The reference works annotated below are a selection from recent acquisitions in the University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign.
General
Bibliography of Slavic Linguistics, 2000–2014. Ed. Tol, Sijmen and Genis, René. Leiden: Boston: Brill, 2015. 3 vols.
A 14-page introduction by Marc L. Greenberg discusses the history and current state of Slavic linguistics and publishing and includes relevant bibliographic references. Many scholars may use the online (Brill) Slavic linguistics bibliography to search among the 67,700 bibliographic items in this international catalog, but exploring the print version with its more than a hundred subject classes and keyword language and subject indexes will have its rewards. For citation verification purposes, the 262-page personal name index in the third volume is probably the most useful auxiliary feature. All Cyrillic citations are romanized.
Gospodarka Galicji 1772–1867: Inwentarz materiałów historycznych z archiwów i bibliotek Polski, Austrii i Ukrainy. Ed. Ślusarek, Krzysztof. Kraków: Towarzystwo Wydawnicze “Historia Iagellonica,” 2015–2016. 5 vols.
This ambitious guide to most of the relevant archival holdings will be of great benefit to scholars of the economic history of Galicia. A 20-page introduction (also presented in English translation) outlines the details of this Polish government-financed project and the difficulties encountered and methodology used. The entirety of the third volume is devoted to holdings of the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in L΄viv and also includes sixteen facsimile plates of maps, manuscripts, plans, and paintings. Volume 5 is devoted to the indexes (subjects, personal names, and geographical locations).
Moldova
Baletul moldovenesc: Actori, roluri, spectacole. By Coroliov, Elfrida and Aga, Nicolae. Chişinau: Biblioteca Ştiinţifică Centrală, 2015. 303 pp.
The first two thirds of this attractive work consists of biographies (including portraits, repertoire, and bibliographies) of Moldovan ballet dancers, choreographers, composers, set designers, and directors as well as articles about individual ballets and institutions. The latter third is a 100-page section of photographs, many in color, of Bessarabian ballet performances. A chronological list of 74 ballet premieres in Moldova (one in 1938 and the others between 1946 and 2007), closes the book.
Mongolia
Mongol΄skaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia. Mongġol teu̇ke-yin nebterkei toil. By Gatapov, A.S.. Ulan-Ude, 2015. 687 pp.
Except for the added title, the text and sparse bibliographic references in this encyclopedia are entirely in Russian. The work lacks illustrations, an index, and a bibliography. The author's preceding work Mongol΄skii istoricheskii slovar΄ (365 pp.) was published in Ulan-Ude in 2008. The wide-ranging articles include biographies of historical personalities as well as contemporary Mongolian studies scholars.
Russia
Arkheologicheskaia entsiklopediia Volgogradskoi oblasti. Archaeological Encyclopedia of Volgograd Region. Chief ed. Skripkin, A.S.. 2d ed., corrected. Volgograd: Volgogradskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2016. 332 pp.
This standard scholarly encyclopedia is well designed and thoroughly illustrated. It is particularly rich in signed bio-bibliographical articles that include portraits. The appendices and glossary are useful, but there is no separate bibliography and no index.
Atlas Pobedy: Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina 1941–1945 gg. Chief ed. and comp. Nikiforov, Iu.A.. Rossiiskoe voenno-istoricheskoe obshchestvo. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 2016. 295 pp.
Preceding the main section of this impressive coffee table atlas covering three periods of the “Great Patriotic War,” June 22, 1941 to May 8, 1945 (59–276), is a section on the military conflicts and preparations in the Far East and western Europe beginning in 1931. The last section (277–293) covers the concluding stages of World War II, mainly in the Pacific and East Asia. The bulk of this work consists of high quality color maps interspersed with some photographs of leading commanders and battle scenes and relevant quotations and official directives from Adolf Hitler, Iosif Stalin, and several principal military figures.
Baltiiskoe more: Entsiklopediia. By Zonn, I.S., Kostianoi, A.G., Semenov, A.V., and Zhil΄tsov, S.S.. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 2015. 570 pp.
Many of the approximately 1,000 articles in this standard reference work deal with the hydrology, hydrography, and geography of the Baltic Sea, but there are also numerous articles about individual ships, sea battles, treaties, historical events, and personalities, with some emphasis on Russian naval officers and operations during both World Wars. The articles are unsigned and lack bibliographies, and there are a few black and white illustrations. A 60-page chronology is appended along with a 47-title bibliography and a list of about that many websites. There is no index.
