H640: Empire and Ethnicity in Modern Russian History

Building Bibliographies

Build your own bibliography first as a guide for your research. The following are some of the tools and tips that will help you with building a bibliography.

Bibliography of books

1. Use subject bibliographies. Some of the useful titles include:

Guide to the study of the Soviet nationalities : non-Russian peoples of the USSR / Stephan M. Horak. 1982. 265 p. [Z2517.E85 G84]: A select subject bibliography. Unfortunately, no up-to-dated bibliography for the studies of Soviet nationalities yet.
Russia and the former Soviet Union : a bibliographic guide to English language publications, 1986-1991 / Helen F. Sullivan and Robert H. Burger. 1994. 380 p. [Z2491.S89 1994]
The German-Russians : a bibliography of Russian materials with introductory essay, annotations, and locations of materials in major American and Soviet libraries / James Long. 1978. 136 p. [RCSLAVRF-- Z2517.G4 L65]
Rossiiskie nemtsy : otechestvennaia bibliografiia 1991-2000 gg. : ukazatel’ noveishei literatury po istorii i kul’ture nemtsev Rossii / T.N. Chernova. 2001. 268 p. [Z2517.G4 C48 2001]

2. Use IUCAT to gather information on those readily available books and journals: Tips: Do a subject search in Advanced Search (as opposed to the default Basic Search) using two subject terms, one the name of any ethnic group of your interest, for example, Estonians, Latvians, Poles, etc; and the other “Russia.”

3. Use WorldCat to expand your search beyond IUCAT: Tips: the same as with IUCAT. (Borrowing materials from outside IU, use ILL services).

4. Both in IUCAT and WorldCat, limit your search by language (for example, English or Russian) as necessary.

Bibliography of Articles

1. ABSEES Online: The most comprehensive subject index for the field of Slavic and East European Studies. For your search, use such subject phrases as “Russia--ethnic relations,” “Russia--nationalities,” “[name of an ethnic group]--Russia”, to name a few.

2. Historical Abstracts: Online index to world history scholarship except American and Canadian histories

3. Russian Academy of Sciences Bibliographies: Use such subject phrases as “natsional'naia politika,” “natsional'nye menshinstva,” or the name of an ethnic group, preferably in Russian transliteration, and “Russia.” This database is a Russian product that is useful for finding Russian articles.

4. UDB—Social Sciences and Humanities Journals: Use such search terms as “natsional’naia politika,” “national’nye men’shinstva,” or names of ethnic groups in transliteration.

5. JSTOR: JSTOR is a journal archive, but since it has now grown so extensive (currently including more than 1,000 important journals in it), you may consider using it as a bibliographic database to build your bibliography. Search it, for example, with "Russian empire," and then narrow it down with further search terms as necessary.

Finding Book Reviews

Book reviews may be helpful for writing a historiographical essay, among others. Use the following two comprehensive book review indices that cover the whole 20th century to the present. I am not aware of any online index to Russian book reviews yet. Instead, use one of the Russian national bibliographies entitled Letopis’ retsenzii [RCSLAVRF-- Z2495 .L64]

Book Review Index Online: Covers from 1965 to the present, searchable by the name of the author of reviewed book, title, and other criteria.

Book Review Digest Retrospective: Covers from 1905 to 1982.

Using Scholarly Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

Useful for finding or verifying historical facts & biographical information, among others. As you all know, Wikipedia should be used only with extreme caution, or not at all. The following are some of the more important encyclopedias.

Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History / Joseph L. Wieczynski. 1976-[2000], 60 v. [RCREFDPT--DK14 .M689]. The most comprehensive, scholarly encyclopedia of Russian history to date. Shorter, but no less authoritative is Encyclopedia of Russian history / James R. Millar. 2004. 4 v. [RCREFDPT-- DK14 .E53 2003]
An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires / James S. Olson, et all. 1994. 840 p. [DK33 .E837 1994]
Dictionary of Russian historical terms from the eleventh century to 1917 / S. G. Pushkarev. 1970. 199 p. [DK36 .P987]
Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ / I.E. Andreevskii. 1990 [reprint of the original that was published in St. Peterburg by F. A. Brokgauz and I. A. Efron in 1890-1904], 82 v. [RCSLAVRF-- AE55 .E55 1890a]
Russkii biograficheskii slovar’ / A.A. Polovtsov. 1896-[1913], 25 v. [RCSLAVRF-- CT1203 .R9]

