The state Shajara system: what it is and how to use it

Why the system exists

In most families the family tree is held orally: a grandfather knows his own father’s name, and beyond that it becomes "I do not remember exactly". The written proof — a birth or marriage record — sits in a civil registry archive or a regional state archive, and reaching it used to mean an application, a queue and usually a journey.

The Shajara system moves that search online. According to the announcements it draws on the electronic civil registry archive, state archive documents and, in some cases, DNA analysis. It is run by the National Archive and was built on the experience of FamilySearch, MyHeritage and the Tatarstan portal Yadkyar.

Where to use it

The service is delivered two ways: in person at a public service centre, or remotely through the unified interactive public services portal, my.gov.uz.

Applying online needs a ONE ID account. On the portal the service is listed under family genealogy formation. Once you apply, the system searches the available records for matches and returns the result to your personal cabinet.

How far back it reaches depends on what survived: twentieth-century records are largely digitised, while earlier ones may still exist only as handwritten books and require a separate archive request.

What it gives you — and what it does not

It gives you names backed by an official record, birth and death dates, and marriage records: the skeleton of a family tree. That is the hardest and most valuable part, because a document confirms it rather than a memory.

It does not give you faces, voices or stories. An archive record will not tell you what your grandfather did in 1954, how he spoke, or why he left his village. It will not tell you where he is buried either — that was never written into any document and passes only within the family.

So the practical order is usually this: take the official names from the state system, then gather the living part around them — photographs, voice recordings, grave coordinates, relatives’ notes — on a family platform. No archive will do the second part for you.

What to do once you have the names

First, write them down. A result on the portal is the result of a query, not your archive. Keep the names, dates and document numbers yourself.

Second, ask the elders. The archive gives you a name, but the only living source about that person is the relative who remembers them. Every relative over seventy is an archive in the process of disappearing.

Third, keep it in one place. A photo in a phone gallery, a note in a notebook and a voice message in Telegram will be lost in three different places within three years.

Questions & answers