsm51@glasnet.ru 

Vladimir Paley 
51 Nikoloyamskaya St.
Moscow 109004, Russia
paley@mail.ru or jgsm51@glasnet.ru 

Dmitiri Panov Russia
109518, Moscow, ul.
Grayvoronovskaya 17, #269 
proband@glasnet.ru

All comments, suggestions, and  inquiries should be sent to the Jewish Heritage Society at heritage@glasnet.ru 

Much of the original Armenia is now the area of Kurdistan in Turkey. However, from the seventh to ninth centuries  the Arab conquerors called by the name Armenia a province which included entire Trans-Caucasia, with the cities Bardhaa, now Barda in the present Soviet Azerbaijan, where the governors mostly resided, and Tiflis (now Tbilisi, capital of Georgia).  The province is also sometimes called Armenia in eastern sources.  The Khazars were sometimes credited with Armenian origin: this is stated by the seventh-century Armenian bishop and historian Sebeos, and the Arab geographer Dimashqi (d.1327).

In the 13th to 14th centuries the Crimea and the area to the east were known as Gazaria (Khazaria) to western authors, and as Maritime Armenia to Armenian authors.  The term Armenia often included much of Anatolia, or otherwise referred to cities on the Syrian-Mesopotamian route (now Turkey, near the Syrian frontier) such as Haran (Harran), Edessa (Urfa), and Nisibis (Na\ibin). More information and maps
http://www.heritagefilms.com/ 

Azerbaijan has been independent since 1991 and lies between Russia and Iran on the Caspian Sea.  Much of it is dominated by the Caucasus Mountains. Despite the loosening up of restrictions against Jews, 27,650 Azeri Jews have emigrated to Israel since 1989.

Mountain Jews are a Jewish people of not more than 150,000 worldwide who owe their name to the fact that, until recently, they and their ancestors had been living for at least 12 to 15 centuries in the mountainous Caucasus region between the Caspian and Black Seas. Most are dark-complexioned.

Mountain Jews of Azerbaijan
An interesting article in the Philadelphia Inquirer of July 27, 1997.  Contact the newspaper archives directly.  Another article appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of the B'nai B'rith magazine.

There are two main groups of "Azeri" Jews in Azerbaijan.  One group is comprised of Caucasian Mountain Jews who have been in the area for many centuries and speak a language called "Judeo-Tat" which is partly based on northern Iranian.  The other group is formed by Ashkenazim who came to Azerbaijan during the nineteenth century.

There were an estimated 17,300 Jews in Azerbaijan at the end of 1993. The rate of immigration from Azerbaijan to Israel was high: 2,625 left Azerbaijan for Israel in 1992, and 3,133—in 1993.  Information, and maps can be found
www.heritagefilms.com/ 

During the first years of the Soviet regime, the Tats had to change their language to conform to the Latin alphabet instead of preserving the Hebrew letters.  A decade later, in 1938, they were made to use the Cyrillic alphabet.  Also, during the late 1930s, many Tat Jewish cultural institutions were shut down as well as some synagogues.

Despite Soviet efforts to assimilate the Tats, they have managed to preserve many of their old traditions and there  has been very little intermarriage.

Some Georgian and Bukharan* Jews also live in Azerbaijan.

Jewish Community of Azerbaijan
Baku, Azerbaijan
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Azerbaijan/baku.html

Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan. In Baku there are 'ten or fifteen' Jewish organizations, including Zionist and youth groups and an Azerbaijan-Israel Friendship Organization, and there are three Synagogues.  The largest and oldest synagogue is for 'Mountain Jews'.  The other two synagogues are used respectively by the Ashkenazim and Georgians.  The rabbis are locally educated.

In 1987, Hebrew courses were allowed to be offered in Baku and now Hebrew can be studied at two high schools and at the University. There are five Jewish schools in Baku and Quba and a Baku community newspaper.

Mikhail Agarunov, President of the JGS in Baku, Samed Vurgun Street 96-58, 370022, Baku, Azerbaijan; Phone 994 12 387 328 or 7 095 129 45 78  Fax: 095 161 2106

Baku's Archive
Archive of Azerbaijan was visited by Ilya Zeldes ilyaz@iline.com She explained in a posting of 12/29/01 on JewishGen Digest that "the search was unexpectedly successful!  Not only did I receive dozens of documents from  their files (over hundred of pages!), but it allowed a search of a local Jewish cemetery and quite a few burials were found, some of which had no idea about before!  Moreover, several photographs of the burials were provided, too!"

The search in the archive found a file with documents about my grandfather's will, description of his property, family lists, school records for my uncle, etc. Photographs of tombstones provided many dates, Jewish names and so on.  If anyone is looking for information from Azerbaijan and would like to hear more detail of how to do a search there, please contact me privately."
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/archive/index.php/t-184541.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku

Maqam ensemble from Hadassah Magazine August/September 2008 issue

Legend traces the origins of the Bukharian Jews to the Israelites exiled to Babylonia in 586 B.C.E.  Another theory is that they are descendants of fifth-century exiles from Persia.  Their name derives from the Uzbek city of Bukhara in southeastern Russia.

