Slavianovedenie v SSSR,
1917-ca. 1986

 

A Biobibliographical Dictionary of Slavicists in the USSR

Specializing in Southern and Western

Slavic Studies

 

Vladimir A. Diakov, Editor-in-Chief

Introduction by E. Kasinec & R.H. Davis, Jr.

 

                Slavianovedenie v SSSR (Slavic Studies in the USSR), contains biographical and bibliographi­cal information, in dictionary form, about practically all Soviet scholars in the field of Southern and Western Slavic Studies for most of the Soviet period.  Detailed data are provided on nearly 2,000 historians, philologists, economists, etc., active from 1917 to approximately 1986.  Their areas of interest are primarily Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, etc.

 

            Now in press, this work was assembled by more than 70 researchers, primarily including the staff of the Department of Historiography of the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Slavic & Balkan Studies.  It is a direct continuation of the biobibliographical volume, Slavianovedenie v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Slavic Studies in Pre-Revolutionary Russia), Moskva: Nauka, 1979.  (The present volume was first announced by Nauka in 1990, but the rights were recently acquired by Norman Ross Publishing.  The Nauka edition has been cancelled.)

 

            The work includes biobibliographical data on scholars from the academies of sciences, libraries, institutes, museums and universities in all of the republics of the former Soviet Union.  The data were gathered in various archives, including that of the security apparatus, producing a work that offers much first-time biographical information on scholars that had been suppressed during the Stalinist period (i.e., the 1930s through the 1950s).  Most of the entries are the result of correspon­dence between the compilers and the Slavicists themselves or with their families.  This is the only such work in the field and will be an invaluable tool to all researchers in Slavic Studies throughout the world.  The work is in Russian.

 

            The dictionary is opened by a preface which characterizes the contents of the work and its methodology.  Following the preface is a lengthy article (40 pages) by Vladimir A. Diakov, which represents the best short history of Slavic Studies in the former Soviet Union produced thus far.  Also included is a list of abbreviations used throughout the volume.

 

            The editor-in-chief, V.A. Diakov, is a leading specialist in the field of 19th-century Russian and Polish history and Slavic historiography.  Among his many contributions to the field of Slavic Studies are the aforementioned biobibliographical dictionary for the pre-1917 period and his fundamental work on independence movement participants in the Kingdom of Poland, 1832-55, prepared with colleagues in Poland in 1990.  Deputy editor-in-chief, Andrei Goriainov, is considered to be one of the most distinguished Slavic bibliographers in Russia. 

 

            An introduction (in English) places the work in its historical context and discusses the genre of Russian biobibliographical dictionaries.  The introduction is by Edward Kasinec, Chief of the Slavic & Baltic Division of the New York Public Library, and Robert H. Davis, Jr., also of the New York Public Library.  Kasinec and Davis are also general editors of the Norman Ross Publishing series of Slavic bibliographies, dictionaries and reference works.

 

Slavianovedenie v SSSR, 1917-ca. 1986

vii + 528 pages, library binding, September 1992, ISBN: 0-88354-356-7…………….$25