email: hessler@uoregon.edu
Office hours: Mondays, 12:00-1:15, McKenzie 351
Fridays, 12:30-1:50, PLC 271
Telephone: 346-4857 (McKenzie office), 302-9032 (home)
GTF: Kathryn Dooley
email: kdooley1@uoregon.edu
Office hours: by appointment
HISTORY 347: THE SOVIET UNION AND CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA
MWF 11:00 - 11:50, Lawrence 115
Description : This is an introductory lecture survey course on the history of Russia and the Soviet Union since 1917. It is open to all interested undergraduates, without prerequisite. Grades will be based on a midterm (25%), a final exam (35%), and four assignments (40 % total; 20% for the paper in Assignment #3 and 20% for the rest of the assignments). Active, thoughtful participation in class may raise your grade by a couple of percentage points (e.g. from 82 to 84). Failure to take one of the exams or to turn in a paper, plagiarism on the paper, or a failing grade on the final exam will mean an automatic F in the course.
Required readings available at the bookstore:
Geoffrey Hosking, The First Socialist Society
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants
Natalya Baranskaya, A Week Like any Other
Steven L. Solnick, Stealing the State
Additional assigned readings will be posted on Blackboard under Course Readings.
Assignments: All but Assignment #1 will be done on the course Blackboard site. Each member of the class will be randomly assigned a “section” at the beginning of the second week of the term. Most of these assignments give you a window of time to complete your postings. For Blackboard assignments, you will be graded on a simplified scale of check (satisfactory), check plus (outstanding), check minus (unsatisfactory), or zero (failure to do the assignment). If an assignment includes an initial posting and a subsequent response, you will be graded separately on each part. Papers in Assignment 3 (worth 20% of your final grade in the course) will receive letter grades. At the end of the quarter, the checks will be converted to a numeric scale for another 20% of your final grade.
Assignment #1 (prepare for class on Wednesday, April 9). This assignment, as well as Assignment #3, involves using the Soviet history website Seventeen Moments in Soviet History (www.soviethistory.org). You will have to register for that site the first time you use it. The idea of Seventeen Moments is to provide information, documentary materials, and visual or audiovisual aids for topics connected to seventeen distinct years between 1917 and 1991. To see how it works, look up 1924 (click on the year, then scroll down the list of topics in the box that appears at the top of the page). Your section will be assigned one of the topics. Read (and view or listen to) everything that the site has on that topic, and take notes. What did you learn? What kinds of source materials are there? How did the topic help you to understand what was going on in the Soviet Union in 1924? Did anything surprise you about it? Come prepared to talk about what you learned from the site in class with the other members of your section (this will be your chance to meet the other students in your section in person). In this assignment, since nothing will be written down, you will be graded on participation on the same scale as Blackboard postings.
Assignment #2 (Initial posting due between April 21 and class period on April 25; deadline for completing all postings is class period on April 28). Nikolai Bukharin, one of the most prominent Bolsheviks of the 1920s, fell victim to Stalin's purge in 1937. The Bukharin document posted on Blackboard is his prison letter to Stalin as he was facing a public show trial and probable execution. Your assignment is to take a stance on the following interpretive issues, and to provide your reasons, preferably including some evidence from the text: 1) What was his primary intention in writing the letter? 2) Was he able to reconcile the purge with his lifelong commitment to communism, and if so, how? 3) What does the letter suggest about his relationship to Stalin? 4) How would you characterize Bukharin's psychological state? 5) More speculatively, do you think that Bukharin's reflections in the letter were likely to be typical of communists who were purged? In terms of the mechanics of this assignment, you should begin by posting your response to two of the questions (your choice, though try to ensure that all the questions receive at least one initial response), with a substantial paragraph explaining your response (due by class period on April 25). After these initial postings are in, weigh in on the three questions that you didn't initially choose, trying to highlight any differences of interpretation you may have with the students who responded first.
Assignment #3 (First and second postings due between May 9 and May 14; paper due in class May 23). Each section will be assigned one of the years listed on the Seventeen Moments site from the period after World War II. Your first job is to look up all of the topics for that year . Choose one that you think looks especially interesting and announce to the other students in your section which topic you have chosen. No two students in the section may choose the same topic, so whoever claims a topic first gets it. You then have a three part assignment. Write and post a few substantial paragraphs describing a) the topic (what happened) and b) the supporting documentary and other materials collected on the site, offering your evaluation of how the primary sources add to your understanding of the topic. Second, comment on the posting by someone else that seems most unexpected compared to what you wrote about, explaining what struck you as surprising.
Third, you will have to write a 6-page paper to turn in to me (on paper, not electronically) in which you characterize the significance of your year in Soviet history through an analysis of 2-3 topics from the site. Fleshing out your understanding with outside reading of published books and articles (preferably not general textbooks, but more specific works), discuss those topics as a window onto the main trends in such areas as political life, economic development, social history, culture, and foreign affairs. Try to highlight tensions and contradictory developments as well as major trends.