Since the early 1970s, thousands of Bukharian Jews have settled in Queens, New York, where a substantial Bukharian Jewish community continually grows. 

The official Jewish language called Judeo-Persian and/or Bukhori is Farsi mixed with Hebrew, Aramaic, Uzbek and  Tajik.

An article about the Bukharian Jews, authored by Rahel Musleah appeared in the August/September 2008 issue of Hadassah Magazine.
http://bechollashon.org/database/index.php?/article/2801

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Uzbekistan.html

Card File of Jewish Refugees in Tashkent
http://resources.ushmm.org/uzbekrefugees/name_list.php#top

In Forest Hills, there is a five-story Bukharian Jewish Community Center which also houses a synagogue and offices of the Bukharian Jewish Congress.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-117281302.html

There are approximately 150,000 Bukharian Jews in Israel today.
http://bethgavrielcenter.com/content/History-Of-Bukharian-Jews.html

Beth Gavriel World Center for Bukharian Jews in Queens contains a synagogue
http://bethgavrielcenter.com/content/History-Of-Bukharian-Jews.html

The Bukharian Jewish Museum
http://www.bjeny.org/erc_350_i.asp

There is a family genealogy site that has information on the Jews of Bukhara.  The author, Jeffrey Mammon, is a  direct descendant of the great rabbi Yosef Maman who revived Sephardic Judaism in Bukhara.  In addition to the  family tree information, there are included photos and other related links.
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/m/a/m/Jeffrey-Mammon/index.html

The Jews of Bukhara site contains additional links including 'An Insider's View of Bukharan Jewry' by Peter Pinkhasov, who is himself of Bukharian descent, with additional input from his family and friends and is available in both English and Russian along with other links to several websites about the Bukharan Jews.
http://www.dancris.com/~byblos/buklinx.htm

Phoenix, Arizona
There are several kosher restaurants, and they are mostly owned by Bukharan Jews in this city.

Synagogues
The first Bukharian synagogue in Queens was established in 1965.  Today, there are over 12 synagogues - all Orthodox in Queens.  According to the community's chief rabbi, Itzhak Yehoshua, about 20 percent of the community is Orthodox; 60 percent is traditional and 20 percent unaffiliated.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Bukharan_Jews.html

A city in Azerbaijan to which most Mountain Jews can trace their roots.  It is a two-hour drive north of Baku and is a town split by the Gudialchai River; on one side live Shiite Muslim Azeris and on the other 4,000 Mountain Jews.

Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, Quba boasted 13 synagogues and was renowned for its Jewish scholarship.     In reading Hebrew prayers, they use a unique pronunciation drawn from both Sephardic and Ashkenazi sources.    They have their own Kaddish (prayer for the dead), drawn from ancient Aramaic sources.  A death is strictly marked with prayers and a traditional Mountain Jew meal with family and friends on the first through seventh days (Shiva),  on the 30th day (Shloshim) and on every anniversary

Birobidzhan

The Jews came to this region near China in the late 1920s, lured to this uninhabited Siberian forests and mosquito infested swamps by a mixture of communist ideological fervor and their dream of a Jewish homeland.  This was an area that Josef Stalin encouraged settlers to establish a Jewish Autonomous Region.  The plan was to develop a community that would keep alive traditions such as the Yiddish  language and Jewish songs and dances.  But religion itself, and all that reminded one of the Jewish   religion was not allowed.
http://www.jewishmag.com/75mag/birobidzhan/birobidzhan.htm

http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/SU/EncJudaica_Birobidzhan-ENGL.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0003_0_03013.html

The regions first synagogue in seven decades was opened in 2004 in this city of some 77,000. Out of 190,000 living in the autonomous region there is an estimate 5,000 who believe they are Jewish - at least their father was Jewish. At one time there were up to 46,000 Jews, but many obviously didn't stay long.  Foreign Jewish leftists were among the early inhabitants including a Jewish-American commune.   Dan Kofman heads the Beit Tshoova Jewish Community.

There are practically no Jews left in Chechnya, but there are some 11,000 Jews eligible to immigrate, living across the border in the Russian Republic of Dagestan.  Nearly all of the Jews live in the cities of Makhachkala and Derbent, far from the fighting, and each city has one synagogue.  About 250 to 300 Jews emigrate from there each year.  The remaining Jews are all elderly or ill.

A former Soviet republic.  Tbilsi is the capital city where most of the 10,000 - 12,000 Jews live and where they have enjoyed relative tolerance.

