History of the Soviet Union
CHSTU286
[Press
on the Image to Enlarge]
The Leaders of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991:
Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko,
Gorbachev
Course Description
New faces. New dreams.
New songs. New visions.
New myths are we flinging on.
We are kindling a new eternity.
Vladimir Mayakovskii, 150
million
After centuries of
expansion, in 1917 the 300-year empire of the Romanov
tsars collapsed in political crisis and military defeat. Within months, the
Bolsheviks had come to power in
The course is a general
introduction to the history of the
Requirements
Each student is expected to complete all of the assigned readings (about 100 pages weekly) and to attend class regularly. Students will be required to take a written midterm and final examination, which will consist of take-home and in-class sections. Each take-home section consists of a typed essay, 4-6 double-spaced pages in length. The midterm examination is set for Monday, October 20. The final examination will take place during the assigned hour and place during finals week. The midterm and final will account for 45 percent each in the final grade for the course; an additional 10 percent will be based on class attendance. NOTE: Any student with unexcused absences in five or more classes will either be dropped form the roster, or given a failing grade.
All papers in the course should conform to the History Style Guide, and all written work should be checked closely for spelling and grammatical errors. Sloppy work will receive at least one full grade reduction.
NOTE: This is an Honors-Adjunct course. Students taking the course for honors will take an oral final exam, and write a longer paper on a theme to be agreed upon with the instructor.
All take-home written work should be submitted directly to Professor Burds, or through the mail slot at 249 Meserve Hall. Please do not leave papers on or under my office door.
Course Books
The following books are available for purchase at the University Bookstore. Copies are also available on reserve at Snell Library.
-
-Geoffrey Hosking, The
First Socialist Society: A History of the
-Kenneth M. Jensen, ed. The
Origins of the Cold War: The Novikov, Kennan and Roberts "Long Telegrams"
of 1946. 1993 revised edition (US Institute of Peace, 1993).
-Vladimir Kozlov, Mass Uprisings in the
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (NAL-Dutton, 1963).
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In addition, readings marked with asterisk (*) are available on reserve at Snell Library. Students are encouraged to consult the course WEB page at http://www.history.neu.edu/fac/burds/chstu286.htm The WEB page contains digitized copies of all reserve readings, lecture notes, and course handouts, plus links to other useful materials and sites on the internet.
Three films will be shown during the semester, at times and dates indicated. They are also available on reserve in the Snell Multimedia Library.
Additional Information
On Line Services
Radio Free
HomePage
Daily Reports From the FSU
Special Reports
Russia in
Crisis From Radio Free
Washington Post Special Report: Former Soviet Union
For daily news report from
Reference Materials
For summaries and extracts from the Soviet and post-Soviet press, see current and past volumes of either of the following, available in the Periodicals Room [2nd Floor, Snell Library]:
The Current Digest of the Soviet Press (weekly)
World Press in Review (monthly)
For basic information on particular aspects of Soviet and Russian history, see the multi-volume set:
Modern Encylopedia of Russian and Soviet History (MERSH). 54 volumes. Edited by Joseph L. Wieczynski (Academic International Press, 1976-1991).
Week 1 Introduction
Wednesday, September 10. Introduction to the Study
of the
Thursday, September 11. The Social Antecedents to the Russian Revolution
[All notes through March 1917 appear in "The Collapse of the Autocracy" lecture]
The Russian Revolution
Hosking, The First Socialist Society,
pp. 15-56.
The Revolution in Theory
* V. I. Lenin, "What is to Be
Done?"; "Can the
Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" in Robert C. Tucker,
editor, The Lenin Anthology, pp. 22-31, 60-79, 399-406.
V. I. Lenin's Return to
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism [1916]
Recommended
Take a superb on-line tour of a Gallery
of Russian Revolutionary Art
Take a tour of Russian Revolutionary Posters -- Page 1, Page 2
Week 2 Russia
in Revolution
Monday, September 15. FILM: From News Reels of the Revolution [45
minutes]
Wednesday, September 17. The Collapse of
the Autocracy, the Provisional Government
and the Dual Power System
Handout: Prices in Wartime Russia, 1914-1916
Thursday, September 18. The Roots of Revolution: Marx, Lenin and the Russian Road
The Civil War
Hosking, The First Socialist Society,
pp. 57-92.
