Imperial Russian Newspapers

An Open Access collection sponsored by the Center for Research Libraries

From the first newspapers established by Peter the Great to the fall of the Romanovs, the Imperial Russian Newspapers collection chronicles 189 years of Russian history. From Peter the Great’s founding of the Russian empire, through the empire’s expansion during Catherine the Great, the abolishment of serfdom by Alexander II, the tumultuous years of Nicholas II, and everything in between.

The Imperial Russian Newspapers collection comprises out-of-copyright newspapers spanning the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, up to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The collection’s core titles are from Moscow and St. Petersburg, complemented by regional newspapers across the vast Russian Empire.

The collection also includes two e-book collections (full-text searchable) of pertinent reference books: an in-depth bibliographic record of all known newspapers published in Imperial Russia (over 10 key bibliographies) and a unique collection of dozens of contemporaneous (mostly nineteenth century) reference works offering detailed subject bibliographies of the articles appearing in the specific newspapers of the Imperial Russian Newspapers collection.

The Imperial Russian Newspapers collection was facilitated by the outstanding bibliographic work done by librarians and scholars in major Russian libraries, primarily the National Library of Russia’s Newspaper Division, which is one of the largest newspaper libraries in the world.

The Imperial Russian Newspapers collection is part of East View’s Global Press Archive® (GPA) program and was made possible thanks to the active support of the National Library of Russia. Open Access to this collection is made possible through the generous support of the Center for Research Libraries and its member institutions.

Open Access

Current Titles

The Imperial Russian Newspapers collection includes 33 titles with over 60,000 issues and over 825,000 pages.  Titles include:

  • Birzhevye vedomosti (Биржевые ведомости), Saint Petersburg, 1862
  • Den’ (День), Saint Petersburg, 1912-1918
  • Kommercheskaia gazeta (Коммерческая газета), Saint Petersburg, 1825-1860
  • Moskovskie vedomosti (Московские ведомости), Moscow, 1913-1916
  • Olonet︠s︡kie gubernskie vedomosti (Олонецкие губернские ведомости), Petrozavodsk, 1917
  • Orenburgskie gubernskie vedomosti (Оренбургские губернские ведомости), Samara, 1845-1846
  • Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti (Санкт-Петербургские ведомости), Saint Petersburg, 1793-1867
  • Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti. Kazennye izvestii︠a︡. Chastnye izvestii︠a︡  (Санкт-Петербургские ведомости. Казенные известия. Частные известия), Saint Petersburg, 1831-1848
  • Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti. Obʺi︠a︡vlenii: Kazennye. Podri︠a︡dy (Санкт-Петербургские ведомости. Объявлении: Казенные. Подряды.), Saint Petersburg, 1785-1818
  • Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti. Obʺi︠a︡vlenii o kupchikh (Санкт-Петербургские ведомости. Oбъявлении о купчих.), Saint Petersburg, 1785-1818
  • Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti. Obʺi︠a︡vlenii o nereshennykh delakh (Санкт-Петербургские ведомости. Объявлении о нерешенных делах), Saint Petersburg, 1785-1798
  • Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti. Uchenye izvestii︠a︡  (Санкт-Петербургские ведомости. Ученые известия), Saint Petersburg, 1818-1823
  • Zemledelʹcheskai︠a︡ gazeta (Земледельческая газета), Saint Petersburg, 1834-1916

Download the title list below to view the complete list of titles in the Imperial Russian Newspapers collection.

About the GPA CRL Alliance

East View and the Center for Research Libraries have created the GPA CRL Alliance to steer the development of a series of thematically designed databases for East View’s Global Press Archive program to meet the specific needs and priorities of CRL members. Launched in 2019, the charter phase of the GPA CRL Alliance resulted in the creation of nine collections, encompassing hundreds of newspaper titles and totaling over 4.5 million pages, of which 3 million pages are fully Open Access.

The first of these collections – Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers, Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers, Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers, Imperial Russian Newspapers, Southeast Asian Newspapers, and South Asian Newspapers – are all Open Access collections and are the result of close collaboration between East View and CRL, with CRL advisors selecting and curating the content, and CRL members funding the collections to facilitate global Open Access.

Encouraged by the positive results of Phase 1, a second phase of the GPA CRL Alliance is now underway. The continuation of this highly successful academic-commercial partnership between CRL and East View will serve our shared values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and continue to extend access to global newspaper collections to the widest possible audience. Fundraising for Phase 2 has ended but CRL members are still encouraged to contribute to the program.

Click the link below to learn more about the GPA CRL Alliance, available collections, and plans for the next phase of the Alliance.