Spring 2011 ACLogo

History 343 Russia and the Soviet Union

Hunt Tooley
Sherman Hall 108
htooley@austincollege.edu
903 813 2292

Course Schedule

MWF 10:30-11:30

MW 3:30-4:30

Thurs 4:30-5

(Tues—no office hours)

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.

READINGS--Please find a copy of the following

Geoffrey Hosking
Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

Publisher: Oxford University Press (April 7, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0199580987
ISBN-13: 978-0199580989

Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 1
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reissue edition (August 7, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061253715
ISBN-13: 978-0061253713

Victor Sebestyen, Revolution 1989
Publisher: Vintage (November 2, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307387925
ISBN-13: 978-0307387929

Most of the course readings will be online. See Schedule for details.

Course Components

Midterm Exam	15
Final Exam	25
Research Paper	25
Class Reading Quizzes	10
Topic Proposal	5
Map Quizzes (2@ 5%)	10
Presentational Project	10

Final Grade: % 100

The writing assignments are described below.

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. If pages are torn from the bluebook when I receive it, this will disqualify the test. Absolutely no use of cellphones is permitted during exams. There is a clock in our classroom, so there will be no need to check the time. 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 five 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.

If you are in doubt about what constitutes plagiarism, please see this excellent information published by the University of North Carolina.

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

MAP STUDY/MAP QUIZ MATERIALS

Map Quiz 1: European Russia and Surrounding Lands	Map Study Sheet # 1
Use the older map, just above, in addition to the following larger-scale map. On the quiz, you can put the entities on whichever map you like, using both maps if that is convenient for you. Map Quiz 2: Total Space of Modern Russian Empires 1 Map Quiz 2: Total Space of Modern Russian Empires 2 For quiz 2, please use any of the three maps you find helpful. All three will be available for the quiz.	Map Study Sheet # 2

ADD INSRUCTIONS FOR SPECIAL PROJECT

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.

Research and Writing Assignments

For this class, you will be doing two modest-sized research papers. We will hold two class workshops during the semester to help with these. Please do not miss these classes. The research paper topics will be specific, the papers based on solid research. The parameters are the following.

--Both papers must be 2,300 words in length (based on MSWord word count—about ten pages, for example, of courier type, 12 pt, though you may use a different font). All papers must be typed, double-spaced. The title must be separated from the text by at least two double spaces.

--Citation will be in the form of footnotes. The footnotes must correspond to the form given for "Chicago-Turabian" style, outlined at:

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

Please read through each of the four linked pages at this site. Problems with the form of footnotes will result in points being taken from the grade of the paper. Please note that in addition to the footnotes, a Works Cited, or Bibliography page is required.

--The topic must be an approved topic, and it must be an enclosed, finite topic. These papers will not be "essays," but rather research papers in the historiographical style.

--Grading will be based on precision and clarity of writing, correctness of citations, strength of argument and thesis, and solidity of narrative. This all presupposes that the writing is "correct." In case it is not—in case there are grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, etc.—points will be subtracted from the paper.

--After receiving your paper back, should you wish to revise it and hand it in again, I will factor in "improvement and editing" to give the subsequent draft a grade. This grade will be averaged with the original draft grade as 1/3. Hence, if you make an 80 (B-) on the first paper, edit it, and then turn it back to me and receive a 92 for very good editing and improvement, I will take the average of 92, 80, and 80. The result would be 84 (a solid B).

Finally, there will also be two topic proposals. These involve consultation with me about the topic. They will be two pages in length, and I will explain the format in class.

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.