Who wants to be a baron?

One day a female friend, who was adding photos to her children’s album, stumbled on a page where she had to update her family tree. She later confessed that the blank page spurred her into thinking she needed to learn more about her ancestors. Natalia then located the grave of her grandfather, who had perished in Prussia in 1945. She became so fascinated by her quest that she went as far back as the eighth generation of her family.

This story is illustrative. Most Ukrainians’ knowledge of their family tree is limited to their grandfathers. This is not surprising, considering that under the Soviets advertising one’s family background was not exactly welcome, especially if it was not strictly a proletarian or peasant one. True, the situation today has improved somewhat. “After 1991, steadily increasing numbers of people visit our archives, looking for their family trees,” says Olha Muzychuk, director of the Central State Historical Archives in Kyiv. However, many Ukrainians are not familiar with the specifics of archival work: where to go, where to look for the required data. Nor do they possess accurate information. According to Muzychuk, locating information relating to collectivization and the Holodomor is especially complicated, because there are still people among the living who took part in the dekulakization campaign. So it is no secret that archival workers fear reprisals after releasing such information.

According to Vira Kashchuk, director of the Ukrainian Center for Genealogical Research, most clients (90 percent) are foreigners, children of emigres, who are trying to trace their roots in Ukraine. For the most part, they are citizens of the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. They pay for a search of their family tree, because visiting Ukraine and doing this research is too expensive. The average cost of such services, depending on the complexity of the search, is $300. Kashchuk says the clientele is constantly increasing. Most Ukrainians want to learn about their ancestors. In fact, this is the latest trend among the modern elite, in the sense that it is all the rage to have relatives of noble birth. Newly established noblemen’s associations are often criticized for allegedly trading in noble titles for their own benefit. Oleksandr Popov, chairman of Kyiv’s Noblemen’s Assembly, says the noblemen’s movement is gradually being revived, but there are a lot of problems. The most important one is the lack of a monarch and court, as well as funding. So these noblemen’s organizations are left to their own devices and are struggling to survive. There are several cases on record when people have approached them and asked for noble titles for themselves — or to make other arrangements. However, according to Popov, they were turned down. “Reputation is the main thing for us, because the only thing left is our ancestral honor and we cannot tarnish it. This is easily done in current conditions, all it takes is one time,” stresses Popov.

True, some noblemen’s organizations are cooperating with people who want to obtain noble titles. They may be conferred on them, but only for the duration of their lives (not on their offspring). But this is practiced only by organizations with spotless reputations, which are members of a royal court. This is a problem in Ukraine because we don’t have a lasting monarchist tradition, with the possible exception of Odesa’s noblemen’s organization, which has been issuing noble titles since 1996, at European prices. The title of knight costs $3,000; baronet, $5,000; baron, $10,000; free-holding baron, $20,000, and viscount, $30,000. Candidates are thoroughly vetted, and checks are made to determine that they are truly worthy of the title, since this noblemen’s organization is a member of the Holy Roman Imperial Court, where final decisions on these titles are made. Other noblemen’s organizations are either Moscow-oriented or affiliated with various famous courts.

A considerable segment of the genealogy market is occupied by fictitious Jewish genealogies. In the mid-1990s hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were granted Israeli citizenship. In order to obtain it, they had to submit documents attesting to their Jewish origin: a birth certificate or extracts from archives confirming their Jewish ancestry. According to Udi Ben-Ami, head of the Israeli Embassy’s consular division in Ukraine, there is a kind of war being waged between the embassy and various crooks. This takes up a great deal of the embassy personnel’s time and energy, and prevents them from focusing on other projects of interest to both countries. Sooner or later, people with fake documents are exposed and deported to their former homeland. There are even cases when Ukrainians, after having lived in Israel for more than 10 years on the strength of such fake documents, are stripped of Israeli citizenship.

“Most often they fake birth certificates or buy genuine ones from Jews,” says Ben-Ami, “and in the latter case spotting this type of fraud is more difficult. It’s a shame that a lot of people trust these crooks, parting with considerable sums, because after their fake papers are exposed they will never be allowed to enter Israel.” Data concerning counterfeiters is transmitted by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies by two routes: the foreign ministry and Interpol. When it comes to court proceedings, the Ukrainian side notifies the embassy.

In past years there were cases when the Israeli embassy would demand not only archival affidavits attesting to their Jewish origin, but also original documents. These requirements are due to the embassy’s mistrust of our documentation, which all too often proves to be counterfeit. According to Muzychuk, there were cases when an archival official had to obtain birth registrations and then drive to the Israeli Embassy in order to have the applicant’s data verified.

Today, fortunately, this practice is nonexistent. At the same time, experts insist that the genealogy business is heating up in Ukraine, probably because the law of supply and demand is at work.