Spring 2025

History 343 Russia and the Soviet Union

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

Course
Schedule

Office Hours:
MWF, in person noon to 12:30
TH 11-12
MWF, via ZOOM 1:45 to 2:30
https://austincollege.zoom.us/j/87907673145

And by appointment or serendipity

Course Goals

This is a course about the sometimes turbulent history of Russia and its imperial lands since its birth in the Middle Asges. 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.

Course Components

Midterm Exam	15%
Final Exam	25
Topic Proposal	0
Progress Report	10
Research Paper	15
Revised Research Paper	15
Class Reading Quizzes Ave.	15
Map Quizzes (average of 2)	5

Final Grade: % 100

The writing assignments are described below.

For the exams, you will need to bring a greenbook 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 an 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).

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 website:
https://www.plagiarism.org/

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

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://people.emich.edu/wmoss/publications/),   Alexander II and His Times.

Documents in Russian History, Seton Hall University, Russian and East European Studies Program
http://academic.shu.edu/russianhistory/index.php/Main_Page

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 World War I Document Archive has MANY sources on Russian history before, during, and after the conflict: http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/

The Cold War International History Project. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/cold-war-international-history-project?gclid=CjwKCAiAyeTxBRBvEiwAuM8dnTFgavWHCIaiaibOUH__iu44oPc_mLHTTVRX3-5Li-rU1f9zBR4xUhoC4XUQAvD_BwE
     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 Harvard Cold War Online Archive. http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/documents.htm

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.

The American State Department's massive collection of US diplomatic documents has material related to Russia for every year since the 1890s. This collection is available in hard copy in Abell, and online at several spots on the interet. Here is one: https://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/frus/

Marxist.org has a good collection of English-language writings and documents on the Bolshevik Revolution: https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/revolution/

Actually, there is some great primary material on Stalin's Russia and more in a Library of Congress Exhibition which is reflected online: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html

The full text of Documents of Russian History 1914-1917 is online at archive.org: https://archive.org/stream/documentsofrussi027937mbp/documentsofrussi027937mbp_djvu.txt

All Readings are online, except:

Geoffrey Hosking
Russian History: A Very Short Introduction
Oxford University Press, 2012
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199580987
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199580989

Writing Assignments

You will be writing a full-fledged research paper on a topic you choose in consultation with me. You will be developing the paper over the semester in a series of papers: topic proposal, annotated bibliography, research paper, revised research paper. Instructions will follow.

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.