Blagotvoritel΄nost΄ v Sankt-Peterburge 1703–1918: Istoricheskaia entsiklopediia. By Kerzum, A. P., Leikind, O. L., and Ia, D.. Severiukhin. St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 2016. 750 pp.
This scholarly encyclopedia has 456 signed articles about individual charitable institutions in prerevolutionary St. Petersburg. The articles are preceded by a 90-page history and chronology and followed by an extensive bibliography and 66 pages of excellent archival photographs taken at the relevant institutional settings. A full listing of the headwords is provided along with indexes of institutions, personal names, and street addresses. This is an essential source for any student of philanthropy in Russia.
Gosudarstvennost΄ Rossii: Slovar΄-spravochnik: Vidy i raznovidnosti dokumentov sovetskogo perioda, 1917–1991 gody. Ed. Larin, M.V.. Moscow: Nauka, 2016. 588 pp.
As an aid to scholars studying the Soviet period of Russian history, archival specialists have compiled this thoroughly documented dictionary and handbook that defines and explains a broad range of specific laws, regulations, treaties, questionnaires, passports, and building and other standards, as well as resumes, service records, tax and census forms, awards, passes, permits, and other official party and government documents of all kinds that were ubiquitous in various periods of Soviet history and are present in personal archives of the period. The dictionary articles include extensive bibliographies of primary and secondary works on most of the topics and on related questions about documentation.
Istoriki Rossii kontsa XIX-nachala XXI veka: biobibliograficheskii slovar΄. Comp. Chernobaev, A.A.. Moscow: Izdatel΄stvo Sobranie, 2016, Vols. 1–2 (each 511 pp.)
This is a highly useful biographical dictionary (complete in three volumes), covering mainly twentieth and twenty-first century Russian historians. The biographies are brief but the entries include basic directory information including major works, specialties, positions held, and works about the scholars. Some of the articles are signed while others are based on returned questionnaires, or other biographical dictionaries. An essential requirement for inclusion was the possession of a doctoral degree.
Kraevedenie v Rossii, istoriia i sovremennost΄: Ukazatel΄ literatury za 1991–2010 gg. Comp. Nikolaeva, Liudmila Sergeevna. St. Petersburg: Rossiiskaia natsional΄naia biblioteka, 2015- Vol. 1. 607 pp.
Bibliographic control of publications on regional studies is a longstanding responsibility of the Russian National Library and this retrospective de visu bibliography includes 3,644 partly annotated entries for selected books, periodical articles, and articles in collections, dissertation abstracts, and reviews (regardless of date) about the history, theory, and current state of regional studies for a twenty-year period. For the most part technical scientific works on archaeology, geology, botany, linguistics and the like are not included. The arrangement is by subject and alphabetically by author or collection title within each subject. Selection for this work ceased in April 2015. The work includes numerous cross references and a complete index of personal names. Many of these local publications, especially from the first half of the 1990s, are not available in major central libraries, and the completeness of coverage for this type of bibliography has diminished as private publishing has increased and the system of legal deposit has weakened.
Morskie ofitsery Rossiiskoi imperii XVIII veka: Biograficheskii slovar΄. By Feofanov, A.M.. Pravoslavnyi Sviato-Tikhonovskii gumanitarnyi universitet. Moscow: Izdatel΄stvo PSTGU, 2016. 202 pp.
693 imperial Russian naval officers born between 1710 and the 1750s who attended Russian military schools between 1731 and 1761 are the subjects of this scholarly biographical dictionary. The arrangement of biographies is alphabetical, and there is no index. Based mainly on official service lists, the concise entries include detailed references to archival sources in two principal archives in St. Petersburg and two in Moscow. Additional sources are family histories and genealogies, histories of educational institutions, and other biographical and bio-bibliographical reference works.
Prikazy Moskovskogo gosudarstva XVI-XVII vv.: Slovar΄-spravochnik. Institut rossiiskoi istorii Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Rossiiskii gosudarstennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov. By Liseitsev, D.V., Rogozhin, N.M., and Eskin, Iu.M.. Historia Russica. Moscow; St. Petersburg: Tsentr gumanitarnykh initsiativ, 2015. 301 pp.
