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This guide lists mate­ri­als that relate to the Russ­ian Empire, for­mer Sovi­et Union, and the many dis­tinct nation­al­i­ties that were once a part of those enti­ties. The mate­ri­als described in the guide are extreme­ly diverse in char­ac­ter. They cov­er the broad­est pos­si­ble range of sub­jects: polit­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal, social, eco­nom­ic, diplo­mat­ic, artis­tic, lit­er­ary, reli­gious, mil­i­tary, musi­cal, and oth­er mat­ters.

The guide cov­ers pub­lic and pri­vate insti­tu­tions, includ­ing uni­ver­si­ty libraries and archives, pub­lic libraries, muse­ums, eth­nic orga­ni­za­tions, church and busi­ness archives, fed­er­al and state gov­ern­men­tal archives, and both pub­lic and pri­vate his­tor­i­cal soci­eties. Some col­lec­tions owned by pri­vate indi­vid­u­als that were includ­ed in the print edi­tion are no longer list­ed sep­a­rate­ly but may be searched if their mate­ri­als have trans­ferred to oth­er hands.

Among the types of mate­ri­als list­ed in the guide are the fol­low­ing: cor­re­spon­dence, reports, orga­ni­za­tion­al records, account books, essays, lit­er­ary man­u­scripts, diaries, jour­nals, mem­oirs, auto­bi­ogra­phies, pho­tographs, films, tape record­ings, and graph­ic mate­r­i­al. With the excep­tion of cer­tain mimeo­graphed mate­ri­als and rare clip­pings, near­ly all print­ed mat­ter has been exclud­ed. Those seek­ing pub­lished books, peri­od­i­cals, the­ses, and the like should refer to appro­pri­ate cat­a­logs of library col­lec­tions. How­ev­er, unpub­lished fac­sim­i­les, pho­to repro­duc­tions, and micro­films of orig­i­nals (even of orig­i­nals sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished) have been tak­en to be archival mate­ri­als in this guide.

An attempt has been made to cov­er all nation­al­i­ties and regions with­in the for­mer Sovi­et Union. For the most part, the empha­sis through­out has been on the home­lands of these peo­ple, rather than on their emi­gra­tion and life in the Unit­ed States or else­where. How­ev­er, some doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to emi­gre life have been includ­ed.

The care­ful user of this guide may turn up instances in which cov­er­age of a giv­en col­lec­tion or repos­i­to­ry is less than com­plete or in which items are impre­cise­ly described. Giv­en the large num­ber of col­lec­tions involved, this is inevitable, the more so since only the most impor­tant col­lec­tions and repos­i­to­ries in or near Boston, Chica­go, New York, Philadel­phia, San Fran­cis­co, and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. were vis­it­ed by the two authors for the orig­i­nal edi­tion. For the many col­lec­tions not exam­ined in per­son, they relied upon pub­lished find­ing aids, descrip­tions sup­plied by cura­tors and librar­i­ans in writ­ing or by tele­phone, pho­to repro­duc­tions of card cat­a­log entries, and the like. Many entries on col­lec­tions or indi­vid­ual items are thus based close­ly on infor­ma­tion pub­lished else­where or sup­plied by oth­ers.

Der Guide wird von der Bib­lio­thek der Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois gehostet.