Slavic and East European Studies Collection at IU

This database is the online version of The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (ABSEES), which started in 1956 at Indiana University, Bloomington, and continued until 1994, when it completely went online. Its chronological scope is limited, going back to 1989.

Balkan Insight is a product of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), a London-based initiative to create independent news source about the newly independent Balkan countries through training of local and regional journalists. An English-language service, it consists of two parts: open-access news service and a “paid service that offers in-depth analysis, commentary, investigative reports, features, interviews and profiles on the latest business and political headlines.”

Pravda was launched by Lenin; it survived, usually under different titles, the repeated suspensions by the tsarist government before it became the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Many important Bolshevik leaders (including Stalin) worked with the newspaper. It voiced the views of the leadership of the Soviet Union. 

By the early 1990s Pravda Ukrainy had become the complete opposite of the original newspaper, having jettisoned its previous ideological commitments, and instead embracing democratic principles, independent journalism, and an unrestrained criticism of the government - stances that drove its popularity and growing circulation. Due largely to financial struggles the newspaper ceased publication in 2014.

Provides access to all journals and articles, more than 4,370 open access e-books, and over 9,400 open access grey literature items (institutional reports, working papers, government documents, white papers, etc.). Currently, the archive’s content comes from over 1400 publishers. Indiana University Libraries’ subscription does not include full access to all e-books and grey literature, so some paywalls are expected.

Previously published under the titles Rabochii i iskusstvo (1929-1930), Sovetskoe iskusstvo (1931-1941), Literatura i iskusstvo (1942-1944), Sovetskoe iskusstvo (1944-1952) and Sovetskaia kul’tura (1953-1991). In the Soviet period it published critical diatribes against dissident writers Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Aksyonov and others, infamous articles condemning modern art exhibitions, chastising avant-guard composers and abstract painters. In modern Russia its reviews and event listings often focus on the cultural life of Moscow and regions, it is known for its topical commentaries on popular culture and politics.

Sheds light on the production side of Soviet cinematography, as well as on the theoretical and practical concepts developed by the period’s leading directors and critics. Includes articles by leading Soviet directors (Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Abram Room), as well as members of the avant-garde LEF, leading authors and philologists.

The Russian literary avant-garde was both a cradle for many new literary styles and the birthplace of a new physical appearance for printed materials. This collection contains many rare and obscure books, as well as well-known and critically acclaimed texts, almanacs, periodicals, literary manifests. Represented in it are more than 30 literary groups without which the history of twentieth-century Russian literature would have been very different. Among the groups included are the Ego-Futurists and Cubo-Futurists, the Imaginists, the Constructivists, the Biocosmists, and the infamous nichevoki - who, in their most radical manifestoes, professed complete abstinence from literary creation.
(From the vendor write-up.)

The collection is almost encyclopedic, illuminating a wide variety of aspects of life in each of the eight countries (Afghanistan, Arabia/Syria, China, Japan, Korea, Palestine, Persia, Turkey) such as culture, politics, religion, diplomacy, etc.

"Consists of pre-revolutionary Orientological publications is the little-known, classified Collection of Geographical, Topographical and Geographical Materials on Asia = Sbornik geograficheskikh, topograficheskikh i statisticheskikh materialov po Azii which was issued by the Russian General Staff between 1883 and 1914 in 87 thick volumes and 9 supplements. The Secret Prints are accounts of travels to lesser-known reaches of Asia, mostly by Russian army officers including among others authors such Nikolai Przhevalskii, Aleksei Kuropatkin, Nikolai Ermolov, Gustav Mannerheim, Lavr Kornilov, and Andrei Snesarev. The articles range from attaché and diplomatic dispatches to histories of tsarist plans for the invasion of India, the siege of Herat, and European campaigns against China. Together, they comprise a unique and largely untapped source for 19th century of Asia." -- OCLC WorldCat

The Annals of Communism series contains 25 volumes of scholarly commentary, annotation, and interpretation of documents from state and party archives selected by teams of Western and Russian editors. These volumes span the history of Soviet and international communism. Highlights include: foreign policy with Germany before World War II; communications during the Great Purges; relations with Western intellectuals and leaders; and private notations on many Soviet leaders.