Library collections serving historians of pre-Petrine Russia should have this outstanding handbook available since it is the most complete and convenient guide to the Muscovite central bureaucracy, including articles with descriptions, bibliographies, chronologies, and extensive bibliographical footnotes about all of the functioning chanceries of the period. The offices are listed chronologically, and all are included in the table of contents. A 12-page bibliography is included. The index of personal names associates each official with one or more chanceries with dates of service and incorporates much newly discovered archival biographic data.
Regional΄nye entsiklopedii Rossii (1929–2014): Bibliograficheskii ukazatel΄. Comp. Razdorskii, A.I., Nikolaeva, L.S., and Novikova, L.I.. St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii dom, 2015. 199 pp.
Fulfilling their traditional responsibility for covering Russian regional bibliography, librarians at the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg have produced this useful guide and bibliography of regional encyclopedias, including illustrations and portraits, with 48 pages of color plates covering each encyclopedia. 560 printed and electronic works are included with author and title indexes. One of the useful supplements includes 26 partially examined electronic editions listed but not indexed. Only three (abortive) regional encyclopedias were published in the Soviet Union up until 1939.
Repertuar russkoi dramy, 1734–1920: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel΄. Comp. Akimenko, A.V. et al. Moscow: Artist. Rezhisser. Teatr. Vol. 1 (A-G) 2015. 907 pp.
Compiled de visu from the collections of the National Library of Russia, the Russian State Art Library, and St. Petersburg State Theater Library, this union catalog aims to cover all theatrical works in Russian published in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union from 1734 to 1920. Dramatic works published in collections and periodicals were outside the scope of Ukazatel΄ zaglavii proizvedenii khudozhestvennoi literatury 1801–1975 published in Moscow from 1985 to 1995, thus making the current work essential. First compiled in electronic format, a total of 23,000 citations are in database. Comic opera librettos are among the works included, and the main criterion was that the dramatic work be longer than three pages. The first volume has 6,914 entries arranged by author or anonymous title. This volume includes personal name and title indexes.
Restless Empire: A Historical Atlas of Russia. By Barnes, Ian. With an Introduction by Lieven, Dominic. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015. xvii, 222 pp.
This handsome book with clear color maps, beautiful illustrations, and eminently readable text clearly belongs on any reference shelf concerning Russian history, and should please specialists as well as the laypersons for whom it is designed. The supplementary matter includes a list of Russian rulers, a glossary, a bibliography of English-language works organized by historical period, a well-designed index, and a map list. The author died in November 2014, and the work was completed under the direction of Dominic Lieven.
Rossiia v 1905–1907 gg.: Entsiklopediia. Chief ed. Zhuravlev, V.V.. Moscow, ROSSPEN, 2016. 1,196 pp.
The publisher has a record of issuing unusually heavy reference books, and this excellent encyclopedia, appearing at a hefty seven pounds (3.17 kilograms), is no exception and is not designed for reading in bed. The ambitious aim of this work is to completely reenvision the 1905 Revolution using the most advanced techniques of contemporary social, cultural, and intellectual history. The first article, an essay on the agrarian press with a sizeable bibliography, is followed by a 12-column article on the agrarian question with a bibliography that, like most of the entries in the work, includes several important monographs and journal articles on the topic by contemporary western scholars. The article on the Jewish question is an exception to this. The women's movement and women's political organizations receive extensive coverage, along with many other social and political topics. Individual historical, cultural, and political newspapers and journals are treated at length, and many biographies of writers, philosophers, scientists, and political theorists are included. A surprisingly large part (42 densely packed columns) is devoted entirely to an article on western scholarship about 1905 with detailed analyses of the most important books and articles and an extensive bibliography mainly of American, British, and Israeli scholars. The photographic illustrations have been reduced in size, and the work lacks an index. The ready reference value of this work is limited by the lengthy articles and lack of an index, but because of its comprehensiveness it is an important source recommended to students of the 1905 Revolution.
Rossiiskaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia. Chief ed. Chubar΄ian, A.O.. Moscow: OLMA Media Grupp, 2015, Vols. 1–2 (each 616 pp.); Vol. 3 (616 pp.), 2016.
