Russian Collections

For more information: Contact Patricia Polansky, Librarian, Russian Bibliographer, The Russian Collection,
University of Hawaii at Manoa Hamilton Library, 2550 McCarthy Mall, Honolulu, HI 96822
Phone: (808) 956-6308, Fax: (808) 956-5968, E-mail: polansky@hawaii.edu

INTRODUCTION

Cover: Russkaia pechat' v Kitae, IAponii i Koree: katalog sobraniia Biblioteki imeni Gamil'tona Gavaiskogo universiteta. Patricia Polansky. Moskva: Pashkov Dom, 2002. 201 p.: illus.

The Russian Collections of the University of Hawaii are housed in Hamilton Library on the Manoa campus. Reflecting the university's curricular and research priorities, Asia and the Pacific regions figure prominently in the 60,000 volume collection of Russian area books, serials, and microform holdings. These resources are used not only by UH students and faculty, but also by a constituency of international researchers. Patricia Polansky is the Russian Bibliographer.

A useful source for the closest Slavic/Russian collections is the PacSlav Library Consortium. Visit the home pages of the members for more extensive help with major bibliographies, electronic resources, and updated lists of new Russian acquisitions.

ABSEES

The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (ABSEES) database covers North American scholarship on East-Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and includes citations for journal articles, books, book chapters, book reviews, dissertations, government publications, and more. The coverage is from 1990 to the present.

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ACCESS

Hamilton Library maintains for the most part open stacks. Non-UH users seeking borrowing privileges are requested to consult the Circulation Dept. for more details. Many materials are available through Interlibrary Loan. Please consult other sections of the library's home pages that describe general guidelines for using the collections... hours, cost of xeroxing, and other matters.

Russian materials are cataloged according to the Library of Congress classification scheme and are found throughout the library. Materials in the Hawaiian and Pacific, Book Arts, and Rare Book Collections are closed, but can be paged.

BACKGROUND

Collection development has focused on Siberia, Soviet/Russian Far East, and Russia's relationship with the countries and peoples of Asia and the Pacific. Systematic acquisitions began in 1937 when Dr. Klaus Mehnert accepted a position on the university faculty. Mehnert had studied Russia in Asia and the Pacific at the University of Berlin under a pioneer in the field, Professor Otto Hoetzsch, and had developed this interest in post-doctoral study at the University of California at Berkeley, where Robert J. Kerner was offering a Northeast Asia seminar. At the University of Hawaii, Mehnert's initiatives were continued in the Department of History by John A. White, and then by White's student John J. Stephan; and in the Russian language and literature program by Ella Lury Wiswell; and in the Library by Patricia Polansky.

Robert B. Valliant, John A. White, Patricia Polansky, John J. Stephan, and Ella Lury Wiswell

In addition to history and Russian language/literature courses, UH has offered geography, philosophy, and religion, generating acquisitions of Russian materials on a wide variety of topics. There are also Russian holdings in oceanography, volcanology, and tropical agriculture. The collection reflects the interests of faculty who were here in the past: Roland Fuchs in Geography, Ella Lury Wiswell and Larry Heien in Russian literature and language, Rex Wade and Donald Raleigh in History. Thanks to the latter two professors we have a strong collection on the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

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SPECIAL RUSSIAN COLLECTIONS

NORTHEAST ASIAN COLLECTION

In December of 2002 an area within Asia's Special Collections Room was designated the Northeast Asia Collection (Room 405). It contains the following materials:

RUSSKAIA PECHAT' V KITAE [RUSSIAN PUBLICATIONS IN CHINA]

Cover of journal: Na puti k rodnie
(Tian'tszin) 1939, no. 1

In the early 1970s P. Polansky began to acquire items that now form a special collection of Russian materials printed in China, a period of publishing from 1900 to 1949, that now holds over 1,000 items. The materials have been used by scholars around the world, including Japan, Russia, Finland, Australia, Israel. A catalog of this collection was published by the Russian State Library in Moscow in 2002: Russkaia pechat' v Kitae [Russian publications in China, Japan, Korea…catalog] (Moskva: Pashkov Dom, 2002. 201 p.)

