Special Collections: Russian & Soviet

The systematic card catalogue of the Documentation Office for East European Law, University of Leiden

The collection includes 18th-century Russian publications, listed in the catalogue below (see link). It is a valuable source for the historical, political, social and intellectual study of 18th century Russia. It also includes non-Russian literature published in Russia in the 18th century and is a useful source for the study of Russian science, theatre, language, and the history of printing.

ACCESS: Consult the catalog link below to locate titles with their reference numbers. Then, search the finding aid (pdf) by reference number to identify which microfilm reel carries the title you need. Request reels in Media Commons by providing staff with the call number for the collection, the title of the work, and reel number.
 

Created by U.S. Presidential directive during World War II and at first placed under the Federal Communications Commission in 1941, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was later transferred to the War Department, and then to the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

The original mission of FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. These translations, or transcriptions in the case of English language materials, make up the Daily Reports.

The FBIS Daily Reports collection is divided into two chronological segments: 1941-1974 and 1974-1996. FBIS Daily Reports, 1941-1974, consists of a single Daily Report publication. FBIS Daily Reports, 1974-1996, is comprised of eight separate regional Daily Reports, of which Part 6 pertains to Eastern Europe (EEU), and Part 7 to the Soviet Union and Central Eurasia (SOV). Regional coverage for eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is also included for the years 1968 to 1974.

The reports includes news, interviews, speeches, editorial commentary, and other materials.

Mark Gayn was a journalist who traveled extensively and was known as one of the most knowledgeable and reliable commentators on Asian and Soviet bloc affairs. The Mark Gayn Papers consists of the impressive and varied research collection of print and non-print materials which he acquired during his career, which spanned five decades. The collection is divided into twenty categories or series, ten of which contain Russian material.

Irvine Israel Glass (1918-1994) obtained his B.Sc. (1947) and M.Sc. (1948) in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Toronto.  In 1950, he obtained his Ph.D. from the newly formed Institute of Aerophysics at the University of Toronto.  He served in this Institute until his retirement in 1983, and thereafter he worked as Professor Emeritus.  Glass made major contributions to gasdynamics research and shock-wave phenomena.

The collection includes correspondence, programs, notes and photoprints relating to trips to China, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere (1969-1985); certificates (1947-1985); and addresses.  Some of his personal correspondence from 1981 to 1982 relates to his part in the campaign on behalf of Andrei Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents, while some from 1987 and 1988 concerns the campaign to allow Soviet Jewish refusniks to emigrate.  Files relating to trips taken by Dr. Glass include material on his visits to the Soviet Union in 1961 and to Poland in 1965.

The collection of Gulag press publications from the Scientific Library of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow, covers the period 1920 to 1937. It contains prison journals from the 1920s; bulletins, newspapers, and literary and cultural journals from the 1930s; collections of short stories, poetry, music and posters; and various propaganda texts and fragments.

Typescripts, some with holograph corrections, of stories in North American Russian-language newspapers, and some correspondence relating mainly to newspaper work.

This collection was originally published as Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny Sovetskogo Souiuza 1941-1945 by the USSR Ministry of Defense and then translated into English by the U.S. Army Center of Military History and the Foreign Technology Division, Air Force Systems Command. It includes the complete official Soviet history of World War II written by some 200 historians and army officers, and provides information on Soviet involvement in the war.

Photos of the meeting of the International Astronomical Union Held in the Soviet Union, 1958. Helen Hogg, as well as other Canadian astronomers including A. Batten and S. van de Bergh, were present and can be seen in these shots. 

The collection contains resolutions, directives and telegrams from the Central Committee of All-Union Communist Party, the Soviet of People's Commissars and their mirror organizations in Ukraine; correspondence from local Party committees and executive committees of the local Soviets; official and private appeals of the regional party committees to higher Party authorities; memoranda and information reports from branches of state security, justice, and the prosecutor's office, as well as citizens letters. This material provides information about grain procurement policies in Ukraine; the escalation of food shortages, large-scale starvation, and mortality among the peasantry; political attitudes and political unrest among the peasants and some members of the grassroots Party organizations; and measures eventually taken by the Central Committee and the People’s Commissariat to contain the scale of the disaster.

George Pavlovich Ignatieff (1913-1989) was a noted Russian-Canadian diplomat whose career spanned nearly five decades. His many postings included Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia (1956-1958), Assistant Undersecretary of State for External Affairs (1960-1962), Permanent Representative to NATO (1963), and Canadian Ambassador to the UN (1966-1969). He served as the ninth Provost and Vice-chancellor of Trinity College (1970-1979), and Chancellor of the University of Toronto (1980-1986).

The fonds consist of records pertaining to George Ignatieff's professional career and personal life. Genealogical information about the Ignatieff family documents their lives in Russia and immigration to Canada. Family records include memoirs, diaries, photographs, student records, journals, and correspondence. Ignatieff's professional life as a diplomat with the Canadian government is doucmented by correspondence, subject files, speeches, reports, newspaper clippings, and photographs.

