Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Harvard : Library and Archival Resources

Russia's War on Ukraine: selected resources Smetana, Sprzedana narzeczona. Teatr Wielki / juis [Fragment]. Poster for an opera performance at Teatr Wielki in Warsaw. Part of Slavic poster collection : Opera performances at Teatr Wielki in Warsaw.

This guide provides a starting point for research for students, faculty, and visiting researchers in Slavic and Eurasian studies at Harvard University. It includes selective lists of reference resources, both online and in print.

Harvard University holds one of the largest Slavic collections outside the Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe. The main collection of over 850,000 volumes in the areas of the humanities and social sciences is housed in the Widener Library and supported by the Americas, Europe and Oceania Division of Harvard Library. Manuscripts, rare books, and materials in the areas of fine arts, music, anthropology, ethnology, law, and science are found in other libraries of the Harvard College Library (for the list of these locations with details on their Slavic holdings please consult Slavic collections at Harvard section of this guide).

The Harvard Slavic collection has as its mission the documentation of the Slavic and Baltic countries throughout history in order to support the teaching and research at Harvard and to serve as a resource for the scholarly community. To carry out this mission, the European Languages Division collects in great depth materials from Russia, Eastern and Central Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus in all Slavic, Baltic and Western languages, and from various émigré communities from these areas scattered throughout the world. In addition to books, serials and microforms, the Division collects non-book materials, such as videos, CD-ROM's, posters and ephemera, and electronic resources with Slavic content.

For the up to date information on our newest resources and projects please subscribe to Harvard's Slavic Collective newsletter and visit Harvard Library's Slavic Blog.  

For requests for new materials and inquiries about the Slavic collections please contact bibliographic specialists at the Americas, Europe and Oceania Division (AEOD) at Widener Library:

Russian/Belarusian/Former Soviet Union collection: Anna Rakityanskaya (617) 495-4797

Ukrainian collection:  Olha Aleksic (also Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute) (617) 998-5367

Slavic Central and South European collection: Lev Chaban (617) 998-5368

Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies collection: Svetlana Rukhelman (617) 496-8241

For technical issues concerning this guide:

 Anna Rakityanskaya (617) 495-4797

The Harvard Library collections can be accessed via its online catalog HOLLIS. To learn more about HOLLIS, please visit the HOLLIS Quick Tips. For general tips on using Harvard libraries, see How to Get Started Using the Libraries.

To render Cyrillic words using Roman characters, HOLLIS uses the Library of Congress system of transliteration.  (Please note that most other U.S. library catalogs and databases use the same system, while several other systems are in use in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and in other contexts.) 

The ALA-LA Romanization tables page on the Library of Congress website provides transliteration tables for various non-Roman languages, including Slavic and non-Slavic languages that use Cyrillic alphabet:

In addition to this, one can also use the automatic online transliteration tool.