The Manuscript Reading Room collects materials related to United States history and culture usually of American provenance, however, their collections contain much Russian-related content due to the long history of Russian-American relations spanning several centuries. There are a number of collections in an array of disciplines that have an obvious Russian connection such as literary collections - Am-Rus Literary Agency records, Joseph Brodsky correspondence, and the Poushkin Society in America records; religion collections - the papers of Leontiĭ, Metropolitan of All America and Canada and the Records of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America, Diocese of Alaska; political and historical collections - the Dmitriĭ Antonovich Volkogonov papers and the Alexander Vassiliev papers. A selective list of the more overtly Russian related collections is provided below.
Also of potential interest to researchers are the large number of collections of American provenance for which Russia is not a main focus, but which nevertheless contain relevant content. These collections include the papers of U.S. diplomats, journalists, politicians, military officers, and governmental figures, and thus offer content viewed from a non-Russian perspective.
The Library has the papers of many U.S. secretaries of state and ambassadors. Pertinent examples are papers of Joseph Edward Davies, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union 1936-1938, and the papers of W. Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union 1943-1946. Materials from prominent individuals in the national security realm include the papers of Paul H. Nitze, a Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department, and William E. Odom, an assistant army attaché, in the United States Embassy in Moscow who smuggled Solzhenitsyn's archive out of the Soviet Union.
The Library of Congress holds the papers of U.S. presidents from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge, including the papers of Woodrow Wilson. Each of these presidential papers collections is indexed and available online and can be mined for information on events, people, and situations related to Russia. Examples of collections from other U.S. government officials include the Albert Sidney Burleson papers. Burleson was an aide to Woodrow Wilson and the Postmaster General. His papers contain correspondence with U.S. diplomats in Russia during the Revolution. The Manuscript Reading Room also has the papers of Ronald L. Ziegler, who was White House press secretary and assistant to President Richard M. Nixon. His papers contain coverage of U.S.-Soviet relations during the Nixon administration.
A number of the journalism collections are related to Russia or the former Soviet Union. For example, the Manuscript Reading Room holds the papers of Henry Shapiro, the chief correspondent of the Moscow Bureau of United Press International from the 1930s to the 1970s, and the papers of Edward L. Deuss, a journalist for the International News Service (INS) in the Soviet Union and Germany from 1927 to 1934. Hedrick Smith, the New York Times journalist and Moscow Bureau Chief who wrote The Russians and The New Russians, donated his personal papers. Other journalism collections with less of a focus on Russia nevertheless can be investigated for specific historical events.
Several of the collections below were gathered as part of the Library’s Foreign Copying Project which copied materials about the United States held in foreign archives. Examples include the records of several Imperial Russian ministries such as the Morskoe ministerstvo and Ministerstvo inostrannykh del.
Below are descriptions prepared by staff of the Manuscript Reading Room of selected collections with content relevant to the study of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Please consult the Manuscript Reading Room to identify additional collections with Russian related content and also to discuss details in advance of a research trip, because some collections have access restrictions and others are stored off-site. The list is organized alphabetically by surname or entity. Titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.
Am-Rus Literary Agency records, 1927-1990 (bulk 1945-1990).Alexis Vasilevich Babine papers, 1895-1953.Boris Brasol papers, 1919-1954.Joseph Brodsky correspondence, 1965-1972.[Records of the Communist Party of the United States of America, 1914-1944] [microform].Maksim Gorky papers, 1922-1936.International Research and Exchanges Board records, 1947-1991 (bulk 1956-1983).George Kennan papers, 1840-1937.Leontiĭ, Metropolitan of All America and Canada, papers, 1855-1962 (bulk 1890-1960).Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov papers, 1918-1974 (bulk 1925-1965).Lydia Nadejena papers, 1907-1974 (bulk 1920-1960).Nazimova collection, 1877-1988.Israel Perlstein collection relating to Imperial Russia, 1613-1914.Poushkin Society in America records, 1931-1955.Russia. Gosudarstvennyĭ Arkhiv Rossīĭskoĭ Imperīi Collection, 1732-1789..Russia. Ministerstvo inostrannykh del records, 1783-1868.Russia. Morskoe ministerstvo records, 1724-1806.Records of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America, Diocese of Alaska, 1844-1974.Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America. Diocese of Alaska records, 1733-1938.Smith/Skolnik Literary Management records, 1901-2019 (bulk 1986-2008).Supreme Soviet Investigation of the 1991 Coup : The Suppressed Transcripts. Part 1, Hearings "Concerning the Role of Repressive Organs in the Putsch of 19-21 August 1991," 1992.G. G. Telʹberg papers, 1915-1940.Alexander Vassiliev papers, 1895-2011 (bulk 1930-1950).Michael Z. Vinokouroff collection of documents, 1851-1930.Dmitriĭ Antonovich Volkogonov papers, 1887-1995 (bulk 1917-1995).Vozdushnye puti records, 1923-1967.Yudin collection of Russian-American Company records, 1783-1946 (bulk 1783-1830).The Manuscript Division seeks to preserve personal papers and organizational records that document the course of America's national experience. Its more than twelve thousand collections and more than seventy million items touch upon every aspect of American history and culture. The Manuscript Division's holdings are strongest, however, in the areas of American national government, the federal judiciary, diplomacy, military history, women's history, and black history.
