Revision Lists — Bessarabia

The Reviskie Skazki (Revision Lists) were conducted in territories ruled by the Russian Czar in the 18th and 19th centuries.  The Revision Lists enumerated individuals/families subject to taxation and identified men to draft into the army.

There were ten known major Reviskie Skazki taken in Russian Empire.  For the Bessarabia district and later Bessarabia Gubernia, the following Revisions may apply:

• the seventh revision in 1815-1825,
• the eighth revision in 1833-1835,
• the ninth revision in 1848-1854,
• the tenth revision in 1856-1859.

By the Treaty of Bucharest of May 28, 1812, the Ottoman Empire ceded the Bessarabia region to the Russian Empire — the land between the Dniester River on the east, the Prut River on the west, and the Danube on the south.  It is not clear if the seventh revision (1815-1825) was held in Bessarabia, because of the special status of the region.  No records for Bessarabia have yet been found from the seventh revision.  Although there are some records dated as early as 1824 from Kishinev, Ismail and Hotin, it is not yet known if there are Jewish records among them.  No records from the eighth revision (1833-1835) have yet been found, but in the ninth revision there are former registration numbers for the families listed as being in the prior (8th) revision.

The Russian military authorities of occupation during the war with the Turks in 1774 recorded 1,300 Jewish families in Moldavia.  At that time Moldavia, included not only the Bessarabia region, but also a section of current Romania, named Moldova/Moldavia, including the major city of Iaşi (Jassy).  The records from 1774 have not been found.  In this database, we have records from the ninth and tenth revisions.  There are also some additional records added to these Revisions in different years.

This project of translating/transcribing Bessarabia Revision Lists began in August of 2009, using records microfilmed by the LDS Family History Library.  As of the fourth update (July 2012), there are currently 56,187 records in the database.

LDS Microfilms

The Mormons (LDS) microfilmed Revision Lists for all districts of Bessarabia (now in Moldova Republic and Ukraine) in 2003, at the Moldova State Archives in Chişinău (Kishinev) (MoldSA).  There are a total of 292 microfilms for Bessarabia, which can be ordered and viewed at any of the LDS Family History Centers, as well as at the Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City.  Some microfilms contain all Jewish records; others may have only several images dedicated to Jews.  Of the 292 microfilms of the Bessarabia Revision Lists, 30 definitely have Jewish records in them, and possible more.  All of the lists are in the Russian language (Cyrillic alphabet).

Below is a list of the 30 microfilms which contain Jewish records.  There are also some small shtetls listed under the district town, such as the shtetl of Kaushany (Căuşeni), listed in LDS under Bendery, in microfilm #2,373,291, which is already complete.  Only the records from Bendery were listed as Jewish records in the Family History Library Catalog (FHLC); Akkerman, Kishinev and Alexandreny records did not have that designation.  That is why we could possibly find more Jewish records among the Revision Lists microfilms, once we look into all 292 microfilms.

The table above will be updated when new Jewish records are discovered.

Revision Lists — Database Fields

The Revision Lists may contain following information:

• Page # — Usually there is a page number of an image which contains two pages (left side for men, right side for women).
  The page # is in the right upper corner of the image.
• Registration # — an assigned family number for a particular town's registry.
• Surname
• Given Name
• Father — Father's given name (derived from the patronymic).
• Relationship to Head of Household
• Sex — "M" for male, "F" for female.
• Age
• Age at Last Revision — only present for men.
• Reason Left
• Year Left
• Comments — includes the status of a family: Merchant, Middle class, Farmer, from military, etc.
  It also may specify when the family registered for the town, and occasionally information where they came from.
• Former Registration # — Registration Number in the previous Revision.
  In some cases, there are two former registration numbers, presented as "1835 - #100, 1848 - #120".
• Day, month, and year of registration — according to the Julian calendar.
  (The Julian calendar was used throughout the Russian Empire until 1918.  For the Gregorian (modern) calendar date, add 12 days for dates between March 1800 to February 1900).
• Uyezd — district; one of the eight districts of Bessarabia: Akkerman, Beltsy, Bendery, Izmail, Khotin, Kishinev, Orgeev, Soroki.
• Gubernia — "Bessarabia".
• Type of Record — "Revision List" or "Additional Revision List".
• Archive / Fond / Inventory / File — the archival source citation, at the Moldova State Archives in Chişinău = "MoldSA".
• LDS Microfilm # — Microfilm number at the LDS Family History Library.

Current Database Contents

The JewishGen Bessarabia Revision List Database currently contains 56,187 records from various Revision Lists, as follows:

Only Bendery was listed in the LDS' Family History Library Catalog (FHLC) as that microfilm as having Jewish records, but not three other towns.  That gives us hope that we will find Jewish records in the 1830s and even the 1820s.

Sample Illustrations

Here are some sample illustrations of Revision Lists from 1848 and 1854.  Click on each image for a larger view.

	1854: Akkerman, Akkerman uezd Very clear handwriting.  It seems that for these families, this is their third revision — it has numbers from the revisions of 1848 and 1835.		1854: Alexandreny colony, Yassy uezd Very hard to read and transcribe.  One such page could include 100 records or more.
	1848: Kaushany, Bendery uezd Very good handwriting.		1848: Kaushany, Bendery uezd The last page.  After all the records, it includes signatures of four Jewish people from the community, signed in Russian and Yiddish.

Acknowledgements

This project was made possible by hard work and dedication of many people who translated, transcribed and validated the records.

Translators, Transcribers and Validators: Galina Antonova, Patrice Bensimon, Sasha Berkovich, Mark Chulsky, Yuriy Daylis, Banai Lynn Feldstein, Janet Furba, Mike Glazer, Igor Gory, Martha Koster, Julia Lombardo, Leonard Meleger, Misha Massov, Marina Medvedovsky, Nick Perper, Mitja & Sasha Sherman, Olga Potap, David Price, Michael Richman, Ella Romm, Maya Smundak, Claire Stuart, Felix Tsedulko, Eugene Weinstein, Liliya, and Yefim Kogan.

Claire Stuart: I would like to dedicate my work to my grandparents, Jacob (Yankel) and Anna (Chana) Trachtenberg, and to their family members who died in the Holocaust.

Mark Chulsky dedicates his work to the blessed memory of the WWII veterans, MIA, and Holocaust martyrs Shaya, Josef, David, Yuda, Leib, Kalman, Gedaly, Boruch and Lev Chulsky, haKohanim.

Yefim Kogan: I dedicate my work to the blessed memory of my father Abram Kogan who inspired my interest in family genealogy.

Sasha Berkovich dedicates his work to the blessed memory of maternal grandparents Simkha ben Nota Polonsky and Khana bat Leib Leikin.

Please contact Yefim Kogan, the Project Coordinator, if you would like to volunteer for this Project.  In order to contribute, you need to read handwritten Russian (Cyrillic), and be able to enter information into an Excel spreadsheet.  If you have any questions about the database, please contact Yefim Kogan at yefimk@verizon.net.

Search the Database

The Bessarabia Revision Lists database can be searched via both the JewishGen Romania Database and the JewishGen Ukraine Database.