Overview and mission
The Russian and East European Studies department at Penn is dedicated to advancing knowledge of a vast and unique region of the world. The department supports interests and expertise across many centuries, countries, languages, and disciplines, including medieval Czech manuscripts, population and health in Eastern Europe, 19th century Russian literature, nationalism and film in the Balkans, Russian and East European foreign policy, Byzantine art, gender and sexuality, and Putin’s Russia. REES also offers East European languages, including Hungarian, and Russian to the advanced level.
The Russian and East European Studies collection at the Penn Libraries serves the needs of researchers, scholars, and students affiliated with the interdisciplinary Russian and East European Studies department, as well as students learning languages taught through the department.
Guides to Russian archives
Find published guides to archives on the Libraries shelves, in English and Russian, on a variety of topics around Russian and East European Studies. You can limit your search further by discipline or "classifications" such as history, literature, or economics. Links to the samples below take you to the records in Franklin Catalog
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Описание документальных материалов В.В. Маяковского, находящихся в государственных хранилищахincludes descriptions of ROSTA and Glavpolitprosvet (1919–1922), manuscripts of V. V. Mayakovsky, his notebooks, paintings and graphic works, posters, programs and sound recordings from various archives
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Из Парижского архива И.С. Тургенева.Archives of I.S. Turgenev
Primary materials-Documentary Sources
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Россия XX вeк. ДокументыA newer series devoted to an interdisciplinary study of the Soviety Union through documentary materials. In 2019, about 50 volumes are available.
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Литературное наследствоThis series provides in depth analysis of Russian and Soviet literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. They publish primary source archival documents, letters, diaries, and related material.
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Russian National Library of digitized avant-garde publications: Русский авангардA project to digitize books from the Russian National Library, illustrating the experimental work of poets and artists that arose in Russia in the first third of the 20th century.
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Krasnyĭ arkhivPublished by the Central Archives and the Central Archival Administration from 1922-1941. Includes archival documents regarding the development of the Bolshevik movement, the Russian Communist Party, the Russian Civil War, Russian foreign policy, history of Russia in Siberia, Central Asia and Kazakhstan, as well as literary historical documents on Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and other Russian writers and critics.
Available from Hathitrust and Penn Libraries has in microform and in print ( request from Libra storage)
Stalin Digital Archive
The Stalin Digital Archive is a result of collaboration between the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI) and Yale University Press (YUP). It includes finding aids, digitized documents and images, a variety of media forms and materials from the declassified Stalin archive in the holdings of RGASPI.
The contents of archive date from as early as 1889 to 1952.
Cambridge Archive Editions Online: Slavic and Balkan
Detailed archival facsimiles of primarily British involvement in the region. View all Cambridge Archive Editions
More Guides to Archival Research
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Working with Russian Archival Documents: A Guide to Modern Handwriting, Document Forms, Language Patterns, and Other Related Topics by Call Number: Van Pelt Library CD1712 .G55 1998ISBN: 9780969772323Publication Date: 1998Also see Glagoleva's more recent article on successful archival research in Russia -
The Russian Civil War: Documents from the Soviet Archive by Call Number: Van Pelt Library. DK265 .A5372 1996ISBN: 0333593189Publication Date: 1996 -
Petrograd 1917: Witnesses to the Russian Revolution by Call Number: Van Pelt Library DK265 .P4548 2017ISBN: 9781851244607Publication Date: 2017
Language and Linguistics
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Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online by
Publication Date: online edition 2022From the publisher: The Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics offers a comprehensive overview of the languages of the Slavic language family and the different ways in which they are and have been studied. It provides authoritative treatment of all important aspects of the Slavic language family from its Indo-European origins to the present day, as well as consideration of interaction of Slavic with other languages. -
Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon by Call Number: Van Pelt Library PG46.Z5 D47 2008 (in print)ISBN: 9789004155046Publication Date: 2008This dictionary in the Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series deals with the Slavic inherited lexicon. It combines recent insights from the field of comparative Indo-European linguistics with modern Balto-Slavic accentology. -
Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language by
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780231881784Publication Date: 1951An etymological dictionary of Russian with each entry containing examples from all Slavic languages as well as comparative linguistic material drawn from other branches of the Indo-European family of languages. -
Indo-European Etymological Dictionaries Online by Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2010-From the publisher: The Indo-European Etymological Dictionaries Online (IEDO) reconstructs the lexicon for the most important languages and language branches of Indo-European. It is a rich and voluminous online reference source for historical and general linguists. Dictionaries can be cross-searched, with an advance search for each individual dictionary enabling the user to perform more complex research queries. Each entry is accompanied by grammatical info, meaning(s), etymological commentary, reconstructions, cognates and often extensive bibliographical information.
