Inside the Soviet Union, Russian history prior to 1917 has been subject to censorship and reinterpretation. Were it not for the Helsinki University Library, an official depository of Russian books from 1828 to 1917, much of Russia's ancient and rich past might have been lost to students in the West.

Now graduate researchers in Slavic studies, Russian history, politics, literature, and culture have access to an outstanding collection of 5,000 scarce titles in the humanities and social sciences from Helsinki University Library's 300,000-volume Slavonic collection. Titles for this collection have been chosen by the staff of the Slavic and East European Department of the University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign and cataloged by Larry Miller, University of Illinois-Urbana. Selections are cross-checked against such sources as Cyrillic Union Catalog, The Slavic Union Catalog, and the National Register of Microform Masters to avoid duplicating materials already in North American libraries. The result is a collection of books previously unavailable in the United States and Canada.

Russian History and Culture provides researchers with in-depth material across many critical subject areas including:

These titles are not available from the Library of Congress or any other source in the U.S.