Digital Resources for Eastern Europe, Russian Federation and Ukraine

In 2015, the European University in St. Petersburg began creating the Archive of the History of Science and Culture with the aim of preserving documents indicating the development of scientific thought in the field of humanitarian and social knowledge. Now, the EUSP Archive contains more than 40 personal collections of documents and materials on anthropology, history, linguistics, literary studies, sociology, and photography.

Primary sources of the 20th century ranging from the genres of geography to society to types of documents (i.e., agent's note or propaganda leaflet). Downloading is available as well as an interactive portal for direct online reading.

A research guide offering open access resource links for archives, audio, bibliographic databases, digital humanities, e-books, ephemera and material culture, images, journals (current and archive), maps news media, video, and web archives. Click "Elsewhere" at the top of each section.

A list of open access Russian historical news sources: audio files, catalogs, digital libraries or newspapers, and films or photos.

Digitized archival materials related to the Cold War from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library's archival collections. Sections include "The Prague Spring", "Polish Files", "Repository of Documents", "Yugoslav Materials" and "Glossy Communism."

Nearly every Russian digital library provides access to digitized newspapers, including those of ethnic minorities. The most efficient way to access these newspapers is to consult this page, which is the digital newspaper guide compiled by the bibliographers of the Newspapers Department of the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. For a tutorial on how to search, see here.

An open access collection of titles digitized under the East View Global Press Archive (GPA). Includes core titles from Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as regional newspapers. It is a coverage of 189 years of Russian History, “From Peter the Great’s founding of the Russian empire, through the empire’s expansion during Catherine the Great, the abolishment of serfdom by Alexander II, the tumultuous years of Nicholas II, and everything in between.”

From the Russian National Library (whose website uses the same interface as UCLA Library), holds a collection of various leaflets and works related to the February Revolution and the White Movement, published from November 1917 to September 1920 on the territories of the anti-Bolshevik governments of the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, and Northern Russia.

This collection contains 58 unique audio files (in Russian, English, German, Latvian, Lithuanian) that were produced and/or broadcast by RFE/RL’s Russian Service between 1970 and 1989. The nearly 18 hours of sound recordings include “telephone conversations between RFE/RL staff in Europe and the US, and opposition members in the USSR.”

A growing collection of diaries, personal histories, and personal documents digitized from private collections. The overall collection'[s catalog includes Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Kazakh materials.

Sergey Aleksandrovich Nefedov is a Russian historian and Doctor of Sciences in Historical Sciences. This site links to many of his illustration-based historical accounts of the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance Era, and Modernism. There are also files of historical accounts with videos attached inside.

“On March 6, 1992, some three months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a handful of enthusiastic young Westerners living in Moscow began publishing the first English-language daily newspaper ever to be printed in Russia, The Moscow Times. Digital files of these varying pictures have been generously donated to the Library of Congress by The Moscow Times.

A collection of “750 photographs of everyday life in the Soviet Union (1919-1921 and 1930) from the papers of Robert L. Eichelberger and Frank Whitson Fetter” held by Duke University Libraries.

An exhibit by the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the McGill University Libraries "that draws on an important collection of more than 350 Soviet children's books published in the 1920s-30s and which are remarkable for their original aesthetic quality, linguistic variety, and thematic diversity.” The categories are: "From the Armenian to the Ukrainian: a Language Mosaic", "In the Animal World", "Revolution and Industry", "The Soviet North", "Agit-prop", "Women as Partners", and "Young Pioneers."

"A virtual museum of Soviet everyday life”. Offered both in Russian and English. Tabs offered are “Video Tours” (with a sidebar offering translations of the Russian transcript, details of the photographs, and basic facts and background of the video), “Photos”, “Audio”, “Documents”, “Essays”, “From Films”, “From Books”.

Public archive on the history of Soviet terror, the history of the Gulag, and resistance to the regime (1917 – 1987). It contains copies of archival and investigative files, materials and documents from family collections, memoirs, photographs, and recordings of oral histories. 18072 documents, 48284 names, 52822 images, 672 files.

Collections about cultural heritage are organized by themes, topics, features, centuries, galleries, etc.

These 6,000 black and white photos were intended to document the reconstruction of the Soviet Union following World War II, providing visual records of daily life, culture, and news at the start of the Cold War. Most of the photographs in the collection were taken by photographers working for the Soviet Information Bureau, the main propaganda arm of the Soviet state during World War II. The collection includes photos taken by notable photographers such as Evgeny Khaldey, Georgy Zelma, Arkady Shaykhet, Yakov Khalip, and Max Penson. Subjects range from famous people, such as Joseph Stalin and Dmitriĭ Shostakovich, to ordinary people from all parts of the Soviet Union, including non-Russian speaking republics. Use the links at the bottom of the page, under the section “Accessing These Materials”.

9,996 items held by the New York Public Library Digital Collections. Alphabetized navigation order column as well as Filters column. Materials are downloadable and are presented with detailed catalog-based descriptions.

A digital collection of mixed-format materials related to the exploration and settlement of the American West, the parallel exploration and settlement of Siberia and the Russian Far East, and the meeting of the Russian-American frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Includes thousands of images.

New York Public Library’s catalog of digital collections offers thousands of images. Click Collections under Browse and then input a keyword such as “Soviet” or “Russia” in the searchbar to access materials.

The human rights organization’s photo collection includes 136 examples (in both color and black-and-white) of what they refer to as “reportage photography” from 1930s to the late/post-Soviet period.

803 photographs, both in B&W and color, with navigation filters based on topic (ex: massacres, political trials, collectivization and dispossession) or location (ex: Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Prague, St.Petersburg, Syktyvkar, Tomsk). Detailed catalog-like descriptions for each photo. Downloadable.

From online collections held by Duke University Libraries. This collection has “75 Russian posters, documenting almost 60 years of Communist political advertising (1920s-1980s).”

New York Public Library’s home page to multiple tabs of its online visual materials that have been digitized: Art, Avant-garde, Book Jackets, Caricatures & Parodies, Coronation Albums, Ethnic Costume, Events, Folk Art, Holidays Greeting Cards, Maps, Menus, Military, Portraits, Posters, Travel, Religious Art/Texts. Within these tabs sometimes exist collections, such as "Portraits of Russian Political Exiles and Convicts" under “Portraits”.

From Princeton University's Cotsen Library, this collection digitized page-by-page a total of 295 visual materials classified under children's literature.

Visual materials and artifacts, such as banners, chinaware, paintings, photographs, pins, posters, and sculptures created throughout the 20th century of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Organized by University of Pittsburgh faculty in the History and Slavic Languages and Literature departments. Intended for students, teachers, scholars, and anyone conducting research on Stalin/ism.