ONE-PAGE HAND-OUT SYLLABUS
Detailed Academic Calendar

Week-by-week summary =
The course definition of "week" is everything from the first class meeting in each week until the first such meeting in the next

1. Big picture and/or "long duration" | Get started on exercise one and exercise two | Lecture topics
2. Origins of modern political culture | Get under way with draft essays #1 and #2 [CF=Exercise three] Lecture topics
3. Era of Great Reforms / Russian Revolutionary Situations | Begin thinking about exercise six | Lecture topics
4. Era of Great Reforms / Russian Revolutionary Situations | Exercise four deadline
5. 1905 Revolution | Lecture topics
6. Revolutions of 1917 | Draft essay #3 [ID] completed at home before exercise five deadline | Lecture topics
7. Revolutions of 1917 (continued) | Exercise six under way
8. Stalinist "totalitarianism" | Lecture topics
9. Gorbachev and the collapse of the USSR | Lecture topics
10. "New Russia" | Exercise seven | Lecture topics
FINALS WEEK = Exercise six deadline

Comprehensive or summary list of seven exercises distributed through the term =

1. Purchase and set up your journal (from week 1 through week 10)
2. Learn how to navigate The Student's Annotated Chronology and Systematic Bibliography (week 1)
3. Research and compose three draft essays in the journal
4. Submit journal, first time, with general reading/writing entries, plus the first two draft essays (week 5)
5. Take a midterm exam, with general reading/writing entries, plus the third draft essay (week 8)
6. Research and compose big term paper (due date on handout syllabus)
7. Submit journal for final evaluation, with results of continuing reading/writing, plus the fourth draft essay

 

 

ONE PAGE HAND-OUT SYLLABUS =

HST 445/545: RUSSIAN POLITICAL CULTURE = Russia and Democracy
Alan Kimball, McK 367, 346-4813. Office hours: Tue & Thur 10:00-12:00 & by appointment

KIMBALL@UOREGON.EDU

Most course materials are in the Knight Library or course webpages. You will purchase a lab book, and there you will keep a record of library and webpage readings, write four take-home "draft" essays, & write a midterm exam. There will be no final exam in this course. Instead, you will submit a term paper on the first day of finals week. Here is a basic calendar of the term's due-dates=

!! ap29 [TUE]= --------------- 1st SUBMISSION of JOURNAL (w/ 1st 2 draft essays & thoughts on research topic)
!! my22 [THU]= -------------- MIDTERM EXAM in JOURNAL (including third draft essay)
!! je03 [TUE] = --------------- FINAL SUBMISSION of JOURNAL|| I'll have them back to you by THU
!! je13 [FRI] by 5pm=  ----- BIG RESEARCH PAPER DUE in MY EMAIL BOX (kimball@uoregon.edu)

First exercise = Purchase and set up your journal. Ask at the customer service desk in the basement of the UO Book Store for a blue lab book (the larger one, 11x9 inches; Stock # 43-581, JUST EXACTLY THIS ONE). The first thing I want you to do with your lab book (let’s call it the journal) is paste a white label securely to the outer upper right-hand corner of the front cover (a mailing label will do). Boldly inscribe your name there. Inscribe other personal contact info on the inner face of the cover, and leave the first 4-5 numbered pages blank for keeping your own table of contents through the term, indicating sources consulted. It is your responsibility here to provide a guide to each part of your journal. Leave page 120 blank for instructor comments & grading. In this journal you will enter lecture notes, keep a record of library work and webpage work, research and write take-home "draft" essays, & write your midterm exam.

Second exercise = Locate this course on the following webpage: http://www.uoregon.edu/~kimball/courses.htm.

Add this URL (web address) to your web-browser's "bookmarks" or "favorites" page. You'll go there often this term.

These first two and five further exercises are listed and explained on the course website.

ABOUT GRADES: Essays & exams are due at the time the class meets on the days specified. Late exercises are penalized one grade. Exercises AWOL 24 hours after due date are given a failing grade. Failure to complete any one of the essays or exams will result in a failing grade for the course. Unpenalized postponement of an exercise is possible only when documented illness or happenstance forces delay, or when arranged in writing beforehand. If you attend class regularly, keep good lecture notes, devote nine hours of your outside-of-class study-week to your reading & writing, & keep a good record in your journal, you may be sure that you are meeting course expectations.