Jewish Community of Georgia
Tbilsi 380064, Georgia

The following is an excerpt from a letter from the Deputy
"In the Georgian State Archives we keep the records (census lists, history, activity, etc) on the Jewish people who as known are living in Georgia (Caucasus) from the old times and they retained their   language, religion, food, culture and so on."  "As we see on the existing genealogical Web sites, data    about the above-mentioned Jews are lacking and assume that the information is wanting."

Deputy chairman of the Archival Department of Georgia is  Dr. Prof. Rezo Khutsishvili

This is a small town in the Caucasus Mountains in the interior of what is now Georgia

In 1992 there was a growing Jewish community of more than 2,000 people in the city of 30,000.  That number has dwindled to about 15.
http://tinyurl.com/66pqeh

Mark Petrushansky is the chairman of the Jewish community for Vladikavkaz. 
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P1-3980376.html

Sukhumi (the capital of the region)

Home to some 120 Jews. Alexander Glusker is the chairman of Sukhum's Jewish community

There are approximately 12,000 to 30,000 Jews in Kazakhstan, less than 0.2% of the population.  Most are Ashkenazi and speak Russian. 2,000 of these Jews are Bukharian and Juhuro (Mountain Jews)
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Kazakhstan.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_in_Kazakhstan

http://www.haruth.com/JewsKazakhstan.html

http://www.ncsj.org/Kazakhstan.shtml

Jews from Persia now in Kazakhstan
They call themselves "The Lakhlouk Jews of Kazakhstan"
http://www.jta.org/news/article/0000/00/00/9532/InKazakhstanJewis

http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/110402JTAc.shtml

Jewish Congress of Kazakhstan
480002 Almaty
Republic of Kazakhstan
http://eajc.org/page84/news15728

Synagogues
http://www.mavensearch.com/synagogues/C3405

Synagogue
There is a Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_in_Kazakhstan

The capital is the city of Astana (since December 10, 1997) whose population is as large as 319,000 people. There are an estimated 10,000 Jews in Almaty, Astana and Pavlodar

Synagogue
http://www.360cities.net/image/astana-jewish-synagogue-kazahkstan#52.00,-2.60,70.0

Chimkent

Dzhambul

Karaganda

Kokchetav

Pavlodar

Petropavlosvsk

Semey

Uralsk

Kyrgyzstan lies at the very heart of Central Asia surrounded by the mighty expanses of China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.  The official population count is about 5 million inhabitants.  About 8% of the population is composed of Germans, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Koreans, Tatars, Tajiks Ulghirs and Dungans. 

An area of Russia which is now known as Moldova.   The name comes from the Besarab family which were the local potentates during the later middle ages.  It lies between the Prut and the Dnestr rivers and the Black Sea.

Until 1812, it was part of the Ottoman Empire. During the 19th century, it was part of the Russian Guberniya after 1873 but became independent around 1919 until it became part of Romania in 1918 to 1940.  From 1940 to 1991 it was in the USSR (Moldavian SSR).  Today, the northernmost part is in the Ukraine.

Prior to 1859, this former principality was under Ottoman rule, but later merged with Bessarabia and Bukovina.  Moldavia and Wallachia also merged to form Romania, also in 1859.  It became a Republic of USSR from 1924-1991.  It is located in the northeast part of Romania and has a total population of 4.5 million.  If you visit the area, be sure to visit Old Orgei (Orgeyev) a reserve with two villages where time seem to have stood still.

The Moldovan Jewish Community in the principal city is Kishinev (Chisinau) of 800,000 numbers today about 15,000 Jews - 39% are elderly.  Jews have lived in Moldova since the 15th century.  The Jewish community were victims of horrific pogroms in 1903, but the greatest devastation resulted during the Holocaust, when 300,000 Jews lost their lives to the Nazis.  Many of the survivors have emigrated to  Israel, leaving the poor and elderly behind.

Records of 61 Moldovans who had committed crimes against Jews during WW II have been transferred to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

Bessarabia has a quarter million Jews in the first half of the 20th century, and was incorporated into Romania in 1918 and remained under its control until 1940.

History
On May 25, 1904, "The Jewish quarter of Chotin, Bessarabia, attacked by a mob of
three thousand. Synagogues demolished and looted. One hundred Jews injured." From the American Jewish Yearbook.

When the Soviets occupied Bessarabia in 1940, they deported to gulags or exiled to Siberia thousand of Jews suspected of disloyalty to the regime.

Romania, together with troops of its ally, Germany, reconquered Bessarabia in 1941 and held it until 1944, adding Transnistria, a narrow strip on the eastern bank of the Dniester.  The German and Romanian forces set about deporting many thousands of Jews to extermination camps in Transnistria and Ukraine.  When the Russians reoccupied Bessarabia in 1944, there were few Jews left.  After the war, many survivors made their way to Romania and from there to Israel.  During the civil war in 1992, Jews again left for Israel.  The Yiddish language and some traditions survived, much more so than in neighboring Ukraine.

Bessarabia Duma Voter Lists
Now online  
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Romania/BessarabiaDuma.htm