History
The history collection covers all periods of Russian and Soviet
history, including all the republics of the former Soviet Union,
with a range of political and social viewpoints. The majority
of titles are available in the loan library. They are of interest
to general readers, as well as researchers.
The key phases of Russian and Soviet history are covered - from
Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and the Decembrists, to the
Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Civil War, Stalinism,
the Great Patriotic War (World War II), the Thaw, the Cold War,
perestroika and the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The collection holds over 1,000 volumes on the Great Patriotic
War. These include contemporary accounts by British writers (such
as Alexander Werth) and Soviet wartime memoirs from partisans,
military leaders (Marshals Zhukov, Chuikov and Rokossovsky) and
war writers (such as Konstantin Simonov). There is also full coverage
of the Siege of Leningrad, the Battle of Stalingrad, the fall
of Berlin and other key events.
The social history of the Soviet period includes sections on
culture, ethnicity, women and feminism, housing and welfare, trade,
economics and peaceful co-existence.
Titles are predominantly in English from both Soviet and Western
publishers. For researchers, the collection is supplemented by
materials in the photo library and reference library. The art
collection includes some rare titles on art of the Great Patriotic
War (sculpture, drawings and posters), while there is a large
selection of war photographs in the photo
library. The reference library also holds bound volumes of
Soviet War News and Soviet War News Weekly,
published in London by Sovinformburo during the war. Detailed
material on Soviet social projects is also available in the architecture
collection.
Two special archives enhance the collection: the Andrew Rothstein
Bequest and the Bill Pomeroy Bequest.
Andrew Rothstein Bequest
The Andrew Rothstein Bequest was received in 1997. The archive
covers Anglo-Soviet relations from 1917 to the 1970s and includes
pamphlets, books and personal notes belonging to one of the major
historians of the early Soviet Union. Andrew Rothstein was born
of Russian émigré parents in London. He was a journalist,
translator and historian who acted as an economic go-between for
Bolshevik Russia and Great Britain before the British Government's
recognition of the Soviet Union in 1924.
Bill Pomeroy Bequest
The Bill Pomeroy Bequest covers Soviet journalism and Soviet
society. Bill Pomeroy was a US-born journalist and author of several
books on his life in the Philippines. He had served in the Philippines
while in the US forces and later returned to study at the University
of the Philippines, before eventually settling in London with
his wife Celia. He was awarded a doctorate in history by the USSR
Academy of Sciences for his book American Neo-Colonialism:
Its Emergence in the Philippines and Asia, published in 1970.
His extensive travels in the Soviet Union were the source for
two books on life in the USSR.
Selected Titles
General History
History of Russia (SF Platonov, Macmillan & Co Ltd,
London, 1925)
Istoriya SSSR: Epokha sotsialisma 1917-1957 gg (Gosudarstvennoye
Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoy Literatury, Moscow, 1957)
History of the Revolution (Leon Trotsky, Sphere Books
Ltd, London, 1967, 3 volumes)
Revolyutsiya 1905-1907 gg (Izdatel'stvo Politicheskoy
Literatury, Moscow, 1975)
History of Russia (Nicholas Riasanovsky, Oxford University
Press, NY & Oxford, 1993)
Stalin v zhizni i legendakh (V Sukhodeev, EKSMO, Moscow,
2003)
World War II
Moscow under Fire: A Wartime Diary 1941 (Erskine Caldwell,
Hutchinson & Co, New York, London, Melbourne 1941)
Our Soviet Ally (M Cole et al, G Routledge & Son,
London, 1943)
Russia at War 1941-1945 (Alexander Werth, Barrie and
Rockliff, London, 1964)
Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya (Marshal GK Zhukov, Izdatel'stvo
Agentstva Pechati Novosti, Moscow, 1974, 3 volumes)
A Book of the Blockade (A Adamovich and D Granin, Raduga,
Moscow, 1982)
Stalin's Wars (Geoffrey Roberts, Yale University Press,
New Haven & London, 2006)
The Retreat: Hitler's First Defeat (Michael Jones, John
Murray, London, 2009)
Social History
Women in the Soviet East (Fannina W Halle, Martin Secker
and Warburg Ltd, London, 1938)
The Russian Peasant and Other Studies (John Maynard,
Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, 1942)
A Russian Journal (John Steinbeck and Robert Capa, William
Heinemann Ltd, London, Melbourne and Toronto, 1949)
Socialism and Culture (Progress, USSR, 1972)
Women's Work and Wages in the Soviet Union (Alastair
McAuley, George Allen and Unwin, London, Boston, Sydney, 1981)
The Red Carnation: The Story of Intrepid Russian Women Revolutionaries
(Vera Morozova, Progress, USSR, 1981)
Moscow Women (Carla Hansson and Karin Liden, Allison
and Busby, London, 1984)
The Best of Ogonyok (Vitaly Korotich and Cathy Porter,
Heinemann, London, 1990)
Politics
The politics collection includes Russian and Western views of
Russian diplomacy and foreign relations, particularly during the
Soviet period. It also covers the history of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Marxism-Leninism and political biography.
The CPSU section includes documents of meetings, congresses and
policy decisions, covering the period up to the 27th Congress
and perestroika. Titles are mainly in Russian and are of interest
to researchers.
The Marxism-Leninism section includes the collected works of
Lenin and Stalin in Russian and English, pamphlets, biographies
and memoirs of key Russian Marxists.
There are also biographies, memoirs and collected works of leading
Soviet political figures, including Lenin, Stalin, Molotov, Khrushchev,
Gromyko, Andropov, Brezhnev, Chernenko, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and
Putin.
Dennis Ogden Bequest
The Dennis Ogden Bequest includes Soviet political material from
the 1960s-90s. Dennis Ogden was a journalist, lecturer on Soviet
history and trade relations, and former head of the Russian Department
in the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Westminster.
He worked in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s as a translator
and correspondent on the Daily Worker.
Education
The education collection includes writings on Soviet education
in English, as well as theoretical texts by leading Soviet pedagogues
(Makarenko, Ushinsky and Krupskaya). There is also a representative
range of Soviet educational textbooks from the 1920s-70s.
The Cicely Osmond Collection in
the photo library also provides a rich visual resource on Soviet
education in the 1920s-70s.
Law
Jack Gaster Bequest
The Jack Gaster Bequest holds pamphlets and journals from the
1930s-90s. It also contains documents and bulletins of a number
of organisations, including the SCR Legal Section, International
Jurists, the World Peace Council and the British-Soviet Friendship
Society. Jack Gaster was a leading international lawyer who also
acted for the British trade unions and labour movement. He was
a former president of the SCRSS and its legal adviser for many
years.
Science
The science collection covers all aspects of Soviet science.
Titles are in English and Russian.
The loan library includes titles on general science, ecology
and the environment, mathematics, physics, optics, chemistry,
medicine and health (the majority bequeathed by Brian Kirman),
and a comprehensive section on the Soviet space programme. The
reference library holds books by Michurin and other eminent scientists,
as well as a section on military science.
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