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Discover more through searching Franklin Catalog(russian OR slavic) AND (language* OR linguistic*) AND (dictionar* OR encyclop*)
Российская энциклопедия
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Большая Российская энциклопедия by Call Number: Libra (remote) AE55 .B59 2004ISBN: 5852703206Publication Date: 2004- -
Большая Российская энциклопедия музеев, частных собраний и коллекцийCall Number: Van Pelt Library. DK510.12 .B65 2009Publication Date: Москва : РИПОЛ классик, 2009Encyclopedia for Russian museums, collections, ethnographic materials -
Great Soviet EncyclopediaCall Number: Van Pelt Library. AE5 .B58Publication Date: 1973-198231 volumes -
большая советская энциклопедияCall Number: LIBRA. AE55 .B623Publication Date: 1969-1981Request from Libra Storage -
Russkie Pisateli, 1800-1917: Biograficheskiĭ Slovar' by Call Number: Van Pelt Reference - Stacks. PG2991.3 .R87 1989 In PrintISBN: 5852700118Publication Date: 1989-In six volumes, this is a first stop resource for any research on 19th C literature. Get an overview of this collections cotents at the Wikipedia article
REES Research Guides
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Old Church SlavonicResources in the Penn Libraries and beyond that support the study of Old Church Slavonic
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Medieval Rus'Resources in the Penn Libraries and beyond that support research and study into Russia's Medieval period.
Collections Specialist
Dennis Hyde
Russia and East European Subject Specialist
Hyde @ pobox.upenn.edu
554, 5th floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
For help with research or navigating the collections you can also contact:
Rebecca Stuhr,
Librarian for Classical Studies and
Librarian Liaison to REES
stuhrreb @ pobox upenn edu
215-898-5999
Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, 218
by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash
Make an appointment
Look for me under the Humanities Librarians list.
Thank yous
Thank you to Helen Stuhr-Rommereim, PhD candidate, Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, who has made significant contributions to the creation and editing of this guide.
Guides to Research from University Libraries
These guides will link to a wide variety of resources across the many disciplines within Russian and East European Studies. You'll find that some resources are freely available on the web, others you will need to look up in Franklin to connect with Penn's licensed version, which will require pennkey/password authorization.
NOTE: Be sure to search using Romanized transliteration. See the American Library Association's Russian transliteration table -- www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf
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University of Illinois Library's List of Guides to Research for Slavic and East European StudiesA list of 33 guides covering multiple regions and aspects of Eastern Europe and Russia
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Yale's Slavic, East European and Central Asian Research GuideIncludes finding primary resources, digital collections, and transliteration and cyrillic searching
Important US Library Collections
Visit each link to learn more about its particular strengths and scope:
- University of Illinois at Urbana Champagn Slavic and East Europe Library
- Slavic, East European & Central Asian Collection at Yale University
- Slavic and East European Studies at Indiana University
- Davis Center Collection |
- Harvard Slavic Collections at Widener Library
- East Coast Consortium of Slavic Library Collections
- Stanford Slavic & Eastern European Studies Collections
- New York Public Library Slavic and East European Collections
- Amherst Center for Russian Culture |
- Columbia Bakhmetoff Archive of Russian and East European Culture
- OSU Hilandar Research Library
- Russia and Eurasia Collections, Hoover Institution Library & Archives