 

 

Academic Calendar
In what follows, I try to make each link to SAC [ID] either a single hypertext hop [ID] or LOOP [ID].

This academic calendar can be taken as a list of potential topics for your draft essays [ID] written in the journal [ID], or for your big research report [ID]
The research report topic may be selected from any part of the syllabus, early or late.

The topic of your first two draft essays [ID] should probably come from the first half of the calendar (into week 5 [ID]), and the third draft essay topic from the second half.

As you make your choices of topics for draft-essays [ID], do not let your choices overlap or duplicate one another
Remember the virtue of breadth as you make your selections
You may, however, expand one of your draft essays into the big research report [ID]

 

 

WEEK 1 =
The big picture and/or "the long duration"

EXERCISE ONE =
Purchase and set up your journal.

Ask at the customer service desk in the basement of the UO Book Store for a blue lab book (the larger one, 11x9 inches; Stock # 43-581, JUST EXACTLY THIS ONE). The first thing I want you to do with your lab book (let’s call it the journal) is paste a white label securely to the outer upper right-hand corner of the front cover (a mailing label will do). Boldly inscribe your name there. Inscribe other personal contact info on the inner face of the cover, and leave the first 4-5 numbered pages blank for keeping your own table of contents through the term, indicating sources consulted. It is your responsibility here to provide a guide to each part of your journal. Leave page 120 blank for instructor comments & grading.

Through the whole term, the course requires nine hours a week outside of class time, reading and note-taking, mainly in this journal. I say "mainly in this JOURNAL" because you may toward the end of the term want to do some part of your preparation for exercise six, the big research paper [ID], on your word processor.

Read this extended description of how to use the journal [TXT]

EXERCISE TWO =
Learn how to navigate SAC

Guide to readings throughout the term are provided in lectures outlined on this course webpage and most particularly in the primary and secondary sources indicated in "The Student's Annotated Chronology and Systematic Bibliography" [SAC © Alan Kimball].

Read this extended description of SAC and how to use it [TXT]

You may print any part of the electronic material I provide this class, but do not put printed or photo-copied texts in your journal.The journal is for YOUR WORK.

 

HOP, if you wish, to EXERCISE THREE

 

First-week lecture topics

Three interpretive issues =

Ten events, trends or eras of long-term historical significance =

  1. Invitation to the Rus [SAC]
  2. Church & state =
    2a. "Universal Christian Monarchy" [SAC],
    2b. "two swords" [SAC],
    2c. "symphonia" [SAC],
    2d. "National baptism" [SAC],
    2e. "Schism" [SAC],
    2f. "Crusades" [SAC]
  3. The Russian heritage of Rechtstaat [rule of law] [LOOP on "law codes"]
  4. Two centuries under the dominance of the Golden Horde [SAC]
  5. "Russian Feudalism" = Miliukov's historical explanation [TXT]
    5a. Aristocracy & state [SAC], with an aside on Montesquieu [SAC] and Speranskii's dour views [SAC]
    5b. Primogeniture [SAC 2-hop LOOP]
    5c. Kurbskii [SAC 2-hop LOOP]
    5d. The Europe-wide rise of of nation-statism, the concept "sovereignty" [LOOP on "sovereignty"]
    5e. the first Russian political thinker, Ivan Peresvetov [SAC]
  6. Village institutions [TXT] and serfdom [SAC]
  7. Traditionalist guide to behavior, the Domostroi [SAC]
  8. Cities, EG=the fabled Veche [SAC], Voevody, ostrogi and fortresses [SAC]. [TXT re. Russian urban political culture]
  9. Multi-cultural, multi-national, and other social factions (plus "trans-nationalism") =
    9a. Cossacks [SAC 17-hop LOOP which you enter in the chronological middle]
    9b. The great church schism [Raskol] and alienation of Russian "Old-Ritualists" [SAC]
    9c. Yurii Krizhanich [SAC]
    9d. Assimilation, EG=Jews [SAC],
    9e. Suppression, EG=Chechens [SAC] &
    9f. Federalism, EG=Ukrainians [SAC]
  10. Petrine transformation [SAC]
    10a. Petr Saltykov's views [SAC]
    10b. Feofan Prokopovich's views [SAC]
    10c. Ivan Pososhkov's views [SAC]
    10d. "Finger pointing at an empty space" = (1) the absence of John Locke [SAC]
    10e. "Finger pointing at an empty space" = (2) the absence of Adam Smith [SAC]
    10f. Social/service hierarchies -- Sosloviia vs. Table of Ranks [SAC]
    10g. Compare fate of Russian nobility with that of Poland [SAC]

