Yury Snapkouski
Historian-Archivist, Professional Genealogist
I am a professional historian-archivist, specialising in biographical research. I have extensively studied the bureaucratic apparatus of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
I can provide consultation and interpretation regarding archival research specifics in Belarus, Russia, Poland, and the Baltic countries. I am the author of the scholarly biographical directory 'Governors and Vice-Governors of Minsk' (2016) and over 100 other scientific publications.
I have been a research associate at the National Historical Archive of Belarus in Minsk for 13 years.
My working languages are Belarusian, Russian, Polish, and English.
The full-text versions of my scientific articles are available on my Academia.edu page.
A little bit more about me
Hallo, RadioSnapkouski is on the air!
Born around the time of the Chernobyl disaster, I entered the world on a clear day in May.
Descended from the unconquered gentry and the great-grandson of a woman who was imprisoned for her Orthodox faith during the end of Stalinism.
During the Livonian War, my distant ancestor, a nobleman named Snopkowski, contributed two horses from his estate to fight against the much-suffering Pskov. This was later confirmed by a certificate from Hetman Radziwill. Unfortunately, the certificate was not evacuated from our family archive during World War II and was lost in the fire set by the German fascists. My maternal grandfather was a specialist in plasma chemistry and a passionate admirer of Esenin's poetry. During salon gatherings in the 1960s, he would often boast about his noble blood, which is not unfounded as confirmed by archival documents.
I inherited an ideal metabolism and hypotension from my male-line ancestor who wandered through the remote forests of Klichev (contemporary Belarus) and breathed the fresh air of primal existence.
I delve into the personal histories of officials who served one of the largest and most horrific empires in my region. I am at your service to find information on your relatives if they originated from contemporary Poland, Belarus, Lithuania etc. We have a complex region where tragic historical events have intertwined and mixed people. I am prepared for challenging cases, even the most difficult and tangled ones.
