St Petersbourg 20th century residents

I was asked several times about the sources on residents of St Petersbourg / Leningrad, of the USSR times (1917-2000).

If you are a direct blood relative, or someone with the notarized power of attorney from direct blood relative (with the documents showing those relations) — you can get births/marriages/deaths  for all deceased relatives — anywhere in the country. They made the nationwide database.  With some nuances, but generally it works.

In St Petersbourg, they made available online the books of vital records for up to 1923. Those are available online for a nominal fee. There are SOME handwritten indexes to them. To check the whole city you need to review ~20 indexes for different areas. Not ideal, but workable.

And they have family lists/lists of residents by addresses (household registers, used for the citizens registration and passports issuance). If it is less than 75 years old — we have the same story with the “privacy regulations”. If it is older than that — generally there are no restrictions.  The reading room for those books has a only a few places and the 2-3 months long line to register for a seat.

Asking the archive to do the research for you also takes 2-3 months, unfortunately.

For early 1930s there are lists of taxpayers, which in effect are lists of adult residents by the households. Also, no restrictions.

There are databases of persons who were evacuated from Leningrad in 1942-43. Available online.

Taxpayers lists are indexed, but indexes only available on the computers in the reading room on Antonova-Ovseenko street.

There are army and party documents, which frequently list family members. Army documents are online and in Podolsk, Moscow region. Party documents are in the (former) party archive.

St Pete archives did a lot of indexing of finding aids, so if the relative worked somewhere and his personal file was transferred to the archive — chances to find the document are good.

Which sites we were talking about? spbarchives.ru