Of particular interest to Russian and East European studies are memoirs of Ignatieff family members reflecting on their lives in 19th-century Russia and immigration to Canada following the Bolshevik Revolution. Ignatieff's professional records include subject files relating to his trips to Russia in the 1980s; a diary, correspondence, and mementos of his trip to Russia in 1983; plus correspondence, reports, memoranda, newspaper articles, etc. on his visit to Moscow in 1955. Ignatieff also gave speeches on the topic of Russia and corresponded with the Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES).

Harold Adams Innis (1894-1952) joined the staff of the University of Toronto's Department of Political Economy in 1927, rising to the post of Head of the Department by 1937. From 1947 until his death in 1952, Innis assumed the additional responsibility of Dean of the School of Graduate Studies. Innis' international reputation as an economist took him on the lecture circuit. The most prestigious of these was the British tour in 1948 of the Beit, Cust and Stamp lecture series in Oxford, Nottingham, and the University of London respectively. As well, Innis was a featured participant in conferences at home and abroad. In 1945 he traveled to Russia on a special invitation to join the 220th Anniversary meeting of the Academy of Sciences in U.S.S.R.

Of particular interest to researchers of the Soviet Union is series 13 describing Innis' participation in the 220th Anniversary Meeting of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. in June 1945. Material includes diaries, articles, letters, programmes, invitations, postcards, and newspapers.
 

A collection of vocal and instrumental music, with Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and Ukrainian words.

Judaica Digital Collections database includes eight resources from the State Archives of Kyiv Oblast', spanning the mid-19th and early 20th centuries:

• Promoting Jewish Education (190 delo)
• Jewish Societies in Ukraine, 1857-1929 (565 delo)
• Anti-Semitic Organizations: Union of the Russian People, 1900s (16 delo)
• Jewish Pogroms in Kyiv, 1905 (152 delo)
• Victims of Pogroms (502 delo)
• Mendel Beilis Trial Papers (435 delo)
• Jewish Emigration from Ukraine, 1895-1917 (296 delo)
• Jewish Emigration from the USSR, 1926-1930 (1,466 delo)

Research files, interview transcripts, drafts of manuscript of the publication Moscow Despatches inside Cold War Russia, by John Watkins; edited and with an introduction by Dean Beeby and William Kaplan (Toronto: Lorimer, 1987). The publication includes selections from official despatches written while Watkins was ambassador to the Soviet Union.

From the description of Professor Martin Dimnik and Librarian's Assistant Caroline Suma:
"The distinguishing feature of the PIMS Slavic Collection is its highly specialized nature. From the start of the collection (1971) the library purchased Slavic materials relevant to researching the history of Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy (i.e., from the 9th to the beginning of the 17th century). The library’s main aim has been to obtain editions of original texts, such as charters and the chronicles of Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy, which are the primary tools of research. Secondary literature that facilitates the study of the sources has also been selected with special care. These materials cover  areas such as political, ecclesiastical, monastic, cultural, and social history as well as literature, language, law, historiography, archaeology, art, architecture, numismatics, sphragistics, and genealogical studies."

Thomas Lahusen collection of Vasilii Azhaev’s materials includes mostly photocopies of drafts of manuscripts, articles, readers’ conferences reports, notebooks, photographs, personal correspondence as well as official documentation pertaining to Azhaev’s imprisonment and further employment in the Corrective Labor Camp of the Baikal-Amur Main Line. The collection also includes photocopies of periodicals produced and disseminated within Soviet labour camps. For the most part, the collection combines material from Azhaev’s personal archives with some documents from the State Archives of the Region of Khabarovsk. 

Thomas Lahusen collected and used these documents when writing his manuscript, How Life Writes the Book: Real Socialism and Socialist Realism in Stalin's Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). Most of the material are copies from Azhaev’s personal archive that were given to Thomas Lahusen by Irina Liubimova-Azhaeva in 1992.

The collection includes a set of letters written from 1934-1939 by John N. Hazard to the Institute of Current World Affairs, during his sojourn in the Soviet Union, first as a law student and later as a visitor. Hazard was the first Anglo-American Harvard Law College graduate to pursue the full course of legal studies then being offered in Moscow. The collection also includes his course lecture and seminar notes: most of these are in English with key terms in Russian. These documents offer a unique portrait of Soviet life and legal education of that time period.

This collection of papers is part of the series "Leaders of the Russian Revolution" and comes from the Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Most Recent History (RtsKhIDNI), known until 1991 as the Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1875-1946) was a member of Union for Struggle of the Liberation of the Working Class, based in St. Petersburg and founder of the RDSRP. The collection includes photographs, diaries, transcripts of speeches, autographs of articles, reports and materials on his work in Petrograd and other places, and on the formation of the Jewish Autonomous Region (Birobidjan) and Intourist.

Primary source material on the peasantry and collectization of agriculture in the Sverdlovskaia oblast.