LibGuides: History: Primary Sources by Era or Topic: Russia and the USSR (20th century)

Translated primary sources in books

Annals of Communism
This search lists books in the Annals of Communism series that reprint and translate primary sources

Magazines and newspapers from the period

Historical Periodicals from ProQuest This link opens in a new window
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Set custom date range to 1905-01-01 to 1922-01-01 if you are looking for material published during the events.
American Periodicals‎ (1740 - 1940)
British Periodicals‎ (1681 - 1939)
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive‎ (1880 - 2000)
The Harper's Bazaar Archive‎ (1867 - current)
Periodicals Archive Online‎
The Vogue Archive‎
Women's Magazine Archive‎ (1846 - 2005)
The Women's Wear Daily Archive‎
Historical U.S. Newspapers from ProQuest This link opens in a new window
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1841-2000 with some more recent
Search all ProQuest U.S. historical newspaper collections simultaneously.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender‎ (1909 - 1975)
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune‎ (1849 - 1993)
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Christian Science Monitor‎ (1908 - 2003)
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times‎ (1881 - 1993)
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times‎ (1851 - 2013)
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Tribune‎ (1841 - 1922)
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post‎ (1877 - 2000)
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: U.S. West, including Reno Gazette-Journal (1876-2008), San Francisco Examiner (1889-2007), and Spokane Statesman-Review (1894-2009)
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
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Combined search of all Gale archival collections, including newspapers and 18th and 19th century collections.
Allows simultaneous searching of British Library Newspapers (1780-1950), London Times (1785-1985), ECCO (1700-1800), NCCO (1800-1900), Sabin Americana (1500-1926) and other Gale primary source collections.
Includes 19th Century UK Periodicals, Archives of Sexuality & Gender (LGBTQ History), British Library Newspapers, The Economist (1843-2014), Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers, Sabin Americana (1500-1926), China and the Modern World, London Times Digital Archive, and London Times Literary Supplement.
Periodicals Archive Online (PAO) This link opens in a new window
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1802-1995
Journal articles in the humanities and social sciences published between 1802-1995
Update frequency: quarterly
Search international scholarly literature in the humanities and social sciences disciplines from 1802 to 1995. PAO includes pre-1995 issues of over 400 journals, including many journals published in languages other than English.

Video

Socialism on Film This link opens in a new window
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1918-1990
Documentaries, newsreels and feature films that reveal the 20th century world as seen by Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, East European, British and Latin American filmmakers.
This collection of films from the communist world reveals war, history, current affairs, culture and society as seen through the socialist lens. Covers countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, much of Eastern Europe, the GDR, Britain and Cuba.

Newsreels from British Pathe and WPA
14 short film clips documenting events of 1917.
The End of St. Petersburg
In 1927, Eisenstein and Pudovkin were both assigned to make films commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the 1917 Revolution: October and The End of St. Petersburg.
October: Ten Days that Shook the World
October: Ten Days That Shook the World is a 1927 Soviet silent propaganda film by Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov.
Russian Film Hub
Large collection of streamable Russian films that can be filtered by decade, director, and genre.

Databases

Border and Migration Studies Online This link opens in a new window
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1800-present
Primary source documents, archival collections, films, and ephemera describing events and lives of displaced people, refugees, undocumented and unauthorized migrants and victims of human trafficking at significant border areas from the 19th to 21st centuries.
Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan: From Silk Road to Soviet Rule This link opens in a new window
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1834-1922
Correspondence, intelligence reports, agents’ diaries, minutes, maps, newspaper excerpts and other materials from the British Foreign Office Files about the history of Persia (Iran), Central Asia and Afghanistan from the decline of the Silk Road in the first half of the nineteenth century to the establishment of Soviet rule over parts of the region in the early 1920s.
Part of the Archives Direct combined search portal.

