Hey guys, I'm in a high level Soviet Union history course, and we were just assigned our research paper that will serve as our "final exam grade". It's pretty standard, a research paper "which should advance an original argument based on the analysis of primary sources."
My Question here is this: what would be a topic that would be most likely to yield a large number of primary sources on this paper.
Despite taking this class, I am not a history major, and I'm not quite sure which topic would have alot of material on it already, I just don't want to run into a situation where I pick a subject and then have to switch it up like halfway through BC there isn't enough content,
thanks.
I just want to give a plug for asking for a meeting with your professor/instructor to either (a) talk about ideas you have for your project or (b) ask for some guidance on it. Also, check to see if your school has a subject librarian for Russian/Slavic/East European studies. They might not be a specialist on Soviet history, but they will nonetheless be a very valuable resource for figuring out how to get your hands on relevant primary sources through your university library.
Lucky for you, there is a very large number of primary sources available online. Most of them have to do with the Great Patriotic War. I hope you can read Russian!
My favourite is probably Pamyat Naroda, which has an extensive record of maps, combat records, etc. Podvig Naroda is a similar resource, but this one contains award orders, searchable by name or date.
German Documents in Russia is another excellent website, available in German and Russian, which digitizes captured German documents. Some German documents are translated into Russian. I don't know if all originals of those documents are available on the website, but it's a massive amount of information.
Documents of the Soviet Epoch covers much more than just the war, with a lot of pre-war documents (not necessarily military) and some post-war documents. There's a caveat: the scans on this website are only available for free if you are in Russia or Belarus. If you're not, then you have to arrange access through Yale University Press (which your university might have a subscription to).
There's also the Electronic Archive of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany which contains documents of the SVAG, including post-war examination of German military installations, confiscation of equipment, etc. A word of warning: this website is terrible. It's slow, difficult to use, and you have to tinker with the URL to get it to show any document past the first page (IIRC you add something like ?page=2).
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs archive had a lot of information about politics and diplomacy between the Allies. I haven't used this one too much, since it doesn't offer much to my area of study, but you might find it useful.
Finally, I Remember has a large number of interviews with veterans, including Western Allied and Axis.
If you want to do something on the Spanish Civil War, you might find the Interbrigades of the Spanish Civil War archive useful. Due to the multicultural nature of the Interbrigades, these documents come in many languages.
Finally, many Russian historians put scans from archives online, either on LiveJournal, VK, or BitTorrent. Unfortunately it is a bit difficult to find
Now, if you speak neither Russian nor German, there isn't much you can do. I Remember has an English section, my blog is chiefly concerned with armoured warfare, and then I can't think of anything else. As you imagine, it would be rather difficult to study a country without knowing the language that is spoken in it. The CIA Reading Room has some data, I guess, but judging by their armoured warfare material, the intel can't be too accurate.