''Vsya Moskva'' (literally translated "''All Moscow''" or "''The Entire Moscow''") was a series of city directories of

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

, Russia, published on a yearly basis from 1872 to 1936 by Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin. The directories contained detailed lists of private residents, names of streets and squares across the city with the details of their occupants and owners, government offices, public services and medium and large businesses present in the city. Each volume was anywhere between 500 and 1500 pages long. They are often used by

genealogists Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

for family research in pre-revolutionary Russia and the early

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

period when vital records are missing or prove difficult to find.

Historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

s use them to research the social histories of the city.

List of residents

Each directory was written exclusively in Russian Cyrillic only, and contains various sections among which was an

alphabetical Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is t ...

list of residents in the city. Those listed usually were the head of their respective household and so spouses and minors are not listed. The following information can be found: *Person's surname and first name *

Patronymic A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor. Patronymics are still in use, including mandatory use, in many countries worldwide, alt ...

*Street address with apartment number *

Profession A profession is a field of work that has been successfully ''professionalized''. It can be defined as a disciplined group of individuals, '' professionals'', who adhere to ethical standards and who hold themselves out as, and are accepted by ...

*Telephone numbers (few private residents could afford a

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

before 1918)

List of occupants of each building on every street and square

A section immediately preceding or following that listing residents in alphabetical order was a directory of all streets, houses and flats with the names of their owners and occupants. In this way readers could determine all those people who lived on a particular street of in a certain apartment block.

Other sections

The following information can also be found in each directory: *Maps of the city *Interior theater seating plan layouts *Lists of personnel in state, public and private institutions *Original Advertising

Interruption in the series

No volumes were published in the following years: *1918 *1919 *1920 *1921 This was due to the events of the

Russian Revolution of 1917 The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...

and the subsequent

Russian Civil war {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...

Termination of series

Publication came to a halt after the edition of 1936, coinciding with the time of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

great purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...

s and Moscow Trials.

Historical and genealogical value

Because numerous residents emigrated from Moscow after the

and tens of thousands more were either arrested, shot, or sent to the

gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

by the Cheka and the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

after 1918 the section detailing residents names is especially useful in determining until when a certain person was still living in the city, and under which address.

Availability

Many original directories in the series (or

microfiche Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...

copies thereof) can be found in libraries across the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

(including

The Baltics The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

) however most only have an incomplete collection.

Other city directories in Russia

Suvorin also published city directories for

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

under the title '' Ves Petersburg'' (''All Petersburg'') for the years 1894 to 1940 and for the whole country under the titles '' Vsya Rossiya'' (''All Russia'') from 1895 to 1923 and continued under than name '' Ves SSSR'' (''All USSR'') from 1924 to 1931.

References

{{reflist

External links

A Russian website offering a search engine in Cyrillic for some city directories.
Directories 19th century in Moscow 20th century in Moscow Russian non-fiction books Mass media in Moscow 1872 books