 

Seven significant implications of the long duration =

(1) Until 1380 [ID] Russian history was thoroughly "contextualized" out on the East European steppes dominated by Byzantine, then Golden-Horde power and culture

(2) From 1380 until well into the reign of Ivan IV [ID], many historians emphasize how Russia's was an "isolated" history, missing four critical episodes of west European "modernization" =

--BUT NB! how complex the issue of "isolation" actually is [LOOP on "isolation"]

(3) Rise of monarchical absolutism [EG] much earlier and much more pronounced than in the rest of Europe

(4) Russian Orthodox Church became a bureaucratic arm of the tsarist state, alienating millions of intensely religious Christians [EG#1=Old-Ritualists] [EG#2=Slavophiles]

(5) Non-European levels of agrarian poverty were the foundation of the tsarist "service state" [pomeshchiki (ID) and serfs (ID)]

(6) Geo-political insecurity and vulnerability [EG]

(7) "Two cultures" (as per Vladimir Veidle [ID])

Readings in addition to those imbedded in SAC (and relevant to the whole academic term)
(primary sources are in boldface)

Browse through the following three-part list of readings on the big picture and devote about four hours to your choice(s). Search for insight into the long-term Russian political culture. Keep a record of your search in your journal.

General accounts of "Long Duration" [TABLE]
(more like reference works, with short interpretive passages indicated) =

Titles offering vast interpretive perspective =

Early Russian history

Imperial Russia

For wider browsing, here are (1) a big "Bone-Yard" bibliography [TXT] and (2) a systematic bibliography of writings on political culture [TXT]

SUMMARY OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FIRST-WEEK "HOPS" in re. COURSE STRUCTURE

This electronic syllabus has so far presented internet "hops" to the following auxiliary pages and subpages =

A. THE RESERVE BOOK ROOM

B. SAC

C. JOURNAL
---1. Reading
---2. Draft essays
---3. Exams

D. GEOGRAPHY

E. WAYS OF SEEING HISTORY
---1. Dozen Categories of Human Grouping
---2. Taxonomy of Historical Experience
---3. Interests

 

 

 

 

WEEK 2 =
Origins of modern political culture

1825 December 14:Petersburg, Senate Square. Decembrist Uprising

 

EXERCISE THREE =
Draft essays

Over the term you will compose three "draft essays". The topics of all three draft essays should grow out of your general course work as laid out in lectures and SAC [ID]. You will enter research notes and the draft essays themselves in your journal [ID]

Read this extended description of the draft essay [TXT]

As you devote the nine hours to reading and writing in the journal every week, you will come across primary documents [ID] that you would like to read with closer attention and research more extensively in the secondary and reference literature.

I am ready to help define topics that best suit you. A purely mechanical but quite satisfactory topic might be titled something like this, "The Significance of [fill in some primary source or sources] in the History of Russian Political Culture" or "The Contribution of [fill in some primary source or sources] to my understanding of the History of Russian Political Culture". You will probably find topics that suit you very well as you do the regular weekly reading. But don't hesitate to ask my advice. The draft essays should be thought of as moments of intense reading and writing about primary (and supportive secondary) sources you come across in the process of weekly reading and writing in the journal.