Although the normal expectation in history papers (particularly research papers) is that you use footnotes and provide a bibliography, this paper is more essayistic than research-intensive. Accordingly, you may simply put references in short form in parenthesis (i.e. to document titles from the website or to outside sources). Please do provide a bibliography as well, though.
Assignment #4 (Initial posting due between May 26 and May 30; group decision due by June 4). Imagine that your section has to decide what should be included on the final exam for this course. Each member of the section has to post two possible essay questions and four possible i.d. topics, giving at least a one-sentence rationale for each. Again, once someone has posted a question or topic, no one else may post the same thing. You then have to decide as a group which three essay questions and which eight i.d. topics should go onto the exam, and briefly explain why. If you come to a deadlock, take a vote, and whoever disagrees strongly with the final group decision can post a dissenting opinion, again with an explanation. I will try to include at least a few topics and/or questions generated by the sections on the actual exam!
CLASS TOPICS
Week 1. Revolution . Reading: First Socialist Society , 15-56.
M Mar. 31 Russia in 1914: an overview
W Apr. 2 From World War I to revolution
F Apr. 4 The Bolsheviks: ideology, leadership, policies, methods
Week 2. The new regime. Reading: First Socialist Society , 57-148.
M Apr. 7 Reds and Whites in the Civil War.
W Apr. 9 The NEP: Politics and economy in the early 1920s. Prepare Assignment #1 for discussion in class.
F Apr. 11 Revolutionary art and culture
Week 3. Toward the “Stalin revolution.” Reading: First Socialist Society , 149-82; Stalin's Peasants , 3-203)
M Apr. 14 Stalin's industrialization drive
W Apr. 16 Russian rural life and the great upheaval (prepare Stalin's Peasants , 3-102)
F Apr. 18 The collectivized village. Discuss Stalin's Peasants , 103-203.
Week 4. The “Stalin revolution.” Reading: Stalin's Peasants , 204-325.
M Apr. 21 Sovietization of the non-Russian regions: Central Asia. Begin posting Assignment #2.
W Apr. 23 “Stakhanovism” and Soviet work culture in village and city. Discuss Stalin's Peasants , 204-285.
F Apr. 25 The “Great Terror”: the decimation of the Soviet elite. Discuss Stalin's Peasants , 286-312; also prepare First Socialist Society , 183-204. Assignment #2: deadline for initial posting.
Week 5. From terror to war . Reading: First Socialist Society , 205-260 (expected by midterm).
M Apr. 28 Mass operations and Soviet ethnic cleansing. Assignment #2: deadline for final postings.
W Apr. 30 Midterm exam
F May 2 Stalin's foreign policy and the German invasion
Week 6. The “Great Patriotic War” and its aftermath . Reading: First Socialist Society , 261-325.
M May 5 The siege of Leningrad. In-class film Blokada
W May 7 Discuss film. Lecture: How the Red Army won (prepare First Soc. Society , 261-94)
F May 9 Late Stalinism and the origins of the Cold War. Begin posting Assignment #3.
Week 7. Khrushchev's Thaw . Reading: First Socialist Society , 326-402; A Week Like Any Other (all)
M May 12 Khrushchev, destalinization, and the “Thaw”
W May 14 Khrushchev's foreign policy. Assignment #3: deadline for first and second postings.
F May 16 Women in the U.S.S.R. Discuss A Week Like Any Other (all).
Week 8. From Stagnation to Perestroika. Reading: First Socialist Society , 402-502; Andrei Sakharov et al., “Manifesto II” (on Blackboard).
M May 19 Central Asia revisited: Environmental degradation and social change (prepare First Socialist Society , 402-445).
W May 21 Andrei Sakharov and the dissident movement. Discuss Sakharov, “Manifesto II.”
F May 23 Perestroika and glasnost': an overview. Assignment #3: Paper due in class.
Week 9. Perestroika. Reading: Stealing the State , 1-41 (skim); 42-175.
M May 26 No class: Memorial Day. Begin posting Assignment #4.
W May 28 Youth, education, the Komsomol, and jobs. Discuss Stealing the State , 42-174.
F May 30 The collapse of the U.S.S.R. Assignment #4: deadline for initial posting.
Week 10. After communism. Reading: Stealing the State (finish).
M June 2 The army in the 1980s-90s. Discuss Stealing the State , 175-218.
W June 4 Russia in the Yeltsin era: a flawed economic transition. Assignment #4: deadline for group decisions with rationales (final posting).
F June 6 Democratization and authoritarianism in the former Soviet republics
Final exam: 10:15 Thursday, June 12.