Using the Correct LC (Library of Congress) Transliteration Rules For Your Catalog Search

The LC system is the one that is most commonly used to transliterate Russian and other Cyrillic language titles in North American scholarship. Consult the transliteration table at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf

Browsing the Collection

In the Wells Library, all books and periodicals are arranged by subject following the LC (Library of Congress) classification system. Finding the call number range of your subject at http://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/classification/lcco/lcco_d.pdf and browsing the collection would be a good way to familiarize yourself with the literature. Browsing can also be done in IUCAT by conducting a call number search, one advantage of which is that it allows you to browse materials both in the Wells Library stacks and ALF (Auxiliary Library Facilities).

Scholarly Institutes and Societies

Association for the Study of Nationalities: An important scholarly association in the field of nationalities studies. It currently publishes an important periodical, Nationalities papers [Coverage: 1997-present. Print: DR24 .N277]

Institut etnologii i antropologii RAN: he most important research institute of Russia in the field of ethnography and anthropology. You may take this site as an example of how useful an institutional website can be for your scholarly work.

Important Russian Sources

Meeting of frontiers/Vstrecha na granitsakh: An American-Russian joint digital library project, with a variety of materials including rare photos, bibliographies, and rare books in full-text, all related to Siberia or the American West, from US, Russia, and Germany.

Russian military intelligence on Asia. Archives: Collection of Russian archival documents (almost 2,000 files) from the Russian State Military History Archive on Afghanistan, Arabia/Syria, China, Japan, Korea, Palestine, Persuia, Turkey from 1651 to 1917.

Russian military intelligence on Asia. Prints: Provides full-text access to all the 96 volumes of the series "Sbornik geograficheskikh, topograficheskikh i statisticheskikh materialov po Azii" (1883-1914), which was a huge publication project of the Russian General Staff during the last two tsars. These volumes include not only original scholarly research by the Russian military officers and diplomats, but also travelogues and translations from foreign publications.

Muslims in Russia: Provides online access to eleven Russian periodicals dealing with various aspects of Russia's Muslim world before the fall of the tsarist regime. The places of publication include not only the two metropolises of Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also such provincial cities as Kazan', Simferopol', Baku, and Kokand. Also included is the Paris weekly "Musul'manin = Moussoulmanine," which began to be published by the Russian Muslim diaspora of Paris, France, for the purpose of enlightening the mountain people of the Caucasus and educating Russian society about the local Muslim world of the Caucasus.

Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis' naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g.: The first all-Russian census. Unlike all previous "revizii," it did not have any financial purposes. It was approved by the tsar in 1895 and executed on the morning of Jan 28 (Feb 9 by new style). The famous geographer P. P. Semenov-Tian-Shanskii played a significant role in the preparations for the census. The questionnaire consisted of 14 questions including those on religion (veroispovedanie), native language (rodnoi iazyk), reading capability (umenie chitat'). For more detail see: http://ak.gks.ru/peep2010/DocLib3/1897.htm] B-WELLS _MFMFICHE HA2

Izviestiia imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva: A journal of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society (1845-1917), it began in 1865. It published lectures, reports, and minutes of scholarly meetings held at the Society. In other words, it was a kind of a newsletter of the society. IUB has the complete run of Izvestiia (1865-1916 on 834 microfiches). There is another important publication of the Society called Zapiski imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva, which is a monographic series of research publications. It began in 1846 as one series, but from 1866 it was published in three separate serieses: geography, statistics, and ethnography. IUB only has the ethnography series (Zapiski imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva po Otdieleniiu etnografii. 1867-1925), also on microfiche (DK33 .Z36).] B-WELLS _MFMFICHE GR23 .G28

Russkaia starina: One of the more important historical journals published in late tsarist Russia (1870-1918). Many memoirs and diaries, some related to experiences in Russian provinces, were published. B-WELLS_DK1 .R89

Kavkazskii sbornik: A military-historical yearbook published in Tiflis from 1876 through 1912 by the Russian military staff of the Caucasus military "okrug." It published articles and primary documents relating to the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. 32 volumes in total were published.] B-ALF _ALF DK511.C1 K24

For more consultation:

Contact Wookjin Cheun, librarian for Slavic and East European Studies (Wells Library E560).

Email: wcheun@indiana.edu

Phone: 812-855-9413

Updated 1/31/2011