Special Collections:

The Millenium Collection contains twenty-one liturgical and scriptural books printed in what is now Ukraine in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The books are from the estate of the late Paul M. Fekula of New York, and were purchased in 1984 by the Chair of Ukrainian Studies Foundation with funds donated by members of the Ukrainian community and friends of the Library.  The collection is named in recognition of one thousand years of Christianity in Rus’-Ukraine.  An annotated and illustrated catalogue by Edward Kasinec and Bohdan Struminskyj provides a detailed description of the books.

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.

This collection reproduces the Tagebuch or journal of Dr. Hans Frank (1900-1946), the Governor-General of German-occupied Poland from October 1939 until early 1945. The journal is in typed format, in chronological order, covering all aspect of Generalgouvernment (GG) administration from its seat in the royal Wawel castle in Krakau (Kraków). The entries reflect administrative matters, rather than the spontaneous thoughts or feelings usually found in a diary.

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.

TS [Pictorial]. Album of twenty black & white photographs, with captions in Romanian.

A.L.S. [Pictorial] from Nicol to C. Dima-Dragon (1962). In Romanian.

Solomon Alexander Nigosian (1932-) served as professor at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Toronto, where he taught courses on world religions, Near Eastern religions, and the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Presently he is a Research Associate at Victoria College and teaches Continuing Education courses at St. Michael's College. Nigosian founded and served as the first minister of the Armenian Evangelical Church of Toronto (1960-1968), and founded and edited the journal Canada-Armenian Press (1963-1968). He has published extensively on the history of religions and Armenian culture and history.

The fonds contain material that documents Nigosian's scholarly and teaching career, as well as his role as a minister of the Armenian Evangelical Church and a member of the Armenian community in Toronto.

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.

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories includes more than 2,000 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to the United States and Canada between 1800 and 1950. The materials date from around 1840 and extend to the present, focusing heavily on the period from 1920 to 1980. Personal stories provide perspectives both on North America and on the immigrants’ countries of origin, including Eastern and South Europe, as well the Baltic countries. Users will find vivid descriptions of life under the Tsar and the various revolutionary governments in Russia; accounts of anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe; stories of persecution and fascism; and detailed descriptions of life in rural communities and towns as well as in major cities such as Budapest, Warsaw, and Moscow.

Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen (1932-1996) was a Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian. After nearly two decades of teaching at academic institutions in the United States, Nouwen went on to work with mentally and physically handicapped people at the L'Arche Daybreak community in Richmond Hill, Ontario.

Within the Henri Nouwen fonds is a hard-bound journal, draft manuscript, and several draft typescripts entitled "Ukrainian Diary." In it, Nouwen describes his trip to Lviv, Ukraine in 1993, and his experiences there in the company of Borys Gudziak and Zenia Kushpeta. The collection also includes about 20 photographs of the trip, along with a second one taken in 1994, in a separate series (Box 386, file 112).

This collection contains material by members of Solidarity and other Polish and international workers' movements. It includes newspaper clippings, typescript articles, graphic material, audio cassettes, medals, stamps, artifacts, and other ephemera. The collection was established in 1982 and continues to grow as a result of donations from private donors.  It consists of twenty-six boxes arranged into five series:
pre-Solidarity, Solidarity legal, martial law, post-martial law, and microfilm and visual art.

Printed material--books, pamphlets, and periodicals--have been catalogued separately and can be searched under the call number "solid".

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.

Oral History Online (OHI) is a landmark database of English language oral histories. It contains at present more than 34,000 pages of full-text content. This full-text material includes Ellis Island oral history narratives and rare Black Panther Party interviews. Oral History Online is also an index to free oral history information on the Web. Working with archives, repositories and individuals, OHI indexed oral histories held by organizations around the world. Many oral stories are related to history of Eastern and South Europe, as well the Baltic countries, for example: oral accounts of the Russian Revolution, 1917-1921: World War II; emigration from Eastern Europe; and Diaspora life in North America, etc.

[Manuscript] (1806)

[manuscript] (1st quarter of 19th century)

Thanks to a generous grant from the SSHRC of Canada in 1985, PIMS purchased on microfiche many serial publications of Imperial Russia from the 19th and early 20th centuries. These cover topics such as Church and political history, antiquities, archaeology, law, and numismatics. Since 1980 PIMS has also been acquiring materials on the medieval Balkans. The same criteria used for purchasing books for Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy are applied here. The Slavic Collection was expanded to provide research materials for the study of the Slavs in the so-called “Byzantine Commonwealth."

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).