The collection includes books and partial runs of journals. The primary imprints are from China (Harbin, Shanghai, Tientsin, Peking, Dairen) with a growing number from Japan. Materials printed in the Soviet Union/Russia Federation, China, and Australia also are collected if they cover any topic about the Russian period in Manchuria. A review of the rarer items by Amir Khisamutdinov may be found in "Russkaia pechat' v Kitae. Opisanie redkikh izdanii v russkoi kollektsii Gamil'tonskoi biblioteki Gavaiskogo un-ta," Rossiiane v Azii, 1994, no. 1, p. 254-282 with introduction on the history of the collection by P. Polansky, p. 251-253.

The Russian materials printed in China are in a caged area. Arrangements for access are made through the Russian Bibliographer.

OTHER RUSSIAN EMIGRATION MATERIALS

Berezov, Rodion. Narodnye zhemchuzhiny.
San Frantsisko: Izd-vo Delo, 1951. 96 p.

Okuntsov, Ivan K. Russkaia emigratsiia v Severnoi
i IUzhnoi Amerike. Buenos Aires: Izd-vo Seiatel', 1967. 423 p.

RESEARCH MATERIALS / ARCHIVES

Approximately 350 titles in English, Russian and Japanese from John J. Stephan, UH Emeritus Professor of History, on the history of Siberia, the Soviet/Russian Far East, Sakhalin, the Kuriles and Russia in Asia are now located in the Northeast Asia Collection.

A few archival collections are available: Peter Petrovich Balakshin (1898-1990), Anatolii Konstantinovich Terent'ev (1898-1987), and a 4 v. typed manuscript of the White Russian movement in Siberia and China. Terent'ev was among those Russian refugees who sojourned at Tubabao in the Philippines following the end of the Russian Civil War in 1922.

P. Balakshin

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The XXth CENTURY

Dr. Klaus Mehnert introduced Russian history courses at the University of Hawaii where he taught from 1937 to 1941. In June of 1941, he accepted a position in Shanghai as editor-in-chief of a new publication to be called The XXth Century. It was published monthly beginning in October 1941 until its final issue in June 1945. The complete Index to the journal The XXth Century is now available. Linking of PDF images of the articles is underway.

RUSSIANS IN HAWAII

The extensive acquisitions of Russian language materials supports our comprehensive Hawaiian and Pacific Collections. One may check P. Polansky's Russian writings on the South Pacific area: a preliminary ed. (Honolulu 1974) to get an idea of the holdings.

A most interesting item was uncoverd in a box of materials from Auguste Jean Baptiste Marques (1841-1929), who was the last Vice Consul of the Russian Empire in Honolulu from 1911 until his death. The unique item is the Russian Passport Application Album.

The repatriation of Russians living aboard began right after the February Revolution in Petrograd. The album contains the passport applications for 165 people who wished to return to their native country. The questionnaire asked each person to submit a photograph, and provide information about themselves.

RUSSIAN PASSPORT APPLICATION ALBUM

RUSSIAN-KOREAN MATERIALS

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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS PHAMPHLET COLLECTION

The Social Movements Collection consists of pamphlets, brochures, and periodicals about the labor movement in the United States as well as global radical political movements, including anarchism, communism, and fascism. The bulk of this collection was acquired by the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library in 1966 from Eugene Bechtold, a bookseller and former instructor at the Chicago Worker's School. Mr. Bechtold began collecting this material in the 1920s. The collection also includes items from the collection of John Reinecke. There are approximately 10,000 items in the collection. Approximately 3,000 items have been cataloged so far.

The Center for the Soviet Union in the Asia-Pacific Region (SUPAR) was one of the area centers established in 1986 in the School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies (SHAPS). Robert Valliant was hired to compile and edit the SUPAR Report, which changed names after the collapse in 1991 to the RA Report under the Center for Russia in Asia (CeRA). The database for these reports can be found at http://www.shaps.hawaii.edu/dbadv.html. CeRA was closed in 2003.

Skryplev Island, located in the center of the "Bosphorous of the East"

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Copyright 2001. University of Hawai'i at Manoa. All rights reserved.