Soviet
Russia 452.01. Section 1
M.
Hickey Old Science Hall Office 130
389-4161 hickey@planetx.bloomu.edu
Navigation links for this syllabus:
Introduction Class Participation Written and In-Class Report
Term Paper Final Exam Required Texts FINAL EXAM QUESTION
Weekly Schedule and Links to Study Questions
Quoting, Paraphrasing, Summarizing, Plagiarism/ Footnotes, Endnotes, Parenthetical Citations
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Introduction:
Since the USSR collapsed, access to
previously closed archives and a wealth of new evidence has helped us refine and
revise our understanding of several important historical questions.
But documents long hidden in the archives have not answered all of our
questions, nor have they dampened heated debates over key issues of Soviet
history.
This
course addresses many of those issues and considers the following questions:
Why did the Bolshevik Revolution occur?
How did the Soviet leadership reassemble the fragments of Russia’s
former empire and how did the realities of functioning as a multi-national state
shape the Soviet system? What enabled Stalin’s rise to power? How did Soviet
citizens cope with the enormous strains of industrialization, collectivization,
state terror, and the other policies associated with Stalinism? How can we
explain the terror of the 1930s? How
was the USSR able to defeat Hitler and at what costs?
How did subsequent Soviet leaders confront the legacies of Stalinism?
What elements of the Soviet system impeded and continue to impede reform? What
dynamics led to the system's
collapse?
A grade
of "A" in this course means that your cumulative score on assignments
equals 93 percent or more of possible points. A-=90-92; B+=88-89; B=83-87;
B-80-82; C+=78-79; C=73-77; C-=70-72; D+= 68-69; D=60-67.
Your
grade will be based upon: Class
Participation (20
percent); a Written and In-Class Report
(10 percent); a Term
Paper (30
percent); and a Final Exam (40
percent). The due date
for the report depends upon your topic; the Term Paper is due at our last class session.
I will enforce university policy on cheating and plagiarism as defined at the website http://www.bloomu.edu/academic/acadpol.shtml.
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Class Participation: This class is a reading seminar. My minimum expectation is that you attend class having completed all readings for the week. Your grade will be based upon the quality of your contributions to class discussions. Attendance is mandatory, and your participation grade will fall in direct ratio to the percentage of class meetings that you miss.
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Written and In-Class Report: By
Week III you must select a topic on which you will conduct
supplemental readings. You will
read three articles in major historical journals (or
one book) addressing that topic.
I must approve your selections.
You will write a short (2-4 page) essay in which you explain the thesis
of each article and compare each to the position
taken by Suny in The Soviet Experiment.
You will turn in the paper at the session during which we discuss your
topic. During that session, you
will also present the class with the main points of your paper.
I will grade your written report on the basis of its logic, clarity, and
accuracy. The in-class report is
mandatory; failing to present it will void your written report grade.
Choosing a Topic for your Written and In-Class Report: The subsections of each chapter in the Suny book provide good report topics. Look over the table of contents, skim the sections that interest you, and then choose a topic. I will schedule you to report at the session during which we discuss that chapter and subsection.
Finding articles or books for your : Start by looking in The Russian Review and The Slavic Review, but note that significant articles might appear in other journals as well. To locate articles, you will have to learn to use the library, and in particular to use electronic data bases like “FirstSearch,” “Historical Abstracts,” and “Humanities Index.” You should also consult the “Suggestions for Further Reading” at the end of each chapter in the Suny book, and ask me for suggestions. Some articles and books will be in our library, but others will require use of interlibrary loan. It is your responsibility to obtain the articles, so don't delay! You must consult with me, and I must approve your choice.
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Either locate and read primary sources (such as document collections, newspapers, memoirs, and US government documents) that shed light on that topic, then using these sources write a research paper that makes a clear and supportable argument about the topic;
Or read a minimum of four books and eight journal articles on the topic, then write
an historiographic essay that compares and contrasts the arguments of different
historians on the topic.
Finding Primary Sources: In addition to the Siegelbaum document collection assigned for this course, you can find dozens of published collections of translated documents and memoirs in our library and on inter-library loan. You need to hunt for these using library databases and by searching the bibliographies of other books on the topic. There are a also few very good collections of translated documents on the internet--follow the links on my Russian and Soviet History Resource Page. English-language newspapers are often an interesting source on Soviet history—try searching the New York Times Index, for instance. And the State Department kept a close watch of Soviet affairs; the series Foreign Relations of the United States, Russia and the Soviet Union, for instance, has many interesting materials related to some of the assigned topics.
Don't hesitate to ask me for help.
You
may have to order books and articles through interlibrary loan, so don't delay!
Finding
Secondary Sources:
Try doing “subject” and “keyword” searches on the various
databases at the library, use Suny’s “Suggestions for Further Reading,”
sift through the bibliographies of other books and articles, and (as always) ask
me for help. You may have to order
books and articles through interlibrary loan, so don't delay.
Writing your paper:
Research Papers: If you are doing a research paper, then your aim is to ask and answer a clear and important historical question about the topic. Define your question as clearly as possible. Explain what (if anything) Suny has written about your topic in The Soviet Experiment. Then use the primary source materials to make a coherent argument that—to the extent possible given the sources—answers your question. Make sure that you are conscious of the limits of your sources. And be sure that the evidence supports your argument
Historiography
Papers:
Historiography is the history of historical writing.
