Peculiarities of Civil Status Acts Records Keeping in Ukraine in the 1920s (on the Example of Kherson Region)

In the 1920s the systems of registration and accounting of the population in the Soviet Ukraine were formed. In developing the relevant legislation, the government of the republic initially used the experience and traditions of religious institutions, but gradually it developed its own approaches in accordance with what the state wanted to know about its citizens. The purpose of this work is to consider the peculiarities of keeping of records of civil status during the fi rst Soviet decade. A set of methods was used to cover the topic, including comparative, historical and chronological, as well as the methods of analysis and synthesis and archival heuristics. Terminological and grammatical study of the text, external source criticism made it possible to make attribution of the records of civil status. The use of methods of induction and deduction allowed working out a set of specifi c facts, complementing the general picture of life of Ukrainian society at that time. The scientifi c novelty. The records of civil status of the 1920s stored in the State Archives of the Kherson Region are chosen as the source base of the research. Their study can help to understand the trends and features, apparently common in the work of departments of civil registration in all Ukrainian lands, which were under the rule of the Soviets at that time. Prospects for further research. Due to public demand of archival information, there is need of further researching in many directions, i. e. a normative base of the work of departments of civil registration, taking of metric books from clergy, co-operation with statistic agencies, informative potential of registration books, etc. Conclusions. The contents of the records of civil status, strictly regulated by numerous government documents, were constantly under the infl uence of many factors, from the illiteracy of registrars to the banal lack of forms. Practical experience shows that the impact of realities of life on the quality of records of civil status was sometimes so signifi cant that now it complicates the search for information or even calls into question its reliability. That is why it is necessary to know the specifi cs of this records for both the success of genealogical research and the reliability of scientifi c conclusions in social sciences and humanities.