Soviet Union

Russian Archives Online

With the final collapse of the Soviet Union on December 1st, 1991, and with the new openness promised by Mikhail Gorbachev well under way, the release to historians of files, photographs and film strips held in the Soviet state archives seemed a very real possibility.

Stalin and the Photographer

Helen Rappaport tells the story of James Abbe, a little-known American photographer, whose images of the USSR in the 1930s record both the official and unofficial faces of the Stalinist regime.

A Long View of the Cold War

Paul Dukes takes a fresh look at the Cold War in the light of some recurring themes of Russian and American history since the 18th century.