Austin College--Fall 2008

History 343

Russia and the Soviet Union

Hunt Tooley
Sherman Hall 109
htooley@austincollege.edu

Office Hours:
Mon, Wed 10:30-11:30
Tues, Thurs 1:45-2:45

Fridays by appointment or serendipity

Course Goals

This is a course about the sometimes turbulent history of Russia and its imperial lands over the last two or three hundred years. It is a history that is integral in the education of any twenty-first century person who hopes to have a grasp on the recent history of the world, the violent course of the twentieth century, and much else. We will attempt to understand Russian "cultures" on their own, and we will really try to get beyond the kind of superficial knowledge that has passed for public awareness of Russia in the Western world for the last couple of hundred years.

Texts

(Optional Purchase on this book--an online version is available)
Ivan Turgenev. Sketches from a Hunter's Album
# Publisher: Penguin Classics (December 10, 1990)
# ISBN-10: 0140445226
# ISBN-13: 978-0140445220
(the version featured online at Project Gutenberg translates the title as A Sportsman's Sketches.)

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago
# Harper Perennial Modern Classics (August 7, 2007)
# ISBN-10: 0061253715
# ISBN-13: 978-0061253713

Robert Conquest. Harvest of Sorrow
# Oxford University Press, USA (November 12, 1987)
# ISBN-10: 0195051807
# ISBN-13: 978-0195051803

David Remnick. Lenin's Tomb : The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
# Vintage (April 26, 1994)
# ISBN-10: 0679751254
# ISBN-13: 978-0679751250

We will also be reading one book on the web, Walter Moss' Alexander II and His Times (see URL below), and a number of other assignments online.

There will also be three movies shown outside of class. If you cannot make them, they will be available for viewing in the library, but in such cases, you will need to drop by my office for a brief discussion, so that I can be assured you saw the film. The films will be among the testable materials of the course.

Course Components

Midterm Exam	15
Final Exam	20
Projects (2 @ 20%)	40
Class Reading Quizzes	15
Individual Book	10

Final Grade: % 100

The "writing" assignments for Hist 343 will consist of two extensive projects, at least one of which will be a research paper of about 10 pages of text, described below. The second project must take a different form, designed in consultation with me. See below for more details.

For the exams, you will need to bring a bluebook or two (available in the bookstore). I may have you trade bluebooks just before the test. YOU MUST WRITE IN INK, AND ANY ERASURES OF ERASABLE INK WILL DISQUALIFY THE TEST. NEATNESS DOES NOT COUNT: JUST MARK OUT WHAT YOU DON'T WANT READ AND GO ON. Finally, leaving the classroom during the test is permitted only in case of dire emergency.

Attendance, Late Assignments, and Academic Integrity

You need to come to class. After more than four absences, you run the risk of being dropped from the course with a failing grade (see AC Bulletin, p. 60).

This course will follow the policies on academic integrity laid out in the Environment and other official college publications. Please read these guidelines carefully; we will follow them strictly. Academic honesty is absolutely essential. This means: no cheating. If you are ever in doubt as to what constitutes plagiarism, please feel free to come by and discuss the question with me, or any other faculty member for that matter. We will also be talking about this when we get to the paper assignments. On the plagiarism issue, just remember: whenever you use someone's words or ideas, you must tell that you have used them. You must give credit where credit is due.

There will be a penalty for late papers, usually five points per day.

Individual Book

You will choose one outside book to read on your own sometime during this class. You must get the book approved with me for credit, and you will have to take an oral exam over the book to get credit for it. This must be done by last week of classes. It counts 10%. You will get full credit if you pass the oral reading exam. Otherwise, you will have to retake the test. Ultimately, if you run out of time before the semester is over without having passed the reading quiz, you will lose the whole ten percent. Choosing the book is part of the assignment. I will help give direction after you have worked on this, but I will not choose the book for you.

Web Links of Special Importance for Us

AlexanderPalace.org   An outstanding history site by Bob Atchison, who lives in Austin. There are numerous books, exhibits, and links about late Imperial Russia. You will want to look around.
http://www.alexanderpalace.org/

Many of our nineteenth-century readings come from this site.
http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/365Read.html

Full-fledged book by Walter Moss
(http://www.emich.edu/public/history/moss/),   Alexander II and His Times.

From Beyondbooks—these are selected documents and exhibits on Alexander II and his times
http://www.beyondbooks.com/eur12/2e_link.asp
The web-exhibit "Beyond the Pale" is especially important.

