Russian and East European Studies

Special Collections’ manuscript and print holdings are extensive and significant. The materials range in date from the early nineteenth century to the present. The bulk of the collection comprises Russian manuscripts and rare books pertaining to political and cultural life of the Soviet Union and the Russian Diaspora in Europe and the United States. The Polish collection primarily consists of avant-guard and artists’ books published in the 20th century.

Especially notable are the Herbert P.J. Marshall and the Huntly Carter papers, acquired by the Hesburgh Libraries in the early 1990s. They formed the cornerstone of the Russian and East European Studies collections at Notre Dame. These collections comprise correspondence, diaries, photographs, printed ephemera, posters, prints, and books relating to the history of early Soviet theater, cinema, literature, and culture.

The Polievktov-Nikoladze family papers is another substantial collection which derives from three generations of a prominent and historically significant Russian-Georgian family. The materials include personal and professional correspondence, diaries, photographs, and other manuscript formats, including the transcripts of interviews with key participants in the February Revolution conducted during May-December 1917 by a historical commission organized by A.E. Presniakov and M.A. Polievktov.

Papers and manuscripts focusing on human rights and the unofficial non-conformist culture of Soviet Russia (also known as Russia’s second culture) constitute a particular strength within the Russian and East European Studies holdings. The materials include letters from the Gulag, literary and political works of Samizdat, manuscripts, official documents, diaries, correspondence, and photographs. A number of personal collections by important Russian political and cultural figures are represented among the Department's holdings. These include the papers of the Human Rights activist and the first executor of the Solzhenitsyn Fund Alexander Ginzburg (1936-2002), the writer Eugenia Ginzburg (1904-1977) and the poets Inna Lisnianskaia (1928-2014) and Semion Lipkin (1911-2003), the concept artist and writer Vagrich Bakhchanyan (1938-2009), the Human Rights activist and literary scholar Elizabeth Markshtein (1929-2013).

Archival Collections

• MSE/REE 0001: The Polievktov-Nikoladze Family Papers
• MSE/REE 0002: The Fatima A. Salkazanova Collection
• MSE/REE 0003: The Michael S. Bernstam Papers
• MSE/REE 0004: The Arina S. and Aleksandr I. Ginzburg Papers
• MSE/REE 0005: The Nicolai E. Dronnikov Collection
• MSE/REE 0006: The Vagrich and Irene Bakhchanyan Collections — these materials include three collections: the Eduard Limonov Papers, the Stalin Drawings, and the Mail Art Collection.
• MSE/REE 0007: The Lev F. Konson Letters
• MSE/REE 0008: The Ruvim (Riurik) M. Nemirovskii Collection
• MSE/REE 0009: The Maya A. Ulanovskaia Papers
• MSE/REE 0010: The Iulia I. Vishnevskaia Collection
• MSE/REE 0011: The Iurii B. Mekler Papers
• MSE/REE 0012: The Iiuliia Markovna Zhivova and Ivan Dmitrievich Rozhansky Papers
• MSE/REE 0013: The Gomberg-Verzhbinskaia and Rabinowich Papers
• MSE/REE 0014: The Natalia A. and Irina V. Roskina Papers [Наталья Роскина и Ирина Роскина]
• MSE/REE 0015: The George Ben Papers
• MSE/REE 0016: The Vladimir Lifshits, Asya Genkina, and Lev Loseff Papers
• MSE/REE 0017: The Elisabeth (Lisa) Markstein Papers
• MSE/REE 0018: The Irena S. Verblovskaia-Revolt I. Pimenov Correspondence
• MSE/REE 0019: The Olga Bushman-Pekelny Papers
• MSE/REE 0020: The Dora Shturman Papers
• MSE/REE 0021: The Evgeniia Ginzburg and Antonina Axenova Papers
• MSE/REE 0022: Russian Icons Collection, donated by Dr. Christopher Nagy
• MSE/REE 0023: The Sergei Linkov Collection
• MSE/REE 0024: The Shnitman Family Papers
• MSE/REE 0025: The Alek Rapoport Papers
• MSE/REE 0026: The Valerii Ia. Kirpotin Papers
• MSE/REE 0027: The Efim M. Slavinsky Collection
• MSE/REE 0028: The Samuel C. Ramer Papers
• MSE/REE 0029: The Pelagia Rościszewska Diary
• MSE/REE 0030: Album amicorum 1895 of Maria Zakharovna Sluchevskaia
• MSE/REE 0032: The Boris I. Tsukerman Papers
• MSE/REE 0033: The Inna L. Lisnianskaia, Semion I. Lipkin, Elena G. and Sergei F. Makarov Family Papers
• MSE/REE 0034: The Mikhail (Moshe) Naumovich Kalik Papers
• MSE/REE 0035: Collection of sketches by Katya Kompaneyets for the 1976 production of "Hamlet" directed by Andrey Tarkovsky
• MSE/REE 0036: Gennady Barabtarlo: Correspondence with the Nabokov Family and with Alexander Asarkan
• MSE/REE 0038: Papers of Iurii Karabchievskii
• MSE/REE 0039: Papers of Pavel Avalov
• MSE/REE 0040: Collection of posters, broadsides, and handbills documenting Soviet invasion of Chechoslovakia in August 1968
• MSE/REE 0041: Polish Solidarność collection, 1981-1988
• MSE/REE 0042 Hugo Bahrs World War II Scrapbooks
• MSE/REE 0043 Polish Resistance During WWII Ephemera Collection
• MSE/REE 0045 Nicolas Miletitch Collection
• MSE/REE 0046 Photograph albums of the Warsaw Ghetto and Warsaw

• MSE/MN 5000: The Huntly Carter Papers
• MSE/MN 5001: The Herbert P. J. Marshall Papers
• MSE/MN 5018: George F. Kennan-John Lukacs Correspondence

Related Online Resources

• Book of Remembrance: Biographies of Catholic Clergy and Laity Repressed in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1918-1953

• Digital exhibit: From St. Petersburg to Notre Dame: The Miraculous Journey of the Polievktov-Nikoladze Family Papers Through a Century of War and Revolution

• February - March 2014 Spotlight Exhibit: Samizdat and Uncensored Literature in the post-Stalin Soviet Union

• May 2014 Spotlight Exhibit: Natalia A. and Irina V. Roskina Papers

• November - December 2014 Spotlight Exhibit: Vladimir Mayakovsky and the Russian Avant-Garde: Books from the Herbert P. J. Marshall Collection

• January 18 - March 15, 2015 at the Snite Museum of Art: Natalia Goncharova’s Mystical Images of War, 1914

• November 2015 Spotlight Exhibit: The Evgeniia Ginzburg and Antonina Axenova Collection

• Fall 2018 Exhibit: In the Solzhenitsyn Circle: the Writer and His Invisible Allies

• Digital Collection: Stalin Test - Conceptual art collection of drawings conceived and assembled by Vagrich Bakhchanyan