The Library owns a few full text Russian newspaper archives. Magazine articles relevant for Russian area studies can be discovered in various databases. Newspaper and magazine articles referenced in databases or print publications can be requested through interlibrary loan if they are not locally available.
Included below are instructions on how to discover additional Russian newspapers and magazines in the Library's collection and beyond.
Visit the Library's Newspapers & Magazines guide to learn more about research with serial publications. The Library's News guide lists a wide range of current news sources.
Selected Newspaper Archives
Presents weekly selections of Russian-language press materials, translated into English. Originally published under the title The Current Digest of the Soviet Press (1949-1991), followed by The Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press (1992-2010), and now The Current Digest of the Russian Press.
Izvestiia Digital Archive, 1917- (East View) Access Instructions
Offers digital access to the archive of one of the longest running Russian newspapers. The archive covers the Soviet era in its entirety as well as the collapse of the Union and the Russian Federation. Yearly updates are added in the spring of the following year.
Nexis Uni Limitations on Use
Provides full text access to national and international newspaper and magazine articles and news transcripts. Coverage varies.
Access World News (NewsBank) Tutorial
Provides full text access to national and international newspaper articles and radio and television news transcripts. Many newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, offer full-image “page view” format. Includes user-friendly subject browse feature, as well as full text searchability. Coverage varies.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports, 1941-1996 (Readex)
Features full text translations of foreign radio and television broadcasts as well as foreign newspapers, periodical articles, and government statements selected by the C.I.A. for distribution to U.S. policymakers and security analysts.
Partially funded with a gift from Allen Cellar, '69 CLAS.
Moscow News Digital Archive (East View)
Features the longest running English-language newspaper in Russia, published from 1930 to 2014. Once the mouthpiece of the Communist party, it later advocated for social and political change. The digital archive includes all available issues of the paper including those of its short-lived sister publication, the Moscow Daily News (1932-1938).
Online Newspaper Archives Index (Wikipedia)
Identifies and links to selected online newspaper archives worldwide.
Imperial Russian Newspapers (East View)
Presents the archives of selected Russian newspapers spanning the years 1782 to 1917. Most of the digitized papers are from Moscow and St. Petersburg but some regional titles are also included. The search interface features a transliteration table and a Russian keyboard to facilitate discovery. A bibliography of all newspapers published in Imperial Russia will eventually be added. Open access to this collection is made possible through the generous support of the Center for Research Libraries, its member institutions, and the National Library of Russia.
Selected Magazine Archives
Identifies and links to selected online magazine archives worldwide.
Discover Newspapers and Magazines through Library of Congress subjects
WorldCat is ideally suited for the discovery of serial publications. It employs the same Library of Congress subjects used in Falvey’s Books & Media catalog but includes nearly all English language newspapers and magazines ever published as well as many foreign language news sources.
Library of Congress subjects facilitate the discovery of news publications. Looking up an already known newspaper or magazine is a good way to start. For example, a title search for Pravda will retrieve multiple records for this newspaper. Click on the first match to open the full record. The record will have multiple Library of Congress subjects.
Click on the "Moscow (Russia) -- Newspapers" subject and on the Serials tab on the results page. This will generate a list of over 700 newspapers that are either currently published in Moscow or have been published there in the past. The vast majority are in Russian but a few are English language newspapers.
The WorldCat search interface offers a selection of helpful features including language and format restrictions. Matching records are ranked by the number of libraries worldwide that have full or partial runs of the publication in their collection. Pravda is held by more than 100 libraries worldwide making it the highest ranked Russian daily in WorldCat ahead of Moscow News. While WorldCat lays claim to a worldwide network of libraries, English-speaking countries dominate the catalog and Russian library holdings are not comprehensively listed.
WorldCat records will include links to online editions of newspapers if they are freely available. While libraries generally do not loan print issues of newspapers to other libraries, they often share microfilm reels. Limit search results to microform and check to see whether the microfilm is held by a US library, then submit an interlibrary loan request.
The same approach can be used to discover magazines. The Library of Congress subject for magazines is "Periodicals." A search for "Soviet Union" and "Periodicals" in WorldCat retrieves over 15,000 matching records. Many of the periodicals will be academic journals. The subject "Periodicals" is used for academic journals as well as for popular magazines. Narrowing the search by adding additional subject terms will make the list more manageable. A search for "Women -- Soviet Union -- Periodicals" retrieves less than 100 matching records, among them Rabotnitsa, a Soviet women's magazine published since 1914.