HERE ARE SOME LINKS TO POSSIBLE PRIMARY DOCUMENTS AND THUS TOPICS FOR THE THREE DRAFT ESSAYS =

DRAFT ESSAYS #1 & #2 should be completed before the time of "first submission" [ID]

One more draft essay will follow =

DRAFT ESSAY #3 = The deadline for the third draft essay is midterm time [ID]. Here are some possible primary documents & topics

 

Second-week lecture topics
(primary source readings embedded in SAC entries) =

Readings in addition to those imbedded in SAC (secondary sources)

A Basket of 2014mr+: News stories about plt.clt = Ukrainian meltdown and independence movements within Ukraine

 

 

 

 

WEEKS 3 & 4 =
Era of Great Reforms and/or Russian Revolutionary Situations

mir2.jpg (97025 bytes)
Meeting of peasant elders in mirskoi skhod [village assembly]
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

EXERCISE FOUR =
First submission of journal

The course requires a "no-grade" first submission of the journal to me on the first day of class in the fifth week of the term (see one-page syllabus for exact date). By this time please include in the journal the first two of your draft essays [ID], and a clear list of possible research topics [EXERCISE SIX below] so that I might make recommendations to you on that matter. This first submission is also an early check to see if I can give you any ideas how to proceed with your journal and the course in general.

On the last page of your journal, I enter my evaluations, using what I call "Frequently Observed Qualities" [FOQs]

Third- and fourth-week lecture topics =
Phases Preparatory to the revolutions of 1905 and 1917

*1856:1866; The era of "Great Reforms" [LOOP on "great reform"] and "the first Russian revolutionary situation" [SAC]

*1867:1881; Russian populism [SAC] and "the second Russian revolutionary situation" [SAC]

*1881:1899; Reactionary politics [LOOP on reaction]

Reading possibilities, in addition to [TXT] above and those imbedded in SAC
Secondary sources

Primary sources: Populism and rise of organized political opposition

Titles which offer vast interpretive perspective
and which are particularly relevant to the next three weeks topics =

 

 

 

 

WEEK 5 =
The rise of organized political parties and the 1905 Revolution

Fifth-week lecture topics =

Readings in addition to those imbedded in SAC, divided into categories
(Readings in boldface are primary sources)

General perspective on late 19th and early 20th centuries =

Economic modernization and politics =

Zemstvo and "liberal" movements =

Marxism =

Peasants and industrial workers =

Revolution of 1905 =

State Duma =

Silver-Age Culture =

 

 

WEEKS 6 & 7 =
Revolutions of 1917


Emperor Nicholas II, Supreme Commander
of Russian armies in World War One


Sixth- and seventh-week lecture topics

Readings in addition to those imbedded in SAC

EXERCISE FIVE =
Midterm exam

A midterm exam will follow a standard form [ID | See one-page syllabus for exact date]

You will write the exam in your journal and submit it to me at the end of the exam period

The journal will already contain your first two draft essays [ID], and now should contain the third

A fourth and final essay is you BIG RESEARCH PAPER [ID].

Here are specific instructions for the midterm exam =

I will select four items from the following list of topics for the midterm exam. From among these you will then select two as the subject of your exam essays. Mini-max strategists among us instantly see that they may now, if they wish, set aside one of the topics on the list just below. If you do that, consider setting aside the topic below that most nearly replicates one of your draft essay topics. That way you can avoid repetition and show wholesome breadth of learning in your journal. In any event, if your draft-essay topics are both among the four I select (highly unlikely), you will still have the other two to write about. Don't worry. No one will be "snookered". I want you to know something about all these things, but I also want to make sure you are able to show what you have learned, not what you might, just might, not have learned.

I ask the same question about each of the following topics = "What does the following person, group, epoch, trend or episode contribute to our understanding of Russian political culture?" (Topics are here hypertext linked to facilitate study)

