Hist 343  Russia and the Soviet Union (spring 2011)
Class Schedule
The readings listed for a given class day are meant to indicate that you should read those before you attend that class. 

31 Jan—Introduction and Overview.

2 Feb—Survey of Russian History.

4 Feb—Origins:  Varangians, Mongols, and Others.  By Friday, read Thompson, ch 1, 2, 3. 

 

7 Feb—The Rise of Moscow and the Russian State.  Thompson, ch 4.

9 Feb—The Political Milieu of Peter the Great.  Thompson, ch 5.

11 Feb—Cultural Continuities.  Thompson, ch 6. 

 

14 Feb—Writing Workshop I:  Beginning the Research Paper.

16 Feb—The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century.  Thompson ch 7.

18 Feb—The Era of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars:  Lithuania, Poland, and Other Conquests.  Topic Proposal due for paper no. 1, via by email by 5:00 pm.

 

21 Feb—From Alexander to Nicholas I.  Thompson ch 8.   Also, please go carefully through the website by Alexander Boguslawski, "Russian Lubok"  (Rollins College)

http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/Lubok/lubok.html

23 Feb—Russian Society in the Wake of Catherine and Alexander.  Read the Wikipedia entry for Ivan Turgenev

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Turgenev

AND read three short stories by Turgenev, all from the collection translated as Sketches from a Hunter's Album, or A Sportsman's Sketches:

    "Khor and Kalinych"  (or "Hor and Kalinitch")  (in I)

    "Yermolai and the Millter's Wife" (in I)

    "Tchertop-Hanov and Nedopyuskin" (or "Chertopkhanov and Nedopyushkin") (in II)

 (Get Sketches here, as A Sportsman's Sketches, I. and II.)

A Sportsman's Sketches I    http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8597

A Sportsman's Sketches II   http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8744

25 Feb—Russia vs the Empires:  Turkey and Britain.  Before class, look thoroughly at the  website "Beyond the Pale:  Jews in the Russian Empire":

     http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/english/28.html

 

28 Feb—Map Quiz no. 1.   Alexander II and the Era of Reform.   Thompson ch 9. 

2 Mar—More on the Great Reforms.

4 Mar—Russia and the Approach to World War I.  Thompson ch 10.  

 

7 Mar—Nationalism, Empire, and Industrialization.  For this class, be ready for the quiz over all of Moss. (Part One only)

9 Mar—No Class.

11 Mar—No Class.  Paper No. 1 due via email, by Friday, March 11, at 2:00PM.

 

Spring Break

 

21 Mar—The Revolution of 1905.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin

Also, carefully look at the photos and read all the text of "The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated":

    http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

23 Mar—Midterm Exam.

25 Mar—World War I:  Outbreak and Eastern Front.   Read Thompson, ch 11.

Also read:

http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Russian_Orange_Book      
http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Russian_Memorandum_of_Advice_to_Serbia

http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Willy-Nicky_Telegrams

 

28 Mar—The Bolsheviks, 1903-1921. Readings:

    From Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potempkin, watch at least the first thirty minutes of:  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1630669376406423668&q=The+Battleship+Potemkin&total=104&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

   ALSO:  Browse heavily in Professor Bryan Caplan's excellent virtual "Museum of Commmunism"

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/musframe.htm

30 Mar—Writing Workshop II.    For this day, please look at the internet photo exhibit on AlexanderPalace.org, this one taken from the work of American eyewitness, Donald C. Thompson.  The book from which the photos and commentary is taken is called Blood Stained Russia.  Be sure to read the commentary as well as studying the photos.  There will be a quiz on this book.

    http://www.alexanderpalace.org/thompson/

1 Apr—Stalin and the Great Experiment.     Look carefully at the commentary and images in an electronic exhibit from the Smith College Museum of Art, "Godless Communists." I will be giving out a CD which you can keep. The introduction is here, with links above to "from the curator" and "background" (this one with five subheadings).  Please peruse all of this material

 

4 Apr—International Contexts:  Comintern, Party, Fascism, Depression, and More.   See the Wikipedia articles on Trotsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky (concentrate on the latter part of the article--the post 1924 material)

and on Willi Münzenberg: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willi_Münzenberg

6 Apr—Stalin Triumpans.  The Great Purges, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Holomodor. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

and an annotated bibliography by the great University of Hawaii Political Scientist, R. J. Rummel:

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CHARNY.CHAP.HTM, Democide in Totalitarian States:  Mortacracies and Megamurderers.

8 Apr—International Contexts:  Poland, the Baltic Republics, and the Coming of World War II.  Look carefully over these Stalin-era posters, and be sure to read the accompanying text:

    http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/chairman/sovintro.php

As you do so, ask yourself what kind of information we can glean from such sources.

Topic Proposal due for paper no. 2, via by email by 5:00 pm.

 

11 Apr—The Great Patriotic War I.  Map Quiz No. 2 will also be on this day, the 13th.
 

13 Apr—The Great Patriotic War:  II.  Read Tooley paper on ethnic cleansing in and around Poland:  "The Human Costs of the Matchstick Solution."  Also, look through the paintings and read the commentary of a Russian website, "Soviet Paintings of World War II"
http://www.allworldwars.com/Soviet%20War%20Paintings.html (please read critically here).

Map Quiz No. 2 will also be on this day, the 13th.

15 Apr—The Great Patriotic War:  III.  Read Wikipedia on Solzhenitsyn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
and

Alfred de Zayas, "The Wehrmacht Bureau on War Crimes," The Historical Journal
, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Jun., 1992), pp. 383-399 
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2639674

 

18 Apr—Occupation and the Creation of the Soviet Bloc.  See the Wikipedia articles on:

the VENONA Project  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project

Agnes Smedley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Smedley

Kim Philby  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby

Alger Hiss  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss

Klaus Fuchs  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg

20 Apr—Khrushchev to Brezhnev.  For class discussion, read about Vasily Mitrokhin's internal KGB report on Soviet operations in Afghanistan between 1978 and 1983:

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.item&news_id=6629
Also, read the Wikipedia entry for   

    Brezhnev  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev

22 Apr—No Class.

 

25 Apr—No Class. 

27 Apr—The Unthinkable:   Thompson, ch. 13 and 14 and the  Wikipedia entries on:

    Andropov  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Andropov

    the Soviet War in Afghanistan  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan

29 Apr—The Fall of the Soviet Empire.  Also, for class discussion, read

Gorbachev  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbachev
and the brief piece from the Hoover Institute Archives:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3523571.html

Paper No. 2 due via email by 5:00pm.

 

 

2 May—Post-Soviet Russia:  1991-2000.  Thompson ch 15.

4 May—Putin and a (Sort Of) New Russia.  Thompson ch 16.

6 May—In the New Age of Terror and Heroism.

 

9 May—Review Day.  No Class.