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Open research questions in Soviet and Russian History

112 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 7,296 Soviet and Russian History papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • In historical scholarship, the mechanisms of adapting the system of pre-conscription rifle training in rear regions of the USSR with extreme climatic conditions during the initial period of the Great Patriotic War remain insufficiently studied.

    Rifle Training in the Yakut ASSR during the Great Patriotic War · 2026 · DOI

  • Despite numerous studies of the GULAG system, women’s experience, especially its ethnocultural dimension, remains insufficiently represented in scientific discourse.

    The Experience of Ukrainian Women in the GULAG Camps: Ethnocultural Dimension and Everyday Survival Practices · 2026 · DOI

  • 104 Yet the reason for this decision remains unclear as by 1979, Venclova’s text was circulating internationally through various unofficial channels.

    Holocaust Trauma and Jewish Voice in Soviet Jewish Samizdat Periodicals · 2026 · DOI

  • The relevance of the study is that the folk medicine of the Russian population residing in the Southern Urals (Ufa province) is one of the most poorly studied but most important layers of ethnic culture, in which continuity of ethnic traditions and the dynamics of worldview and religious identity are clearly manifested.

    Lõuna-Uurali venelaste ravipraktika: vaevuse ülekandmine inimeselt teistele objektidele · 2025 · DOI

  • The main goal of the study is to shed light on an underexplored chapter in the history of the Crimean Tatars’ return, which took place after the signing of the Decree of 5 IX 1967, issued by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

    In the Shadow of Simferopol’s Parks: Crimean Tatars’ Return to Their Homeland in the Late 1960s · 2024 · DOI

  • Though their work is little known except to scholars in Slavic Studies, in the years following the Russian Revolution of 1917 Soviet Orientologists laid the foundations for the critique of Western Orientalism that would be introduced to the West many years later in 1978 by Edward W.

    The Soviet Invention of Postcolonial Studies · 2023 · DOI

  • By 1989, at least one in five Soviet citizens lived outside of “their” titular territories or did not have one, yet their lived experiences—especially poignant when the USSR dissolved—are not well understood.

    As the Forest is Chopped, the Chips Fly: The Fall of Soviet Internationalism and Late Perestroika's “Refugee” Problem, 1988–1990 · 2023 · DOI

  • Based on letters and other writings that remain vastly under-researched in Russia and practically unknown to English-speaking audiences, I analyse Prince Orlov’s correspondence as illustrative of a broader ideological turn to liberal imperialism and contextualise it from Russian and European perspectives.

    Redefining the Russian Empire: The turn to liberal imperialism through the letters of Prince Nikolay A. Orlov at the height of the Great Reforms · 2022 · DOI

  • In this aspect, the issue is limited to the period between the Caucasian front, which was opened with the start of the world war in 1914, and the period up to the neutrality and friendship treaty concluded in 1925.

    Caucasia in Karagöz Cartoons · 2022 · DOI

  • Abstract This article is devoted to an important period, as yet insufficiently studied by anthropologists and sociologists, in the history of Kalmykia – the deportation of the Kalmyks to Siberia (1943–1956) and its cultural implications.

    Visible and Invisible Ethnicity: Native Language and Religiosity Among the Kalmyks during the Years of Deportation, 1943–1956 · 2022 · DOI

  • Since the very topic of the relationship between the Steppe and the City within the framework of Russian historical science is relatively poorly studied, and also taking into account the latest achievements of domestic and world scientists, it is necessary to pay special attention to the little-known aspects of the relationship between nomadic and sedentary cultures.

    Cities and Sedentary Villages of Western Kazakhstan in the Middle Ages (on the Example of the Vital Activity of the Golden Horde Settlement Of Aktobe) · 2021 · DOI

  • This article is devoted to one of the most understudied research topics, the peculiarities of the migration of the Uighur ethnic group from China to Kazakhstan in the 1950s, related to the repatriation policy of the USSR.

    The repatriation policy of the USSR and the peculiarities of Uighurs’ migration from the PRC in the 1950s · 2021 · DOI

  • In light of scarce literature available on the success and failures of Western internationalist communes in the early Soviet period, this paper draws from intensive field work in Kyrgyzstan and understudied sources in Czech, Kyrgyz, Slovak and Russian to offer a novel, bottom-up narrative on the socialist city in Central Asia.