University of Exeter's site on links related to Russian History
http://www.ex.ac.uk/russian/rushist.html

Documents in Russian History, Seton Hall University, Russian and East European Studies Program
http://artsci.shu.edu/reesp/documents/Sources--main.htm

Alexander Boguslawski, "Russian Lubok" (Rollins College)
http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/Lubok/lubok.html

Don Mabry's Historical Text Archive has a very nice list of links on Russian history
http://historicaltextarchive.com/links.php?op=viewslink&sid=53

Turgenev Writings (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

The Cold War International History Project. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1409
This site is full of primary and secondary sources on the Cold War, many from the Russian perspective. This is a project of the prestigious Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The National Security Archive http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ is maintained by scholars at George Washington University. There is some excellent primary material here made up of declassified materials from the NSA and other American intelligence agencies--including a lot pertaining to the Cold War and Russia.

Class Schedule

Sept 2—Introduction—Early Russia
Sept 4—Russian Absolutism, Russian Empire. Read
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/2.htm
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/3.htm
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/4.htm
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/5.htm
    Short readings on Napoleon's invasion of Russia and the Battle of Borodino

Sept 9--Russian Culture and Society. Turgenev, Sketches from a Hunter's Album (printed ed.) or online at the Project Gutenberg site given in the previous section of the syllabus. Whichever edition, read the following stories:
    "Khor and Kalinych" (or "Hor and Kalinitch")
    "Yermolai and the Millter's Wife"
    "Tchertop-Hanov and Nedopyuskin" (or "Chertopkhanov and Nedopyushkin")
    "My Neighbor Radilov"
    "Farmer Osyanykov" (or "The Peasant Proprietor Osyanykov")
    "Tatyana Borisovna and Her Nephew"
    "A Living Relic"
Sept 11—The Great Reforms and After. Read
http://countrystudies.us/russia/6.htm
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/7.htm
    Also: 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

Sept 16—For class discussion, read Walter Moss, Alexander II and His Times (all three parts):
    http://people.emich.edu/wmoss/publications/
Sept 18— Outsiders. the website "Beyond the Pale: Jews in the Russian Empire":
     http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/english/28.html

Sept 23—The Revolution of 1905.   Wikipedia entries:
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/6.htm
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_(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/
and
Lenin's "What is to Be Done?" http://artsci.shu.edu/reesp/documents/Lenin--chto%20delat.htm
Sept 25—The Coming of the Great War. 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

Sept 30—Disaster: http://countrystudies.us/russia/8.htm
    From Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potempkin, watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J74IKt8rxkQ
   ALSO: Browse heavily in Professor Bryan Caplan's excellent virtual "Museum of Commmunism"
    http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/musframe.htm
Oct 1—Reading: An internet photo exhibit on AlexanderPalace.org, this one taken from the work of American Donald C. Thompson, called Blood Stained Russia. Be sure to read the commentary as well as studying the photos.
    http://www.alexanderpalace.org/thompson/

Oct 7—Civil War and the New Russia.
   Look carefully at the commentary and images in an online exhibit from the Smith College Museum of Art, "Godless Communists." The introduction is here, with links above to "from the curator" and "background" (this one with five subheadings). Please look at all of this material before or after you view the eight images:
    http://www.smith.edu/artmuseum/exhibitions/godlesscommunists/index.htm
and the eight included online images (with specific comments) are:
    http://www.smith.edu/artmuseum/exhibitions/godlesscommunists/overview.htm
Oct 9--No Class.

Oct 14—Lenin's Death and the Struggle for Power:
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/9.htm
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky (concentrate on the latter part of the article--the post 1924 material)
Oct 16--Midterm Exam

Oct 21—Stalin and Stalinism:
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/10.htm
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/11.htm
Also, asking yourself what kind of information we can glean from such sources, look carefully over these Stalin-era posters, and be sure to read the accompanying text:
    http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/chairman/sovintro.php

Oct 23--VOZHD. In class, discuss Harvest of Sorrow (not all sections: TBA).

Oct 28--The Soviet Union in World 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.vor.ru/55/Exhibition/Pic_eng.html (please read critically here).
Oct 30—The Nature of Stalinist Repression. The Gulag Archipelago, Book I only—to discuss in class.

Nov 4--From Stalin to Khrushchev.
     http://countrystudies.us/russia/12.htm
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/13.htm
    http://www.coldwarfiles.org/files/Documents/KhrushchevSecretSpeech.pdf
Nov 6—Cold War.


