USSR 1917- 1941

Search terms

USSR – Soviet, Russia, Bolshevik

Stalin – Stalinism, Communism

Change – impact, effect, purges

Social change – family,  life, work, people, schools, children, peasants

Culture – women, religion, church, art music, education, propaganda

Years: 1922 – 1953

Specific policies – collectivization, kulaks, NKVP, totalitarianism

What information tools?

Search terms: Stalin and society

e.g. Thurston, R. W. (1991). The Soviet family during the great terror, 1935-1941. Soviet Studies, 43(3), 553.

Search terms: Stalin Collectivization

e.g Landis, E. (1998). Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. The English Historical Review, 113(452), 787

e.g Great purge

Primary sources

• Access to Russian Archives

  English archive of digital Russian archive guidebooks (available in Russian).

• Documents in Russian History

  A collection of documents in English translation from pre-Petrine to 1931.

• The Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System Online

  A searchable archive of over 700 interviews of Soviet refuges from 1917 to the mid-1940s. In English. Life on the kulaks interviews

• Internet Modern History Sourcebook

  An online archive of Imperial and Soviet documents translated into English.

• Marxists Internet Archive

  A searchable archive containing selected works by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.

• Revelations from the Russian Archives

  Collection containing historical background and primary sources. English translations.

• Seventeen Moments in Soviet History

  Searchable archive of texts, images, maps, audio, and video materials 1917-1991. English translation.