Special Collections: Russian & Soviet

James Mavor was professor of Political Economy at the University of Toronto from 1892 to 1923, and donated this collection in 1960. It contains his correspondence on Russian affairs, and sheds light on his acquaintances with such prominent Russians as Prince Kropotkin and L. N. Tolstoi. The collection also contains historical material on the emigration of the Doukhobors to Canada.  There is also material relating to the October Revolution, the Civil War, and Russian émigré activities.  Mavor’s papers include writings by himself, Stepniak, Sviatlovskii, and others on Russian topics.  The papers were most likely assembled for the writing of his major work, The Economic History of Russia (1914).

The Maximenkov Collection contains video recordings of a variety of television shows, both news and entertainment. Examples of what is offered include films, concerts, sporting events and Vremia news reports, in addition to Russian-related stories on North American news networks such as CTV and CNN.

Collection of Mennonite-related documents from the Zaporizhzhe Regional State Archive, Zaporizhzhe, Ukraine, microfilmed under the auspices of the Research Program in Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto.

The largest and most prestigious Soviet film studio during the era of the “Great Patriotic War” was Mosfilm in Moscow. It was in this premier studio that many of the landmarks of Russian cinema were imagined and produced. The collection includes correspondence, memoranda, scripts and shooting scripts.

This collection includes all pre-revolutionary journals dedicated to the gramophone and the phonograph, which were still considered novelties at the time these journals were published. It also includes six Moscow journals from 1774 to the early 20th century.

The collection includes sources covering events leading up to and including the overthrow of the Russian Empire. The collection is based on the holdings at Columbia University's Herbert Lehman Library. Included are titles such as Journal de St. Petersburg, Russkia Viedomoski and Drug, covering every facet of the revolution including late 19th century indications of the coming revolution; subtleties of Russian life in the twilight of the Imperial period; the Revolution's effect on daily life; the final blow to the Empire's political structure, the aftermath and the beginning of the movement towards the Soviet Union. In addition to the Russian papers, the collection includes papers printed in other countries.

The collection includes writings on Russia by French, German, English and other western observers representing ideologies ranging from Orleanism to anarchy, and including various religious doctrines. Works of Russian political emigrés, including Turgenev and Bakunin, are also included. Among the many concrete topics dealt with in the collection are tsarism and Russian political history, serfdom, Russian socialism and early revolutionary movements. The collection provides the researcher with a broad account of 19th century Russia and of how it was regarded in the West.

A collection of records documenting the activities of the Soviet State, Central Committee of the Communist Party and All-Union Young Communist League from March 1953 until April 1966, from the holdings of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) in Moscow.

The One-Day Newspaper Collection consists of newspapers that had unusually short runs, published in the period between the first year of the Russian Revolution and the start of the Gorbachev era. The One-Day Newspaper Collection of the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library is the largest, with more than 6400 titles.

Charles Pachter, born in Toronto, is one of Canada's leading contemporary artists.

His papers include his mother's, Sara Pachter's, travel diary to Israel and Russia in 1959, as well as correspondence and photographs of her trip to Belarus and Russia in 2002. Sara Pachter was a Toronto travel agent and led frequent tours of Israel.

This collection, reproduced from the Royal Archives, reflect Queen Victoria's active role in foreign affairs. It includes the principal papers of state forwarded to the Queen, her related correspondence with her ministers, and correspondence with other sovereigns and members of families. Also included are reports and memoranda that were attached to correspondence for the Queen's information. These documents contain statistics, eyewitness accounts and intelligence reports from foreign office officials stationed throughout the continent. In addition, it contains extracts or abstracts of many papers of state submitted to the Queen in order to bring specific information to her attention.

Only the first part of six pertains to Russia and Eastern Europe. This part includes material from 1846 to 1900 and contains correspondence with her ministers and with the tsars of Russia along with state documents and reports from embassies abroad. These files cover such themes as the succession of Tsar Alexander II; the emancipation edict of 1861; the second Polish revolution, 1863-1864; Russian expansionism, 1860-1900; the London Conference of 1871; the Alliance of the Three Emperors, 1881; the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1893; and the First Hague Peace Conference (1899).

The Potichnyi collection includes German, Polish, Ukrainian, KGB and other documents related to the Ukrainian underground movement. Also included are extensive correspondence, clippings and other documents pertaining to the Ukrainian underground.

The second group of the Peter J. Potichnyi collection of the Counter-Insurgency documents come directly from Soviet archives. This collection covers 150,000 pages of documents, covering the activities of the NkVD-NKGB, and the MVD-MGB internal forces of the Ukrainian Okrug against the Ukrainian Liberation Movement during the years 1944-1954. After Ukraine proclaimed independence in August 1990, this archive was removed to Moscow.

A collection of Russian record company catalogs originally published between 1905 and 1925. It includes librettos of opera excerpts and songs.

The Electronic Archive “Project for the Study of Dissidence and Samizdat” (PSDS) includes the database of Soviet samizdat periodicals, electronic editions of selected samizdat journals, illustrated timelines of dissident movements, and interviews with activists.

These publications constitute three separate collections, consisting of approximately 60 boxes of materials issued by various departments of Radio Free Europe from 1961 to the present. Many of the publications are weekly background and situation reports on Eastern Europe and the USSR in English. About half of the material consists of publications from the Czechoslovak Unit of Radio Free Europe issued since 1970, and reprints of items from Czech and Slovak newspapers and journals.

A collection of unedited intelligence reports—many of them handwritten—from Red Army operatives throughout Russia.  Included are traditional operational and intelligence reports and evaluations.  The political intelligence reports contain surveys of civilian attitudes and assessments of the mood and circumstances of Red Army troops.

Born in Khrotytsia, a German-speaking Mennonite colony in Southern Ukraine, David Rempel came of age during the Civil War. He immigrated to Canada in 1923 and then went on to study and live in the United States. He spent his career as an historian and teacher preserving the vanishing culture of the Mennonites in Russia and Ukraine. The collection consists of Rempel's documents, including correspondence, mainly pertaining to Mennonite history in pre-revolutionary Russia, and the effects of the Maknovshchyna and the emigration to North America.

This database provides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of political processes through the lens of revolutions, protests, resistance, and social movements. The collection includes videos, printed materials, and images from a variety of time periods, regions, and topics, including material on the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the Prague Spring.

In 1830, M. M. Speranskii and his colleagues published forty-five volumes (entitled Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii) containing, in chronological order, the texts of more than 31,600 legislative enactments beginning with the Ulozhenie of 1649 and ending with the reign of Alexander I on December 11, 1825. Later, a second and third series were issued. The second, embracing the reigns of Nicholas I and Alexander II (1825-1880), takes up 55 volumes, the third comprises 33 volumes for the period March 1881-1913, when publication was terminated by the Revolution.