Commercial and Trade Relations Between Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union and the U.S., 1910-1963
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Country Intelligence Reports/State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Reports USSR (1941-1961)
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Czechoslovakia from Liberation to Communist State, 1945-63: Records of the U.S. State Department Classified Files
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East Germany from Stalinization to the New Economic Policy, 1950-1963
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George H. W. Bush and Foreign Affairs: The Moscow Summit and the Dissolution of the USSR
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Global Press Archive
Open access collections: Imperial Russian Newspapers (25 titles); Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers (987 titles); Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers (292 titles); Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers (79 titles); Southeast Asian Newspapers (65 titles)
Russian Civil War and American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia, 1918-20
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Russian Historical News Sources
List of open access newspaper collections

Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War This link opens in a new window
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1873-1953
From The National Archives, U.K., documents encompass signals intelligence reports and government-directed policy and strategy from the period of Appeasement right through to the early Cold War.
British government secret intelligence and foreign policy files from 1873 to 1953, with the majority of files dating from the 1930s and 1940s, across four major conflicts – the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the early years of the Cold War and the Korean War.

Socialism and National Unity in Yugoslavia, 1945-63: Records of the U.S. State Department Classified Files
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United States and the Russian Civil War: The Betty Miller Unterberger Collection of Documents
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World Communism: Pamphlets from McMaster University
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World War I and Revolution in Russia, 1914-1918
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Web projects

Americans in the Land of Lenin: Documentary Photographs of Early Soviet Russia
750 photographs of every-day life in the Soviet Union (1919-1921 and 1930) from the papers of Robert L. Eichelberger and Frank Whitson Fetter.
Audio Archive of Russian History
Recordings dating back to the earliest years of the Soviet state. Included are the voices and speeches of key political figures, including Lenin, Kerensky, Kirov, Beria, Stalin, Gorbachev, and others.
Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union Web Archive
The countries of the region in recent years have been publishing a wide variety of websites likely to be of value to contemporary and future humanities, social science, and history projects, and this archive has been established as an attempt to identify, capture, and preserve this material. Includes websites published by political parties, non-governmental organizations and activist groups, artists and cultural collectives, and historians, philosophers, and other intellectuals.
EuroDocs: Russian Revolution
Translated primary source documents
From St Petersburg to Notre Dame
This exhibit presents selections from the earliest known and heretofore unexamined oral histories (interviews) of the February Revolution as told by its leading participants shortly after the events.
Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System Online
English-language digitized materials selected from the HPSSS: summary transcripts of 705 interviews conducted with refugees from the USSR during the early years of the Cold War.
History of Russia in photographs
Collection of photographs taken in Russia for almost a century and a half, from 1840 to 1999. It includes photos on various topics from museum archives and personal collections.
In the footsteps of the revolution
What the memorable places of the 1917 revolution look like today
Politics, Propaganda and People's Art of the “Great” Socialist October Revolution
This is the virtual counterpart of a physical exhibition that is dedicated to the centenary of the Russian Revolution.
Posters of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922
New York Public Library digital exhibit
Project 1917
Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents.
Russian Film Hub
Large collection of streamable Russian films that can be filtered by decade, director, and genre.
World on Fire in Flames of Blood: Narratives of the Russian Revolution
With a title drawn from Aleksandr Blok's The Twelve, this exhibition brought together some of the conflicting voices from the chaotic events that changed world history. This digital companion includes a selection of digitized items from the exhibition.

Books

Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution by Michael C. Hickey (Editor)
ISBN: 0313385238
Publication Date: 2010
This new collection of documents helps students understand the complex texture of Russian public rhetoric and popular debate during World War I and the 1917 Revolution. * More than 300 original documents from the national and local press and from unpublished provincial archival materials, all carefully edited and annotated and either translated into English for the first time or presented in new translations * A chronology of major events in Russia for the period from summer 1914 to mid-January 1918 * Cartoons that appeared in the national and local press in 1917 * A map of Russia in 1917 showing the locations of important cities and geographical features
Revolution in Danger by Víctor Serge
ISBN: 9781608460847
Publication Date: 2011
Upon arrival in Petrograd in 1919, Victor Serge - the great chronicler of the Russian Revolution - found a society nearly shredded to ribbons by civil war. In these essays he sketches a portrait of the darkest hours faced by the fledgling revolution, and defends the red terror against abstract criticisms as a regrettable, though unavoidable, product of horrible circumstances.
Dear Comrades by Vladir Brovkin
Call Number: Lied Library Book Stacks DK265 .D34 1991
ISBN: 9780817989835
Publication Date: 1991
Vivid reports of the struggle of two parties vying for supremacy in postczarist Russia.

History: Primary Sources by Era or Topic

Translated primary sources in books

Magazines and newspapers from the period

Video

Databases

Web projects

Books

Microfilmed collections

Locations

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