Feb 7—Introduction and Overview. Plus, The Kievan Rus

Feb 9—From Kievan Rus to the first four Ivans

Watch John Green's Crash Course on the Kievan Rus and the Mongols

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etmRI2_9Q_A

Wikipedia on the Grand Duchy of Moscow--Intro only
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Moscow 

Wikipedia on Ivan III  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_III

and on Ivan IV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible

Feb 14—The Time of Troubles and the Establishment of Russian Absolutism
Read  this interesting page on the Time of Troubles  http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/351-10.htm

and this introduction to the Romanov law code, the Ulozhenie

https://library.law.yale.edu/news/monuments-imperial-russian-law-1649-sobornoe-ulozhenie
and Englishman Samuel Collins's report on Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich:

http://academic.shu.edu/russianhistory/index.php/Samuel_Collins%2C_On_the_Present_State_of_Russia

Feb 16—Peter the Great

Read the Wikipedia entry on "Peter the Great" (down to "Issue"--about eleven normal pages)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_GreatAnd also these two items:
--Documents on Peter the Great  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/petergreat.asp
--And the liberal late nineteenth-century statesman and historian Pavel Miliukov on the reforms of Peter the Great:
http://academic.shu.edu/russianhistory/index.php/Pavel_Miliukov_on_the_Reforms_of_Peter_the_Great

Feb 21—The Russian Empire in the Late Eighteenth Century

Read this very brief summary bio from HistoryNet:
https://www.historynet.com/catherine-the-great/
and read documents on Catherine the Great:  http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/18catherine.asp
     and also this short bio of Alexander I:
https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/biographies/alexander-i/

Feb 23--Cultural Continuities

   Read through the various pages of Alexander Boguslawski's wonderful collection of "popular prints," or Lubok, online at:
http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/Lubok/lubok.html
I mean it when I say this:  look at all the pages and all the captions.  There will be a double value reading quiz, and we will discuss this in class.
Also read the Wikipedia entry on the most famous Russian icon (literally), the "Virgin of Vladimir":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_of_Vladimir only down to and not including "Post-revolution"

also read the Wikipedia entry for Ivan Turgenev

Mar 1--Alexander II, the Era of Reform, and After 
Map Quiz no. 1 at the beginning of class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
On Lenin, only the first sections down to and not including "University and political radicalisation"
And on Panslavism, Rok Stergar's short entry in the excellent inernet resource, The International Encyclopedia of the First World War:
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/panslavism
And on Alexander III--read the intro only to the Wikipedia article on the Borki Train Disaster. But enlarge the photo and take a close look.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borki_train_disaster

Also, look thoroughly at the website "Beyond the Pale:  Jews in the Russian Empire":

Mar 21--The Coming of World War I:  Outbreak and Eastern Front 
Look at this short powerpoint (with sound) on the Russian Origins of World War I
and read the IEFWW entry on Russian War Aims (only down to "Provisional Government":
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_aims_and_war_aims_discussions_russian_empire    

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

http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Willy-Nicky_Telegrams
For class viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGoCwNHE4ys

Mar 23—Midterm Exam

Mar 28--Russia and World War I

IEFWW entry on Russia and the War Fronts

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/warfare_1914-1918_russian_empire
and this longer IEFWW entry on the Eastern Front by Timothy Dowling:
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/eastern_front

Mar 30--The Bolsheviks, 1903-1921

Read the Christopher Read entry on the two Russian Revolutions at IEFWW:

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/revolutions_russian_empire

    And look at Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potempkin--watch at least twenty or so minutes: 
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

Apr 4—Civil War, Comintern, Trotsky, and More 
Read the Wikpedia entry (Intro only) on the "Russian Civil War"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War

See the Wikipedia entry on Trotsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky
Also, to be taken with a grain of salt, see this short History Channel video about the end of Nicholas and Alexandra and their family. It contains some great footage, even though the narration is in some cases questionable. But who cares?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYRMHKC9xMA

Apr 6—Stalin Triumpans: The Great Purges, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Holomodor.
Read for class discussion and a double-value reading quiz, Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow.

and PLEASE POWER SKIM THROUGH 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:  Mortocracies and Megamurderers.

Second Paper due on Friday, April 7, at 5:00pm via Turnitin

Apr 11—The Great Patriotic War: I 
Map Quiz No. 2 at the beginning of class. Discussion will start here and to some extent continue to the end of the semester.
Wikipedia on Solzhenitsyn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
AND read the first chapter of Solzhenitsyn's great work, The Gulag Archipelago:
https://archive.org/details/gulagarchipelago03solz

Apr 13—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).

Also, 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

Apr 18—Soviet Occupation and the Construction of Postwar Empire 
Reading TBA

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

Apr 25—Krushchev and Kennedy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_summit
the Berlin Wall
Bay of Pigs and Missile Crisis
National Security Archive:  http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/
  please follow up on the related documents

http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Cuban-Missile-Crisis.aspx

(including the audio part, and the whole Thirteen Days exhibit)

Apr 27—From 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   

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

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

And on Star Wars (SDI) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

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

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

May 9—Russia, NATO, and Twenty-First Century Conflict