How can I trace back my family in Russia?

Is there any free site or any way that I can trace back my family tree in Russia?

• My grandmother came from there and we have no addresses or contacts at all..... just her family name and family member's names to work from.

• Answer:

  There aren't many free sites that will help you, but start with http://www.ellisisland.org and look for her passenger records. It's going to tell you when she arrived, where she left from, and who she came to stay with in the US. From there, you go to the National Archives and Records Administration and order a copy of her Declaration of Intent and Petition for Naturalization (two separate documents). If she came over after January 1, 1901, she should have listed her town of birth, names of parents and all siblings, etc. With that in hand, then you go back to the Ellis Island passenger manifest and look for information on anyone else coming over with that name and from that location. You're trying to figure out if they were Orthodox or Jewish. The Orthodox baptismal records remain in pretty decent shape and most can be ordered on film from the LDS. Those that aren't you can try getting information by going to a Russian Orthodox parish in your area and trying to get their help in getting the sacramental registers from the "chrismation" of your ancestors. If they were Jewish, you're not in so much luck. Finally, you can take your cumulative knowledge (and don't jump to this step too early...it gets expensive if you do) and start searching the Russian phone directories for that area on a site called InfoBel. http://www.infobel.be You would then have to find someone to write letters for you (again, a good source is a local Russian Orthodox Church) and then see what kind of response you get. Hopefully your family wasn't from Lithuania or you have a whole other process to follow. Contact me if that's the case. So that's the easy way. The hard way is to keep trying to search the internet. Russia doesn't have the resources to digitize all of their records. It would take 20 years to get anywhere with the project if they started now...and they haven't made the effort yet. So what you need is probably over there somewhere, but it's not going to be easy to get without hopping on a plane or finding someone over there to do the research for you...and in Russia you can expect that to be extremely expensive....well over $10K in most cases for both the research and the translation.