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.”

Includes such notable contributors as writer Richard Wright, folk singer Woody Guthrie, and political cartoonist Robert Minor. These publications were not only used by Party members to share news and exchange ideas. A large number of subscribers in the late 1950s-1960s were CIA agents or front companies linked to the CIA.

Both Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic were established as independent state entities after local referendums conducted in May 2014 and organized by the separatists leaders. Although the results of the referenda have not been recognized neither by Ukraine, the EU or the United States, its direct result led to an all out war between the Ukrainian military and eastern Ukrainian pro-Russian separatists resulting in thousands of deaths from both sides. Newspapers in this database cover the period of military hostilities between the unrecognized states and the government of Ukraine (2013-2015) and contain research material for anyone studying the development of separatist movements in this part of the world.

Newspapers Included:

Boevoe znamia Donbassa
Boevoi listok Novorossii
Donetsk vechernii
Edinstvo
Nasha gazeta
Novorossiia
Vostochnyi Donbass
XXI vek
Zaria Donbassa
Zhizn' Luganska

Some of the authors and journalists whose works appeared in Gudok were the famous Soviet journalist and satirist Ilya Ilf, and the writers Mikhail Zoshchenko, Lev Slavin, Sasha Krasny, and Alexander Kabakov. At the height of its popularity in the 1970s it had a daily circulation of 700,000.

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. 

Published continuously until 2008, Krokodil was at one time the most popular magazine for humorous stories and satire, with a circulation reaching 6.5 million copies. Krokodil lampooned religion, alcoholism, foreign political figures and events, bureaucracy, and excessive centralized control. The caricatures found in Krokodil can be studied as a gauge of the 'correct party line' of the time. During the height of the Cold War, cartoons criticizing Uncle Sam, Pentagon, Western colonialism and German militarism were common in the pages of Krokodil.

Throughout its history Ogonek has published original works by such Soviet cultural figures as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the photographer Yuri Rost, and others. In 2005, issues #31-35 were not published. The lack of database content for this period does not indicate missing issues, rather it accurately reflects a period in which no issues were published due to a brief suspension due to an ownership change.

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.

Published by the Russian Academy of Sciences, this journal covering Russian and world history was first published under the title Istorik-Marksist (Marxist Historian, 1926-1941), then Istoricheskii zhurnal (History Journal, 1937-1945) and finally under the present title (since 1945).