Russian and East European Institute

Welcome to the Russian and East European History Website!

REE History Faculty
Graduate Curriculum and Course Syllabi
East European PhD Qualifying Exam Guidelines and Field Requirements
East European PhD Reading Lists
Funding and Placement
Campus Academic Resources
Library Holdings

Indiana University is a pioneer in teaching and research on the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Russian empire and Soviet Union (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia). The History Department currently has 10 full-time faculty in the field, including 5 who work on Eastern Europe and the Baltic region, and 5 who work on Russia, Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union. In addition, Indiana University boasts over 70 other specialists in related disciplines (Politics, Economics, Anthropology, Public Administration, Foreign Language and other fields) who serve as resources for our History students. The University Library houses one of the top collections in the United States for historical studies. The Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University is another powerful resource for students. This institute, established in 1958 and continually funded since that time by large federal and private grants, provides funding for research, training, and conference travel, hosts visiting scholars and lecturers from throughout the world, mounts workshops in which History students often participate. You will find all you need at Indiana University for advanced historical studies of the peoples of Eastern Europe, Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union.

Funding and Placement

Indiana University graduate students in history enjoy great success in obtaining internal university and external grant support for research and travel. They regularly receive grants for foreign research from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the American Council of Teachers of Russian, Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Competition, Fulbright Research Competition, Kosciuszko Foundation, and others. Students active in East European and Russian history often receive funding for language training and research travel. Our job placement record is strong. Recent graduates in Russian and East European history have won tenure-track positions at Vassar College, California State University at Los Angeles, University of Cincinnati, University of New Mexico, University of Washington (Seattle), University of Nebraska, Boise State University, Hamilton University, and others.

Campus Academic Resources

The fields of Russian and East European history receive strong support from the nationally-funded Indiana University Russian and East European Institute (REEI). REEI and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures provide support for teaching of Russian and most of the languages of Eastern Europe. Every year IU offers training through the advanced level in Russian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian-Croatian, Czech, and Georgian. IU also offers beginning through advanced training in Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish through its Department of Central Eurasian Studies. That department teaches, in addition, Mongolian, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazak, Persian, Turkmen, Pashto, and Azeri. Slovene and Bulgarian are occasionally offered in the summer, as are other regional languages such as Albanian and Chechen.

Students benefit from grants administered through REEI, including especially the U.S. government-funded Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships. REEI also administers Mellon Foundation grants for student research and travel. Academic exchanges for students are organized through a number of programs affiliated with REEI. The Polish Studies Center offers exchange opportunities to Poland, and other exchanges are available for work in Hungary and Romania.

An area studies faculty of over 70 experts at IU gives solid support to interdisciplinary work. History students frequently take courses for their outside minors with these faculty members, who work in such areas as anthropology, economics, folklore, film studies, literature, political science, criminal justice, and public administration. History students can also choose an inside minor in a number of fields, including the History of Gender and Sexuality, and many benefit from the Gender Studies Department. The Jewish Studies program also offers unique opportunities to students of Russian and East European history.

REEI brings prominent U.S. and international scholars to the Bloomington campus. A special chair in Hungarian Studies sponsors teaching each year by a leading scholar from Hungary, usually a historian. The Polish Studies Center brings scholars and intellectuals from Poland. Konstanty Gebert and Irena Grudzinska Gross participated in the recent “Solidarity After 25 Years” conference. Agnieszka Graff, Jan Gross, and Antony Polonsky have made recent visits to campus, as well. The Romanian Studies Program also attracts well-known scholars, most recently Sorin Antohi, Vladimir Tismaneanu, and Katherine Verdery, among many others, to campus. Visits by ambassadors and other officials of the Russian and East European republics are regular occurrences in Bloomington. Visiting scholars and officials spend time with graduate students in formal seminars or conferences and in private consultation.

Library Holdings

Another important aspect of our field’s link with REEI is the library research collection. In addition to our excellent collection of English-language monographs on the history, culture, and politics of Eastern Europe, Indiana also holds an impressive number of such materials in the languages of the area (over 500,000 volumes). Our library collects newspapers from most countries in Russia and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Croatia), and receives some of the important specialized journals from this area. Some of the important acquisitions over the past four years have been a collection of microfilmed State Department documents relating to the internal affairs of Romania, 1945-1959, as well as the popular Romanian newspaper Universul in microfilm format (1918-1929 and 1944-1946). This last item is the first of its kind in a U.S. library. We are working towards acquiring a full run of this newspaper.

Russian and East European Institute | College of Arts and Sciences | Ballantine Hall 565, Bloomington, IN 47405 | Ph: (812) 855-7309 | Fx: (812) 855-6411 | reei@indiana.edu | Copyright 2006 Trustees of Indiana University