The first three volumes of this large format encyclopedia of world history cover: 1. Aalto-Aristokratiia—2. Aristomen-Blagoev—3. Blagosvetlov-Velikoe kniazhestvo Finliandskoe. The preface by Vladimir Putin and brief introduction by Editor A.O. Chubar΄ian emphasize that this 18-volume encyclopedia will strive for objectivity, eschewing the flawed ideological approach of standard Soviet-era encyclopedias, including its principal predecessor, the 16-volume Soviet Historical Encyclopedia (Sovetskaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia) published 1961–1976. The latter work was the prototype for the 60-volume Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History which began publication in 1976 and initially consisted largely of translations from that Soviet work. The articles in this new encyclopedia are signed and include brief bibliographies. The illustrations are nearly all in black and white. Students interested primarily in Russian history and historiography will need to consult more focused sources.
Russkaia pechat΄ v Aziatsko-Tikhookeanskom regione: katalog sobraniia Biblioteki imeni Gamil΄tona Gavaiskogo universiteta. Russian Publications in the Asia-Pacific Region: Catalogue of the Hamilton Library Collection, University of Hawaii. Comp. Polansky, Patricia. Moscow: Pashkov dom, 2015. 4 vols.
Patricia Polansky is the longtime bibliographer for Russia in the University of Hawaii Library and the doyenne of Russian Asia-Pacific bibliography. This 4-volume carefully constructed catalog of the outstanding collections she has built and curated is a notable achievement and should be in every library with Russian holdings. The first part treats more than a thousand Russian emigre monographs from China, and the second volume concerns the emigre periodical press, children's literature, and a history of publishing activities by the emigre community in China. The Southwestern Pacific (Japan, Korea, Australia, and the Philippines) is the topic for the third volume, and the final volume covers the US Pacific Coast and South America and includes a personal name index to all four volumes. Striking color plates, mainly book covers from the collection, are a highly attractive feature of this unique catalog.
Vserossiiskoe Uchreditel΄noe sobranie: Entsiklopediia. Chief ed. Protasov, L.G.. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2014. 533 pp.
This encyclopedia of the Constituent Assembly closely resembles but is not as scholarly as some other ROSSPEN reference works on Russian history. The many useful features include excellent illustrations, statistical tables, party histories, candidate lists, election results, and biographies of the important participants, caricatures, and the like. The articles are not signed and bibliographic and archival references are limited. The 10-page bibliography includes three works in English, two of them by Oliver Radkey.
Ukraine
Davnia ukraïns΄ka literatura: Slovnyk-dovidnyk: 650 statei. By Bilous, Bohdan, Bilous, Petro, and Savenko, Oksana. Nota Bene. Kiev: Vydavnychyi tsentr Akademiia, 2015. 207 pp.
This handy volume consists of concise scholarly articles about Ukrainian literature from the eleventh to the eighteenth century, including individual authors, works, bio-bibliographies of modern scholars, and general articles about medieval and baroque literary trends, genres, and cultural topics in a Ukrainian context. A basic bibliography of secondary books is appended.
Taras Grigor΄evich Shevchenko (1814–1861): K 200-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel΄. Comp. Kolmakova, M.V. and Chernyshenko, D.Iu.. St. Petesburg: Biblioteka Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, 2015. 149 pp.
An introduction by the compilers outlines the history of the Shevchenko collections in the Russian Academy of Sciences Library, the special 2014 exhibit, and the division of this bibliography (some 500 entries) into eleven sections. The tenth section lists 31 items reclaimed from the library's secret collection (spetskhran), and the last section has 106 titles from the gift collection of Shevchenko scholar Iu. D. Margolis. The book includes 15 black and white portraits of Shevchenko and an index of personal names of authors and editors.
Ukraïns΄ki personal΄ni bibliohrafichni pokazhchyky (1856–2013). Comp. Iatsenko, O.M. and Liubovets΄, N.I.. Dzherela ukraïns΄koï biohrafistyky, vol. 3. Kiev: Natsional΄na biblioteka imeni V.I. Vernads΄koho, 2015. 470 pp.
This bibliography of the personal bibliographies of notable Ukrainian scholars in all fields of knowledge worldwide is a valuable contribution to Ukrainian studies. The work begins with a 24-page introduction to Ukrainian bio-bibliography followed by 3,604 entries with descriptive annotations. A chronological division shows a total of 358 items published before 1980, of which 29 are from before 1918. A section listing electronic bibliographies between 1991 and 2013 includes diskettes and other obsolescent media in addition to internet links. The work is indexed by profession, series, title (Russian, Ukrainian, non-cyrillic), and personal names of compilers, editors, and others. The first index is by individual scholar treated, and use of this index is hampered somewhat because the index numbers erroneously refer to entries generally one, two, or three positions earlier in the bibliography.
