DRAFT SYLLABUS

HIST 244 – Professor Sanborn – Fall 2017

Students: please be aware this is subject to change

Others: please do not copy without permission/attribution (though you may of course link to this page)

SCHEDULE OF TOPICS, READINGS, AND EXAMS

  • SUMMER READING: Akunin, all; Chekhov, vii-xxiii, 1-14, 109-136, 161-170, 253-262, 345-376. [Introduction, “The Death of a Clerk,” “Small Fry,” “The Huntsman,” “Gusev,” “Peasant Women,” “In Exile,” “Rothschild’s Fiddle,” “On Official Business,” “The Lady with the Little Dog.”] [YOU SHOULD READ THESE PRIOR TO THE FIRST CLASS ON AUGUST 29 – SEE CLASS EMAIL] (335 pgs)

UNIT ONE – RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION

  • Week of August 28: The Decline and Fall of the Russian Empire (59 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Discussion: Akunin’s Turkish Gambit
      • Introduction to course: Pass out syllabus
      • Lecture: Russia on the Eve of Apocalypse
    • Thursday
      • Discussion: Chekhov and Late Imperial Russian Society
      • Lecture: Russia in World War I
      • Readings: Smith 1-59
  • Week of September 4: The Russian Revolution (91 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: 1917
      • Readings: Smith 60-100
    • Thursday
      • Lecture: Bolshevism
      • Readings: Smith, 101-151
  • Week of September 11: Civil War and Reconstruction (110 pgs)
    • Monday
      • EVENING FILM SCREENING – CHAPAEV
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: The Civil War
      • Readings: Smith, 152-216
    • Thursday
      • NO CLASS (makeup class = film screening on Monday)
      • Readings: Smith 217-262
  • Week of September 18: The First Socialist Society (131 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: The Soviet Union in the 1920s
      • Readings: Smith, 263-312
    • Thursday
      • Lecture: The Revolution in the World
      • Readings: Smith, 313-394
  • Week of September 25: Starting the Great Turn (123 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: Collectivization
      • Readings: Bulgakov, 1-55 (chps. 1-4)
    • Thursday
      • Lecture: Industrialization
      • Readings: Bulgakov, 56-123 (chps 5-epilogue)
  • Week of October 2: The Stalin Revolution (162 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: The Stalinist 30s
      • Readings: Edele 1-73
    • Thursday
      • Lecture: The Great Terror
      • Readings: Edele, 74-162
  • Week of October 9: World War II (80 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • FALL BREAK
    • Thursday
      • Lecture: The Defeat of the Soviet Union
      • Readings: Edele, 163-243
  • Week of October 16: World War II (76 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: The Victory of the Soviet Union
      • Readings: Grossman, 3-64, 154-169
    • Thursday
      • MIDTERM EXAM
      • TURN IN YOUR COMMONPLACE JOURNAL
  • Week of October 23: From War to Peace (80 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • NO CLASS (Makeup class = film screening on Wednesday)
    • Wednesday
      • EVENING FILM SCREENING: OCTOBER (in Buck Hall Theater)
    • Thursday
      • Lecture: The End of World War II and the Start of the Cold War
      • Readings: Grossman, 247-306; 322-343
  • Week of October 30: Mature Socialism (250 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: Politics in the 1960s and 1970s
      • Readings: Fitzpatrick, 1-124
    • Wednesday
      • REVOLUTION! SYMPOSIUM
    • Thursday
      • Lecture: Society in the 1960s and 1970s
      • Readings: Fitzpatrick, 125-250
  • Week of November 6: Mature Socialism (94 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: Culture in the 1960s and 1970s
      • Readings: Fitzpatrick, 251-345
      • EVENING FILM SCREENING: IRONY OF FATE
    • Thursday
      • NO CLASS (class made up with Tuesday film screening)
  • Week of November 13: Dissidents (169 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Discussion: Poetry, Art, and Resistance
      • Readings: Yevtushenko (ON RESERVE) p. 3, 69-72, 102-104, 107-109; 113-115 [Lies; They Killed Someone!; “Again a meeting”; “Here is what”; Babii Yar; Irony; Girl Beatnik; The Heirs of Stalin?]
      • Readings: Brodsky, 83-86, 101-129, 211-215, 271-273; [“The classical ballet, let’s say, is beauty’s keep”; On the Death of Zhukov, A Part of Speech, Lullaby of Cape Cod, May 24 1980, To a Friend: In Memoriam, October Tune, A Martial Law Carol, Folk Tune]
      • Readings: Brodsky Nobel Lecture (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1987/brodsky-lecture.html)
    • Thursday
      • Lecture: The End of the Cold War
      • Readings: Kotkin, pp. 1-112
  • Week of November 20: Post-Soviet Russia (107 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: Democracy? Capitalism?
      • Readings: Kotkin, pp. 113-220
    • Thursday
      • THANKSGIVING
  • Week of November 27: The Putin Era (81 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Lecture: Russia in the Putin Era
      • Readings: Assorted recent articles on contemporary Russia (approx 20 pgs)
      • EVENING FILM SCREENING: TURKISH GAMBIT
    • Thursday
      • Russia and the World in the 21st Century
      • Readings: Norris, “Introduction” (1-19), “Wars and Gambits” (73-92), “Playing with History” (143-166).
      • EVENING LECTURE: STEPHEN NORRIS
  • Week of December 4: Russia Today (191 pgs)
    • Tuesday
      • Russia, Past, Present, Future
      • Discussion: Putin, Masculinity, and Politics
      • Readings: Sorokin, 1-92
    • Thursday
      • Discussion: Sorokin
      • Readings: Sorokin, 93-191
  • FINAL EXAM AT TIME DESIGNATED BY REGISTRAR

 

BOOK LIST

Boris Akunin, The Turkish Gambit (Random House, 2005) ISBN 9780812968781

Anton Chekhov, Stories of Anton Chekhov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Bantam, 2000) ISBN 0553381008

S. A. Smith, Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890-1928 (Oxford UP, 2017) ISBN 9780198734826

Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog (Harvill Press, 1999) ISBN 1860466400

Mark Edele, Stalinist Society, 1928-1953 (Oxford UP, 2011) ISBN 9780199236411

Vasily Grossman, A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 (Vintage, 2007) ISBN 9780307275332

Sheila Fitzpatrick, A Spy in the Archives: A Memoir of Cold War Russia (I. B. Tauris, 2013) ISBN 978-1784532956

Joseph Brodsky, Collected Poems in English (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000) ISBN 0374528381

Steven Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000, UPDATED EDITION (Oxford University Press, 2008). ISBN 9780195368635

Stephen M. Norris, Blockbuster History in the New Russia: Movies, Memory, and Patriotism (Indiana UP, 2012) ISBN 9780253006806

Vladimir Sorokin, Day of the Oprichnik, trans. Jamey Gambrell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012). ISBN 978-0374533106

ON RESERVE

Evgenii Evtushenko, assorted poems