HISTORY 201: The Historian's Craft: Russia Engages America, America Engages Russia (Fall 2025) : Romanization of Russian

Library catalogs in the United States and Western Europe typically represent Russian works in Romanized form. Some library catalogs such as UW-Madison's have both the original Cyrillic and Romanized forms, but some cataloging records may not have the Cyrillic, so searching only by the Cyrillic forms may miss some materials. The challenge in searching for Russian materials by their Romanized authors and titles is that there are several Romanization schema. Most academic libraries in the United States use the Library of Congress Romanization scheme (see link below). However many journals have style sheets for their authors that specify a specific Romanization scheme other than the LC scheme. In addition, authors of books are usually free to use whichever scheme they are most comfortable with. Thus the spelling of the author's name or the words in a title may not be in the LC Romanization scheme that the library catalog will use.    

Examples (the form used in our catalog is in bold):

Yeltsin, Boris versus Eltsin, Boris
(Yeltsin, Boris Nikolayevich, 1931-2007)    Ельцин, Борис Николаевич

Dobrynin, Anatoliĭ versus Dobrynin, Anatoly
(Dobrynin, Anatoliĭ Fedorovich, 1919-2010)    Добрынин, Анатолий Федорович

Krupskai︠a︡, Nadezhda versus Krupskaya, Nadezhda
(Krupskaya, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, 1869-1939)   Крупская, Надежда Константиновна

Sverdlov, I︠A︡kov versus Sverdlov, Yakov
(Sverdlov, I︠A︡kov Mikhaĭlovich, 1885-1919)    Свердлов, Яков Михайлович