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

city directories A city directory is a listing of residents, streets, businesses, organizations or institutions, giving their location in a city. It may be arranged alphabetically or geographically or in other ways. Antedating telephone directories, they were i ...

of Moscow, Russia, published on a yearly basis from 1872 to 1936 by

Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin Aleksei Sergeyevich Suvorin (Russian: Алексей Сергеевич Суворин, 11 September 1834, Korshevo, Voronezh Governorate – 11 August 1912, Tsarskoye Selo) was a Russian newspaper and book publisher and journalist whose publ ...

. 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 for family research in pre-revolutionary Russia and the early Soviet period when

vital records Vital records are records of life events kept under governmental authority, including birth certificates, marriage licenses (or marriage certificates), separation agreements, divorce certificates or divorce party and death certificates. In some ...

are missing or prove difficult to find. Historians use them to research the

social histories Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

of the city.

List of residents

Each directory was written exclusively in Russian Cyrillic only, and contains various sections among which was an alphabetical 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 *Street address with apartment number * Profession *Telephone numbers (few private residents could afford a telephone 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 and the subsequent Russian Civil war.

Termination of series

Publication came to a halt after the edition of 1936, coinciding with the time of Joseph Stalin's great purges and

Moscow Trials The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of th ...

Historical and genealogical value

Because numerous residents emigrated from Moscow after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and tens of thousands more were either arrested, shot, or sent to the gulag by the

Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated ...

and the NKVD 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 copies thereof) can be found in libraries across the United States, Europe (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 the United Kingdom and Germany) however most only have an incomplete collection.

Other city directories in Russia

Suvorin also published city directories for Saint Petersburg under the title ''

Ves Petersburg Ves Peterburg (/vʲesʲ pʲɪtʲɪrˈburg/; in 1914–1923 Ves Petrograd; in 1924–1940 Ves Leningrad — the annual city directory of Saint Petersburg, Petersburg–Petrograd–Leningrad started in 1894 by Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin (1834–1912 ...

'' (''All Petersburg'') for the years 1894 to 1940 and for the whole country under the titles ''

Vsya Rossiya {{italic title ''Vsya Rossiya'' (literally translated "''All Russia''" or "''The whole Russia''") was the title of a series of directories of the Russian Empire published by Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin (and his heirs; Suvorin died in 1912) on a year ...

'' (''All Russia'') from 1895 to 1923 and continued under than name ''

Ves SSSR {{italic title ''Vsya Rossiya'' (literally translated "''All Russia''" or "''The whole Russia''") was the title of a series of directories of the Russian Empire published by Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin (and his heirs; Suvorin died in 1912) on a year ...

'' (''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