Week 3 Civil
War & New Economic Policy
Monday, September 22. "All Power to the Soviets": From Revolution to Civil War"
Map of Civil War Fronts, 1918-1920
Wednesday, September 24. The Civil War & the Origins of Bolshevik Dictatorship: War Communism
Handout: Regicide: The Murder of the Tsar's Family
Option: Take a Tour of the Ipatiev House, the Site of the Murder of the Romanovs
Thursday, September 25. The Crisis of 1921 & the Origins of the New Economic Policy
Lenin’s War against the Russian Orthodox Church (19 March 1922)
Bolshevik Culture
Hosking, The First Socialist Society,
pp. 93-148.
* Wendy Z.
Goldman, "Working-Class Women and the ‘Withering Away’ of the
Family: Popular Responses
to Family Policy;" in Fitzpatrick, Rabinowitch,
and Stites, eds.
The Lenin Legacy
* "Lenin’s
Testament," in Robert V. Daniels, editor, A Documentary History
of Communism, Volume I,
Communism in Russia, pp. 149-151.
Week 4 The Transition to a Planned Economy
Monday, September 29. Lenin’s Heirs and the
Struggle for Succession
Wednesday, October 1. Bolshevik Visions: Society and Culture in the 1920’s
Handout: 'A Thoroughgoing Politicization of Everyday Life': Political Activity as Theater
Thursday, October 2. The Limits of Bolshevization
Week 5 Stalinism
in the 1930s
Monday, October 6. Stalinism & the First Five-Year Plan: Collectivization & Industrialization
Handout: Building Socialism in the Soviet Countryside, 1930s
Wednesday, October 8. Overcoming the Market: The Stakhanovite Movement
Handout: Working Class Culture in Stalin's Showcase City: Magnitogorsk
Thursday, October 9. FILM: Harvest of Despair
[A Film of the Ukrainian Famine]
The Collectivization of Soviet Agriculture
Hosking, The First Socialist Society, pp.
149-182.
Week 6 The Great Terror
Monday , October 13. Columbus Day. University Closed.
Wednesday, October 15. The Great Purges
Handout:
Documents of the Stalin Terror
Handout:
Soviet Culture in the 1930s
The Purges of the 1930s
Hosking, The First Socialist Society,
pp. 183-260.
*
Related Sites
Open Society Archives: FORCED LABOR
CAMPS (an on-line exhibition)
Thursday, October 16. Stalinist Culture in the
1930s
Week 7 World
War II
Monday , October 20. Midterm Examination [Limited to Material to October 16]
Take-Home
Essay Question
Exam Hints
Practice
Midterm Examination
Wednesday, October 22. Background to War: the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939
Related Materials (Not Required)
Nazi-Soviet
Relations, 1931-1941 [Documents of the Avalon Project]
Treat of
Nonaggression Between German & the USSR [23August 1939]
Secret
Additional Protocol [23 August 1939]
Thursday, October 23. Film: The World at War:
Week 8 The Legacies of the Great Patriotic War
Monday, October 27. The Great Patriotic War
HANDOUT: Data on
Soviet/German/British/US Wartime Production
Map of the Eastern War, 1939-1945
Wednesday, October 29. From
Thursday, October 30. The Domestic Impact of the Second World War
Handout: Stalin's Toast to Victory (May 24, l945)
World War and the Impact of the War on
*Hosking, The First Socialist Society,
pp. 261-295.
*Michael Cherniavsky, "Corporal
Hitler, General Winter and the Russian Peasant," The Yale
Review
Volume LI, Number 4 (Summer 1962), pp. 547-558.
*Jeffrey Burds, "The
School of Hate" in 'A Sea of
Blood and Tears': From Civil War to Cold War in Soviet Galicia, 1944-1953
[Unpublished book manuscript], plus selected translations from Soviet war
correspondents, poets, and prose writers.
*William C. Fletcher, "The
Soviet Bible Belt: World War II’s
Effects on Religion," in Susan J. Linz,
editor. The Impact of World War II on the
Related Materials (Not Required)
K. I. Bukov, “The Anxious
October of '41”, Russian Studies
in History Volume 31, No. 4
(Spring 1993): 30-48.
