January 15, 1951, was the first day of the newly reconstituted Slavic Division, and also  when Slavic and East European studies became a prominent field of endeavor for the Library of Congress. During the 1940s the leadership of the Library had planned an internal reorganization to position the Library to undertake large, systematic international acquisitions. The chief of the Slavic Division during this first post war decade of the newly reestablished division  was Sergius Yakobson (1951–1971), who had started at the Library as a special consultant in Slavic affairs and continued working as a librarian and political analyst. In 1951 his expertise and hard work was recognized when he was made the first chief of the new division. His first order of business was to hire other experts to staff his division. The reports from the 1950s show the tremendous growth in the collections and the rise of specialized bibliographic products for Eastern European research during the Cold War. In 1951 the area of responsibility for the Division was the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, and certain non-Slavic areas of Eastern Europe such as Albania, Hungary and Rumania. By the end of the 1950s the area of coverage expanded to include Germany and Austria as well.

Below are images of selected items acquired by the Slavic Division during 1951-1959.