Online Resources - Soviet Union Research Guide - Ms. Schoeplein - LibGuides at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

What you'll find on this page

This page contains online databases and newspaper resources. Please note that specific research tips for these sources can be found on the topic-specific tabs for each group. If you're interested in acquiring books, there are links to the catalog on the right; however, there are books detailed later on in this guide that will be available on the reserve cart. If you would like to request your own books, it would be wise to do this as one of your first steps as some books might take a few days to arrive (and books are not required for this project).

[Reminder: Library Catalog is for local UIUC resources and I-Share is a state-wide system and is used if UIUC resources don't have what you need.]

Online databases

General overview

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Provides access to a collection of aggregated and integrated reference books from high-quality publishers.
CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
Updated weekly. Explores a single "hot" issue in the news in depth each week. There are also older articles that will be useful for this project. Newer articles also sometimes have a 'background' tab that would provide useful information. Every report is written by an experienced journalist and features comments from experts, lawmakers and citizens on all sides of every issue with numerous charts, graphs and sidebar articles.

E-book access and magazines

MAS Complete This link opens in a new window
Searching for names of people and major events worked well with this database. Many articles were not primary sources given the time coverage, but gave good overviews of historical events. For example, “Prague Spring,” “Khrushchev,” and “space race” all retrieve results. Designed specifically for high school libraries, this database contains full text for more than 500 popular, high school magazines. It also provides more than 360 full text reference books, 85,670 biographies, 105,786 primary source documents, and an Image Collection of over 453,000 photos, maps & flags, color PDFs and expanded full text backfiles (back to 1975) for key magazines.
Alternate Access Link
Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window

This resource will pull relevant chapters from a wide variety of e-books, and it covers a wide variety of subject areas.

Databases that will give you access to articles and historical data

American Bibliography of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies This link opens in a new window
Covers North American scholarship on East-Central Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet Union. All results will be geographically relevant, so you may try searching by keyword, events, etc. It may be useful to search “socialist” NOT “post-socialist,” and same for communist. You can also use the subject tags (or key words) to search by country, since most articles are indexed by both subject and country. All subjects are covered, so you may find it helpful to use the subject tags on the left of the search to browse results. Events like Glasnost and perestroika have their own tags, given the scope of the database.

Alternate Access Link
Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
This is a general historical database that goes as far back as 1450. You will probably want to search a geographic term (Soviet, Soviet Union, Russia, Mongolia, etc.) along with a subject term. For example, “Soviet” AND “daily life” or “communism” AND “Poland.” Standardized names of people will also retrieve results. Many languages are included in this database, so you will want to use the left bar to sort for English language results
Limited to 6 users at a time.

Alternate Access Link
Index Islamicus This link opens in a new window
This database indexes materials having to do with the Islamic world- will cover Muslim parts of the Soviet Union including Muslim Russia, Caucasus, and Central Asia. This is a good resource for finding materials beyond just Russia, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. You may try searching “Soviet,” “USSR,” or names of specific events. You may also try searching by the name of a country; for example, “Azerbaijan,” “Tajikistan,” “Kazakhstan,” “Russia,” etc.
Alternate Access Link

Newspaper Resources

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790. Includes current news, business information, company directories, federal and state laws, regulations, legal cases, and more.
Access World News This link opens in a new window
Access World News from NewsBank provides full-text information and perspectives from over 600 U.S. and over 700 international sources, each with its own distinctive focus offering diverse viewpoints on local, regional and world issues. Date coverage varies with individual newspaper
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Search all 46 ProQuest Historical Newspaper titles owned by the University of Illinois, representing 19 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, as well as titles from Canada, the UK, and India. Coverage spans the 18th century to the 2010s and includes important publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and Chicago Tribune.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers is the definitive newspaper digital archive offering full-text and full-image articles for significant newspapers dating back to the 18th century. Every issue of each title includes the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images in easily downloadable PDF format. The full collection of ProQuest Historical Newspapers contains over 30 million digitized pages.

Finding Books Online

Library Catalog (VuFind)
Searches in our local (University of Illinois) catalog. START HERE to find books!
I-Share Catalog
I-Share includes the resources of 86 Illinois libraries belonging to CARLI. GO HERE if the U of I catalog doesn't yield what you need!

Soviet Union Research Guide - Ms. Schoeplein: Online Resources

What you'll find on this page

Online databases

Newspaper Resources

Finding Books Online