The Russian-speaking community has a long and established presence in UK cultural and political life. The UK-based Russian-speaking diaspora is a visibly distinct community with a rich and diverse history and cultural life, while also being an integral and significant part of the UK’s historical landscape.

 Three Anglo-Russian Newspapers: Nasha Rodina, 1 August 1943. P.P.3554.emz; Russkii v Anglii, 15 January 1936. LOU.LON 696 [1938]; Russkii Put’, 11 March, 1922. LOU.LON 682 [1922]

A web archive focusing on the online presence of this community in the UK will form one of the British Library’s Special Collections, Russia in the UK. This special collection will bring the online presence of Russian culture and community in the UK together in a unified archive.

Collected and curated by the British Library, the collection aims to reflect the virtual life of the UK-based Russian diaspora, from news, sports and music, to literature, art and cultural collaborations. It will include sites relating to the activity of the Russian-speaking communities in Britain, such as community events, groups and campaigns, cultural centres and schools, businesses and blogs. This special collection hopes to provide a platform which represents the diverse experiences of the Russian-speaking community, and the services and frameworks that exist to support and promote this Russian-speaking diaspora. It seeks, most importantly, to collect and preserve the online presence created for and by this community.

Legal Deposit Libraries (LDLs) like the British Library prioritise the selection of websites which reflect the diversity of a community’s life, interests and activities throughout the UK. The objective is to preserve those web resources which are expected to be of interest to future researchers. The website selection process is also influenced by considerations of whether a website is at risk of being lost, and whether selection would result in a more comprehensive collection.

A snapshot of websites related to the Russian Revolution included in the British Library’s web archive. February 21, 2018

The Russia in the UK collection will serve both as an original dataset and as a means of including and engaging a diverse range of audiences. This collection represents a cross section of Russian and English UK-based websites containing a wealth of material which will be of value to researchers now and in the future.

In bringing together these virtual traces of a linguistic community, connected through their common cultural and diasporic identities, this special collection will provide a foundation for community-members and researchers curious about the heritage and influence of the Russian diaspora in the UK.

The Russia in the UK web archive is growing and is now ‘live’ and accessible to the public through the British Library’s reading rooms. We would like to invite members of the public who are interested in contributing to web archive to nominate websites they feel reflect Russia in the UK today.

For more information about this project, please send your questions and suggestions to [email protected].

Hannah Connell, Collaborative Doctoral Student, King’s College London and British Library