  1. Universal doctrine of factions [TXT]
  2. Paul Miliukov, Russia and Its Crisis (1905) ch4 "The Political Tradition". Try this summary TXT
  3. Social/service hierarchy = Social estate [soslovie] and bureaucratic rank [chin] [SAC]
  4. Invitation to the Rus [SAC]
  5. Novgorod, Hanseatic League, and urban self-governance in the Veche [LOOP from 1136]
  6. Two centuries of dominance under the Golden Horde [LOOP]
  7. Traditionalist guide to behavior, the Domostroi [SAC]
  8. Mercantilist political order [LOOP beginning in middle, 1713]
  9. Andrei Kurbskii [SAC]
  10. 1770s:Nikolai Novikov [SAC] and
  11. Alexander Herzen [SAC]
  12. 1815:1825 "Decembrist Movement" [4-hop LOOP]
  13. 1849:"Petrashevtsy" [SAC] NB! TXT section on "raznochintsy"
  14. Village institutions (mirskoi skhod; obshchina) [TXT]
  15. Intelligentsia [TXT]
  16. Russian Civil Society and Political Crisis, 1859-1863 [TXT]
  17. Mikhail Bakunin and Sergei Nechaev [SAC]
  18. Terrorism [SAC]
  19. Women in Russian political culture, 19th-century [SAC] and early 20th-century [SAC]
  20. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Reflections of a Russian Statesman [SAC]
  21. Police Socialism [ID -- Follow LOOP on "wage-labor" to 1905 for fuller sense of "demographic imbalance" in Russian (and general European) social structures]
  22. Zemstvo liberalism [LOOP on "Zemstvo"]
  23. "Bloody Sunday" [SAC] and Father Gapon's Petition [TXT] indicating what wage-laborers wanted
  24. Parliament (Duma) [18-hop LOOP on "Duma"]
  25. Karl Marx and Russia [LOOP]
  26. Vladimir Lenin [LOOP]
  27. Leon Trotsky [LOOP], perhaps with some emphasis on his views about "Peculiarities of Russian Development" [TXT]
  28. Give some examples of how "Demographic imbalanace" contributed to the revolutionary crises from the 1860s to 1905
  29. Did World War One cause the 1917 revolutions in Russia? [LOOP on war-time origins of the Russian revolutions]
  30. 1917:1921; Establishment of single-party rule in contest among political parties [SAC]| If you wish, you may concentrate on the legacy of Lenin's "What's to be Done?" [ID]
  31. What did the Revolutionary Civil War [LOOP] contribute to the 1921-1927; New Economic Policy [LOOP]?
  32. Stalin and Stalinism [LOOP on Stalinism]
  33. Identify what seem to you the main differences between "Civil Society" [ID] and "Totalitarianism" [ID] as reflected in the history of Russian political culture up to 1941?

On the last page of your journal, I enter my evaluations, using what I call "Frequently Observed Qualities" [FOQs]

 

 

EXERCISE SIX =
BIG RESEARCH PAPER

You will write a BIG RESEARCH PAPER submitted by email [ID]. (I call exercise six "big research paper" to distinguish it from the "draft essays" [ID]) The research paper is conceptually different from, and in addition to, earlier draft essays in the journal. Draft essays are like take-home exam questions on general themes. The research paper is an individualized and more focused topic. As you complete EXERCISE FOUR above, be sure to submit in the journal a list of possible research topics. I will help you make a decision on that matter.

Here is a page which provides suggestions about how to structure a research report.

The deadline for submission of the research paper is indicated on the one-page syllabus.

WEEK 8 =
Stalinist "totalitarianism"

Stalin-post49.jpg (28722 bytes)
1949: Portrait of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin
The red banner behind him reads:
V[sesoiuznaia] K[ommunisticheskaia] P[artiia] (b[ol'sheviki])
or
All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
by B. N. Karpov et al.

[SOURCE with many other examples of art in the era of "Socialist Realism" (1934 +)]

 

Eighth-week lecture topics =

Readings
in addition to those imbedded in SAC
[TABLE]

CHOICES: CUSTOM RESOURCES FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE, pp. 33-62, 82-95 [Excerpts from RPR7]

Titles offering vast interpretive perspective
relating to the Soviet and post-Soviet period

 

 

 

 

WEEK 9 =
Gorbachev and the collapse of the USSR

Reading =

CHOICES: CUSTOM RESOURCES FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE, pp. 2-32, 139-170 [Excerpts from RPR7]

Here is a new and very highly coded datafile on the era of Gorbachev and Yeltsin

Ninth-week lecture topics =

 

 

 

 

WEEK 10 = 
"New Russia"

Women at political rally in Leningrad (St.Petersburg) after USSR dissolved

Tenth-week lecture topics =

*--Three hard-hitting political-economic assessments of the Russian situation = Witte, Stalin, Putin
*--James Madison and Boris Yeltsin in post-Soviet Russia [TXT]
*--Khodorkovskii LOOP
*--What light does our knowledge of the long-duration of Russian political culture shed on the years since the dissolution of the USSR?
*--What light does our knowledge of Russian political culture shed on certain well-known general theories about politics?

Readings in addition to those imbedded in SAC =