LINK to
World War II in Soviet Eastern Europe
The Russian
Campaign, 1941-1945: A Photo Diary (by Otto Willnauer)
Photo Exhibition: World War
II Through Russian Eyes [Traveling Exhibit From the Russian Central
Armed
Week 9 Stalin’s
Last Years
Monday, November 3. Stalin’s Last Years, 1945-1953: Postwar Reconstruction and Politics
Handout: Stalin's
Analysis of Victory (February 9, 1946)
Handout:
Andrei Zhdanov's "Report on the International
Situation" (September 1947)
The Cold War
READ: Hosking, The First Socialist
Society, pp. 296-325.
Kenneth M. Jensen, ed. The
Origins of the Cold War: The Novikov, Kennan and Roberts "Long
Telegrams" of 1946. 1993 revised edition (US Inst of Peace, 1993).
Related Materials (Not Required)
The Origins of Containment:
George
Kennan's "Long Telegram"
(Moscow-to-Washington) (February 22, 1946)
The Novikov Telegram: Soviet Ambassador in
Washington DC to Moscow, September 27 1946
NSC-68 --
The Foundations of American Cold War Policy
"The Sinews of Peace":
Audio and Transcript of Churchill's Speech at Fultom
Missouri, 5 March 1946
Cold War/International
History Project WEBsite
Cold War
Espionage on CNN.COM
Soviet
Documents in the Cold War
Compendium of
Documents & Readings on the History of the Cold War
The
Succession Crisis
Wednesday, November 5. Origins of De-Stalinization, Khrushchev
Handout: Letter Home to His Family from a Zek in A Siberian Labor Camp, 15 March 1955
Thursday, November 6. The 20th Party Congress and After
De-Stalinization
READ: Hosking, The First Socialist
Society, pp. 326-401.
Nikita S. Khrushchev, Crimes of the Stalin Era: Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [Closed Session, February 24-25, 1956]
Week 10 The ‘Thaw’
Monday, November 10. Khrushchevian Populism to Brezhnevian
Bureaucratism:
Neo-Stalinism,
Brezhnev and the Period of Stagnation
Wednesday, November 12. "Rebels on their Knees"
Handout: The
Fate of Boris Pasternak
Handout:
Soviet Popular Culture During the Thaw
Thursday, November 13. Rebels on their Knees, Part II (The Crisis in Soviet & Post-Soviet Literature)
The Legacy of Dissent
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich (entire)
The "Thaw": Coping with the Stalin
Legacy
*Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The
Cancer Ward (New York: The Dial Press, 1968), pp. 215-230.
*Vassily Aksyonov, The Burn (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), pp.
154-165.
*Nanci Adler, “Life in the 'Big Zone': The Fate of
Returnees in the Aftermath of Stalinist Repression,” Europe-Asia Studies
Volume 51,
Vladimir Kozlov,
Mass Uprisings in the
Week 11 Scenarios of the Decline of Communist Rule, Part I
Monday, November 17. The Problems of Repatriation: Urban Riots, 1957-1964
Tuesday, November 19. Brezhnev’s Little Deal
Thursday, November 20. Free day. No class.
The Brezhnev Era
Hosking, The First Socialist Society, pp. 402-501.
Brezhnev’s ‘Little Deal’
*James R. Millar, “The Little Deal: Brezhnev’s Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism,” Slavic Review Volume 44, Number 4 (Winter 1985): 694-706.
Week 12
Monday, November 24. Obstacles to Reform: The Case of Soviet Agriculture
*Lev Timofeev, Soviet Peasants (Or, The Peasants’ Art of Starving) (Telos Press, 1985).
Wednesday, November 26. No class. Thanksgiving holiday.
Thursday, November 27. No class. Thanksgiving holiday.
Week 13 Scenarios of the Decline of
Communist Rule, Part II
Monday, December 1. Selections from the Glasnost’ Film Festival
Wednesday, December 3. The Soviet Union in Crisis: The New Soviet Man Turns Pessimist
Handout: The New Soviet Man Turns Pessimist
Thursday, December 4. The
READ: *Stephen White,
Week 14 Scenarios of the Decline of
Communist Rule, Part III
Monday, December 8. Russian Apocalypse: Ethnic Politics in Post-Soviet Russia
Handout: The New Russian Right
Samples from the Right-Wing Soviet Press
Wednesday, December 10. Youth Culture: Subcultures and Soviet Rock-and-Roll
Handout: Soviet
Rock-and-Roll Lyrics
Handout:
Russian Guitar Poetry as Performance Art
Thursday, December 11. Review session
December 15-19. Final Examinations:
All papers & written work are due by