LibGuides: Modern World History: USSR

Resources from Online Databases

Soviet Union, 1917–1991
A topic overview from Gale's World History in Context database
Democratization
A reference article from Gale's World History in Context database, Encyclopedia of Russian History

Books containing Primary Sources

Gulag Voices : oral histories of Soviet incarceration and exile by Jehanne M. Gheith; Katherine R. Jolluck
Call Number: 365.45 GHE
ISBN: 9780230610637
Publication Date: 2011-02-10
A Documentary History of Communism in Russia by Robert V. Daniels (Editor, Introduction by, Translator)
ISBN: 9780874516166
Publication Date: 1993-04-01
Living Through the End of the Cold War by Jeff Hay (Editor)
Call Number: 909.825 LIV
ISBN: 0737721324
Publication Date: 2005-02-25
Contents: Speeches and writings from leaders (Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Boris Yeltsin and Vaclav Havel) -- Life under Glasnost and Perestroika (Thomas Sancton, Richard Owen and Alexander Kabakov) -- The Iron Curtain comes down (Michael Meyer, Daniel Pedersen, Karen Breslau, Robert Darnton, William R. Doerner, Adam Michnik and Douglas Stanglin).
Sedition : Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev by O. V. Edelman; E. Iu. Zavadskaia; Vladimir A. Kozlov; Sergei V. Mironenko; Sheila Fitzpatrick; Olga Livshin
ISBN: 9780300111699
Publication Date: 2011-02-22
(explores Soviet prosecution records to tell the hidden story of ordinary citizens who were arrested for expressing discontent during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years)

Primary Sources

Internal Workings of the Soviet Union: Revelations from the Russian Archives
(An online exhibit of the Library of the Congress)
Stalin and the Cold War
(The Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
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This collection contain Stalin's own writings, conversations, and legacy. The documents come mostly from the 1950s, and from Russian archives.
Soviet Foreign Policy
(The Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
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Documents on the international relations and foreign policy of the Soviet Union (1946-1991).
Post-Stalin Succession Struggle
(The Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
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Comprised of letters and speech transcripts, these documents mostly come from Russian archives and span 1944 to 1962. Many documents are related to or by Khrushchev, and many deal with the power struggle that arose between him and the "Ruling Troika" of Lavrentii Beria, Georgii Malenkov, and Molotov.
Nikita Khrushchev Collection
(The Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
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Documents containing the thoughts and opinions of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The earliest document is from 1955 and the latest is from 1968.
End of the Cold War
(from the Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
United States-Soviet Relations
(The Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
Intelligence Operations in the Cold War
(from the Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
Mitrokhin Archive
(from the Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
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The Mitrokhin Archive consists of summarized notes taken by Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist who defected to the United Kingdom after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Vassiliev Notebooks
(from the Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
A collection of 8 notebooks and loose pages kept by Alexander Vassiliev while researching in the KGB archives.
Project RYaN ( KGB lead program to anticipate a "nuclear missile attack")
(from the Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
Space Race
(from the Digital Archive of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
Documents on the 20th-century competition for supremacy in spaceflight capacity between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Ebooks and Print Books in our Library Collection

Books on Politics and History

A History of Twentieth-Century Russia by Robert Service
Call Number: 947.084 SER
ISBN: 0674403479
Publication Date: 1998-03-20
America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006 by Walter LaFeber
Call Number: 909.825 LAF
ISBN: 9780073534664
Publication Date: 2006-11-20
The Cold War by Robert J. McMahon
Call Number: 909.825 MCM
ISBN: 9780192801784
Publication Date: 2003-07-10
Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991 by Orlando Figes
Call Number: 947.08 FIG
ISBN: 9780805091311
Publication Date: 2014-04-08
The Collapse of the Soviet Union by Andrew Langley; Derek Shouba (Consultant Editor); Katie Van Sluys (Consultant Editor)
Call Number: 947.085 LAN
ISBN: 9780756520090
Publication Date: 2006-09-01
Soviet Union by Stephen Lovell
Call Number: 947.084 LOV
ISBN: 9780199238484
Publication Date: 2009-09-01
Soviet Communism from Reform to Collapse by Robert V. Daniels
Call Number: 947.084 SOV
ISBN: 0669331449
Publication Date: 1994-01-02
The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union by Laurie S. Stoff (Editor)
Call Number: 947.084 RIS
ISBN: 0737720271
Publication Date: 2004-10-15

Books on Lenin

Lenin by Robert Service
Call Number: 947.084 LEN
ISBN: 0674003306
Publication Date: 2000-10-18
Lenin by Dmitri Volkogonov
Call Number: 947.084 LEN
ISBN: 0029334357
Publication Date: 1994-10-12
Lenin's Revolution by David Marples
Call Number: 947.084 MAR
ISBN: 058231917X
Publication Date: 2000-10-03

Books on Stalin

Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union
Call Number: 947.084 STA
ISBN: 9781931798945
Publication Date: 2006-04-01
The Stalinist Empire by Ted Gottfried; Melanie K. Reim (Illustrator)
Call Number: 947.084 GOT
ISBN: 0761325581
Publication Date: 2002-09-01
Stalin by Oleg V. Khlevniuk; Nora Seligman Favorov (Translator)
Call Number: 947.08 STA
ISBN: 9780300163889
Publication Date: 2015-05-19
The Dictators by Richard Overy
Call Number: 943.08 OVE
ISBN: 0393020304
Publication Date: 2004-09-01

Books on Khruschev

Khrushchev by William Taubman
Call Number: 947.085 KHR
ISBN: 0393051447
Publication Date: 2003-03-17
Khrushchev's Cold War by Aleksandr Fursenko; Timothy Naftali
Call Number: 947.085 FUR
ISBN: 9780393058093
Publication Date: 2006-10-17

Books on Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev by Tom Head (Editor)
Call Number: 947.085 GOR
ISBN: 073771297X
Publication Date: 2003-04-09
Gorbachev : his life and times by William Taubman
Call Number: 947.08 GOR
ISBN: 9780393647013
Publication Date: 2017-09-05
Politics, Society, and Nationality Inside Gorbachev's Russia by Seweryn Bialer
Call Number: 947.085 POL
ISBN: 0813307538
Publication Date: 1989-01-19

Books on Putin

Putinism by Walter Laqueur
Call Number: 947.08 LAQ
ISBN: 9781250064752
Publication Date: 2015-06-30
Putin Country by Anne Garrels
Call Number: 947.43 GAR
ISBN: 9780374247720
Publication Date: 2016-03-15

Ebooks

Class Theory and History by Stephen A. Resnick; Richard D. Wolff
ISBN: 9781136704338
Publication Date: 2013-12-16
The Rise and Fall of the the Soviet Economy by Philip Hanson
ISBN: 9781317885382
Publication Date: 2014-09-11
Communism and Its Collapse by White S Staff
ISBN: 9780203134191
Publication Date: 2002-01-04
The Global Revolution by Silvio Pons; Alan Cameron (Translator)
ISBN: 9780199657629
Publication Date: 2014-10-28
Lenin by Lars T. Lih
ISBN: 9781780230030
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Stalin by Hiroaki Kuromiya
ISBN: 9781317867807
Publication Date: 2013-08-16
The Gorbachev Factor by Archie Brown
ISBN: 9780191520808
Publication Date: 1997-08-01