    ‘Building the Internationalist City from Below’: The Role of the Czechoslovak Industrial Cooperative “Interhelpo” in Forging Urbanity in early-Soviet Bishkek · 2020 · DOI

  • Focusing on the 70,000-km2 -wide Argun River basin that once united western Manchuria with Transbaikalia in Siberia, Sören Urbansky’s borderland history compellingly shows that the territory, cut in two by the international border since the early eighteenth century, needs to be studied as an entangled unit of analysis.

    Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border by Urbansky S�ren (review) · 2020 · DOI

  • 110 countries in the world consume more than 500 types of products, manufactured in Kazakhstan, though even at the beginning of the XXI century, Kazakhstan was not well known in the globe.

    KAZAKHSTAN EDUCATION SYSTEM BREAKTHROUGH, HAVING OVERCOME THE TRAGIC EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF KAZAKH PEOPLE · 2019 · DOI

  • This insufficient interest is quite striking, considering that dünyǝvilik (secularism), literally meaning “this-worldliness,” is enshrined in the 1995 Constitution.

    Secularism and National Identity in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan · 2019 · DOI

  • BACKGROUND: While the health crisis in the former USSR has been well-documented in the case of Russia and other northern former Soviet republics, little is known about countries located in the southern tier of the region, i.

    Adult mortality patterns in the former Soviet Union’s southern tier: Armenia and Georgia in comparative perspective · 2017 · DOI

  • For these two books not only give a sense of the liveliness of the field, but also indicate all manner of ways in which the subject might be taken forward, not least in relation to the under-studied REVIEWS 769 nineteenth century.

    Sankt-Peterburg â Velikobritaniia. XVIIIâXXI vv. by E. N. et al. (eds) Kal'shchikov Kobak, A. V. and Kuvaldina, O. L. (eds) Rossiia-Velikobritaniia. Plat' vekov kul'turnykh sviazei. Materialy VI Mezhdunarodnogo petrovskogo kongressa, Sankt-Peterburg 6â8 iiunia 2014 goda (review) · 2017 · DOI

  • Chronologically, it is limited to the period between 1915 and 1917, before the German administration adopted a clear Lithuanian-oriented strategy for Ober Ost.

    Forgotten occupation: Germans and Belarusians in the lands of Ober Ost (1915–17) · 2016 · DOI

  • Despite the significant shifts that took place in the process of research into the history of the Kaliningrad Oblast during the Soviet period, carried out by historians from Russia and other countries, the adaptation by the postwar settlers to the socio-cultural landscape remains a poorly researched theme.

    From ‘Ancient Slavialand’ to ‘Paradise Lost’: Rehabilitation of Cultural Heritage in Kaliningrad (late 1940s to early 1980s) · 2015 · DOI

  • The consequences of such administrative regulation of addiction in Soviet Badakhshan were dire: in the years between 1941 and 1968, only few patients with the diagnosis of narkomania were hospitalized in the Tajik Republican Psychiatric Hospital, while the exact numbers of repressed drug users who perished in prisons and Gulag camps are destined to remain unknown.

    The opium war at the ‘roof of the world’: the ‘elimination’ of addiction in Soviet Badakhshan · 2013 · DOI

  • Among those most frequently encountered are “rapprochement” (сближение), “merging” (слияние), “Russification” (обрусение, русификация): terms that lack proper, unambiguous definition, and have produced no consensus among either contemporaries or modern researchers.

    TERMINOLOGY PERTAINING TO ETHNIC RELATIONS AS USED IN LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA; pp. 24–50 · 2010 · DOI

  • Thus in his major work on Stalinist agriculture published in 1949, Naum Jasny frankly admitted that data were insufficient to reach a conclusion, merely noting that “stocks from former years probably declined during 1932.

    Stalin, Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933 · 1995 · DOI

  • In the wave of social activism that has washed over the Soviet Union in recent years, the strike by some 400,000 coal miners in the summer of 1989 may be the most poorly understood of events.

    Perestroika from Below: The Soviet Miners' Strike and Its Aftermath · 1990 · DOI

  • Then, too, Pokrovsky's characterization of Plekhanov's interpretation as non- Marxist says more of his own limited knowledge of Marxism than of Plekhanov's outlook, for Plekhanov unquestionably derived the concepts 'oriental society' and 'oriental despotism' from the fathers of Marxism.

    Plekhanov, Trotsky, and the development of Soviet historiography · 1974 · DOI

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112 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 7,296 Soviet and Russian History papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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