Slavic Studies

Collection of the earliest part of the Slavonic early printed books of the Moscow University Library, consisting of 40 Slavonic bibles and Cyrillic religious books printed in the 15th and 16th centuries, including editions of the Gospels, New Testaments, Acts and Epistles, and Psalms. Included are: the first printed edition of the Slavonic Bible by Belorussian printer Franciscus Skorina; the first printed Slavonic text of the complete Bible by Moscow printer Ivan Fedorov; Slavonic books from Moscow, Lvov, Ostrog, and Vilno (the latter from the Mamonichi press of printer Petr Mstislavets); and books from Slavonic printing presses in Nesvizh, Venice, and Skutri, among others

The collection documents the history of modern Russian and Ukrainian art. It encompasses critical literature, illustrated books, and art periodicals. The collection contains texts by such artists as Wassily Kandinsky, Pavel Filonov, Kazimir Malevich and Anatolii Petrytskyi; publications of art groups such as the Jack of Diamonds (Bubnovyi valet) and Màkovets; theoretical tracts by Nikolai Tarabukin and Boris Kushner; and books by well-known critics such as IAkov Tugendkhol'd, Erikh Gollerbakh, and Nikolai Punin. The collection also offers a selection of early 20th century art-related serials. These historical sources of pre- and post-revolutionary art reflect the diversity of artistic thought in the first thirty years of the 20th century, the intense discussions about the nature of the new art, its form, and its aims. The collection consists of 215 titles that were published in two parts on microfiche.

In English. Established in the aftermath of WWII in 1945 by the Soviet Women's Anti-Fascist Committee and the Central Council of Trade Unions of the U.S.S.R., it began as a bimonthly illustrated magazine tasked with countering anti-Soviet propaganda by introducing Western audiences to the lifestyle of Soviet women, their role in the post-WWII rebuilding of the Soviet economy, praising their achievements in the arts and the sciences. Ran till 1991 when the USSR collapsed.

In Russian. Established in 1899 and in continuous print until 1918, Ogonek first came on the scene as a weekly illustrated supplement to the influential St.Petersburg-based newspaper Birzhevye Vedomosti. Having posted impressive growth in readership, in 1902 Ogonek would chart an independent course, becoming a separate entity and attracting period’s most notable journalists, photographers, literati and critics. In short, this was the period of the formation of magazine’s foundational aesthetic sensibilities, for which it would become famous until its unceremonious closure by the Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1918 for propagating anti-Soviet views.

This database provides full text in-depth information from Russia and the former Soviet Union. Resources include newspapers, newswires, popular and scholarly periodicals, and government documents. Available in English and Russian.

The collection includes Soviet film magazines and newspapers from the 1920s and 1930s, reflecting an interesting and fertile period in the history of Russian film. Film publications were revived in the early 1920s after being interrupted in 1918 by Bolshevik censorship. In the beginning, the film press offered detailed coverage of the industry, both in the USSR and abroad, in addition to advertising western films playing on Soviet screens. By the end of the 1920s, a partial and eventually complete ban on imported films was introduced, marking the beginning of a campaign to "proletarize" Soviet art. By the mid-1930s, ideological consensus and Socialist Realism as the dominant mode in art came to the fore in film, as in all other areas of Soviet art.