PatentScope now includes records for Russian and Soviet patent documents from 1919 to 2010, about 1.4 million patent documents. Full-text is not include, but abstracts are available from 1960 forward.
I'm the librarian for research services in the Engineering and Science Library at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. I've been working with patent information since 1991, including seven years at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. I believe that the dissemination of patent information is a public good and should be promoted, especially in the education of science and engineering students.