"The European Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (EBSEES) was created in 1974 by merging the two bibliographies that were then in print : the British Soviet East European and Slavonic Studies in Britain and the French Travaux et publications parus en francais sur la Russie et l’URSS published in the Cahiers du Monde russe et sovietique. The English title of the bibliography was originally the European Bibliography of Soviet, East European and Slavonic Studies; it was changed with the 1990 volume to reflect the new political situation. The French and British founders of EBSEES were gradually joined by new European partners: Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and most recently Switzerland. EBSEES was originally a tool for research on the USSR and the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, [...] we hope to provide researchers with the documentation needed to follow developments in a fast-changing geopolitical area which consisted of 9 states in 1989 and now, after the break-up of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, comprises 27 independent countries."