Nov 11—For class discussion, read Vasily Mitrokhin's internal KGB report on Soviet operations in Afghanistan between 1978 and 1983. Also, read the Wikipedia entry for
    Brezhnev http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev
Nov 13—No Class.

Nov 18--From Breshnev to Gorbachev. Read the Wikipedia entries on:
    Andropov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Andropov
    Gorbachev http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbachev
    the Soviet War in Afghanistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan
Nov 20—Restlessness and Reform
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/19.htm
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/16.htm
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/18.htm
    http://countrystudies.us/russia/20.htm

Nov 25—The Collapse of the Soviet Empire. Read Lenin's Tomb, to page 276. Also, for class discussion, read the brief piece from the Hoover Institute Archives:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3523571.html

Dec 2—The New Russia. Lenin's Tomb, 277 to the end.
Dec 4—Russia and the New World Order.

Final: Dec. 11, 9:00am.

Research and Writing Assignments

For the following two projects, you must see me by the end of September to work out your own schedule for turn-in dates. Then you must adhere to the schedule that you have proposed. As I will repeat below, you must do these projects in consultation with me.

YOU WILL BE WORKING ON TWO DIFFERENT KINDS OF RESEARCH/INTERPRETATION PROJECTS THIS SEMESTER. ONE will be of a kind that most folks taking an upper-level history course understand easily. This will be a research paper on a topic chosen in consultation with me. It should be at least 8 pages long (or in word length--2,000 words), typed, double-spaced. There should be footnotes or endnotes, not any form of internal citation. You should include a bibliography. The style should accord with the Chicago Manual of Style, and there is more info on this here:

http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocChicago.html

Please be aware that footnote citations and bibliography citations are constructed differently.

Some other requirements: the pages must be numbered, though we don't number the first page of the essay. The title page is not numbered, nor is it counted as one of the nine pages. Passive voice constructions should be kept at minimum in the paper. In quoting, remember to TAG or attribute your quotations in the text: don't just rely on the footnote to give that information to the reader. These and other matters I discuss in class will most definitely impact the grade you receive on the paper.

In your study, you must identify a very specific topic, develop a thesis concerning this topic, and demonstrate the thesis by analyzing evidence. This must be more than a broad essay. It should be a small research paper. The due date for the paper will be assigned individually, depending on the topic.

THE SECOND KIND OF ASSIGNMENT will be much more unusual. You will be called on to do an extensive project, equal in scope to the paper described above, but one of a non-traditional nature. I am extremely interested in some kind of presentation that will use other media than paper-writing, but which will nonetheless involve analysis of primary materials, or at the very least, unusual ways of conveying history in some depth to the public. This could be an internet site. This could be a performance, with commentary. This could relate to music or art. Or it could be some kind of reconstruction of important events based on primary documents. It could be a short movie, or a documentary, if you have a video-camera and iMovie on your computer. It is up to to you to decide the form of your presentation. You may form a team of other class members, but if so, you must delineate clearly to me what parts of the project each student is responsible for. All this must be done in consultation with me.

I would prefer that you do the paper first and the other project second, since we will be reading, viewing, and hearing all kinds of non-traditional sources this semester, but if you can talk me into it, I might be willing allow you to do the other project first. Indeed, I might allow you to do two of the non-traditional projects instead of paper/unusual project. I will not allow you to do two papers, however.

In your study, you must identify a very specific topic, develop a thesis concerning this topic, and demonstrate the thesis by analyzing evidence. This must be more than a broad essay. It should be a small research paper. The due date for the paper will be assigned individually, depending on the topic. The essential element will be analysis. If you give a duet-acting scene from Dostoyevsky, then you must frame it by giving a brief introduction (as in UIL duet acting, except longer and more substantial) and then perhaps lead a discussion on it. That is, the project must help some projected audience understand a piece of history or culture in its own context.

Note on academic journals pertaining to Russian History

Many journals containing scholarly articles on the history of Russia are available to you. Abell Library carries the major European history journals: The Journal of Modern History, The Journal of Contemporary History, Historical Journal, and The American Historical Review. You also have available to you many articles in HTML form, or better yet, pdf files that you can simply download and read, or download and print and read. The best avenues for us are probably JSTOR, Project Muse, and then simply a Wilson Web search, which takes you to all kinds of sources. JSTOR carries, among other journals of interest to us, the back issues of Russian Review, which offer many articles on Russian History, and Slavic Review, the leading history journal devoted to Russian and other Slavic history. Project Muse carries The Journal of Cold War Studies, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, and other useful journals.