Your aim in a historiographic essay is to explain changes in historical
interpretation across time or differences between various “schools” of
historical interpretation. Define
your topic as clearly as possible. Then
analyze the works that you have read, either in chronological order or by
historiographic “school.” Discuss
the thesis of each work and the kinds of sources the author has employed, then
explain how it relates to previous historical interpretations.
Assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of each work or school.
Finally, come to a working conclusion as to the most useful
interpretative approach to your topic.
Whether
you choose to write a research paper or a historiographic essay, your paper must
be at least 10 pages long (typed, double-spaced), not counting
endnotes. You
must use endnotes to document the source of all quoted, paraphrased, and
summarized material. Your paper is due by Tuesday, 3 December (but you can turn it
in earlier). I will grade your paper on the basis of its clarity, logic,
accuracy, and utilization of source material.
Potential
Topics Term
Papers:
A) Workers in the 1917 Revolution
D) Military Aspects of the Civil War
G) Party Power Struggles During NEP
J) Stalin and Politics in the 1920s
L) State Policy towards Collectivization in the 1930s
N) State Science/Educational/Cultural Policy in the 1930s
P) Peasant Resistance to Collectivization
R) The Causes of the Terror in the 1930s
U) The Red Army in World War Two
W)
Stalin and the Post-War State
Y) Khrushchev's Rise to Power
@A) Agricultural Policy under Khrushchev
@C ) Politics Under Brezhnev
@E) Foreign Policy Under Brezhnev (including the "Second Cold
War")
Or
you can choose your own topic in consultation with me.
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Final Exam: In November I will give you a take-home final exam. It will be an essay question, and it will require you to draw together material from all of our assigned readings and also from outside readings. It will be due at our scheduled final exam meeting. Your essay must be at least ten pages long (typed, double-spaced), not counting endnotes. I will grade your exam on the basis of its logic, clarity, accuracy, and use of relevant evidence. It is due at our final exam session. FINAL EXAM QUESTION
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Required
Texts:
Ronald
Grigor Suny, The Soviet Experiment:
Russia, the USSR, and the Successor
Rex A.
Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Lewis
Sieglebaum and Andrei Sokolov, Stalinism
as a Way of Life: A Narrative in
Gabriel
Temkin, My Just War:
The Memoir of a Jewish Red Army Soldier in World War
Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
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Weekly Schdule and Links to Study Questions
Week I (27, 29 Aug): Late Imperial Russia.
Suny, 1-19. Link to Suny study questions.
Wade,
preface and pages 1-17.
Week II (3, 5 Sept): Bolshevism, World War One, and the February Revolution.
Suny, 19-39. Link to Suny study questions.
Wade,
17-52.
Linked documents: Link to web-linked documents assignment.
This
includes the following documents: Vladimir
Lenin "On the Two Lines
in the Revolution" (at http://www.marx2mao.org//Lenin/TLR15.html);
The Abdication of Nikolai
II, March 15, 1917
(at http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/abdicatn.html);
and The First Provisional
Government (at http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/provgov1.html)
Week
III (10, 12 Sept): The
“February System” and the Provisional government.
Read Suny, 39-52. Link to Suny study questions.
Wade,
53-231.
Last opportunity to get approval of report topic.
Week
IV (17, 19 Sept): Bolsheviks
come to power, their first steps, the onset of
Suny, 52-72. Link to Suny study questions.
Wade, 232-298 Link to Wade study questions.
Linked
documents.
This includes the following documents: The Decree on Peace (at http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/peacedec.html); Lenin on the organization of the Cheka (at http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/cheka.html);and The Declaration of Rights of Toiling and Exploited Peoples (at http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/decright.html).
Week
V (24, 26 Sept): The Civil War,
the non-Russian peoples, dictatorship, and
Suny, 72-139. Link to Suny study questions.
Linked
documents.
This includes the following documents: V. I. Lenin, "Preliminary Draft Resolutions of the 10th Congress of the R.C.P" (at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/mar/x01.htm); Lenin's "Last Testament" (at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/congress.htm).
Last opportunity to get approval for term paper topic.
Week VI (1, 3 Oct): NEP and the intra-party struggle.
Suny, 140-213. Link to Suny study questions.
Linked documents. First, re-read the documents assigned for last week! Link to web-linked documents assignment from last week. [This includes the following documents: V. I. Lenin, "Preliminary Draft Resolutions of the 10th Congress of the R.C.P" (at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/mar/x01.htm); Lenin's "Last Testament" (at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/congress.htm].
Second, I will give each of you one or two short document excerpts from the political and policy debates of the 1920s. You will have to "report" on that document--you will be responsible for making the argument made by the author of your document during the policy debates. We will in effect reconstruct the debates, with each of you acting as one of the key "players."
Also, and this is optional (!!!), I have set up links to full-length texts of some key documents by Trotsky and Stalin. Go to these by clicking to the Web-Linked Documents For Week VI page. These documents are picked from the J. V. Stalin Internet Library (http://www.marx2mao.org//Stalin/Index.html) and the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/index.htm).
Also,
read the Introduction to Siegelbaum (1-27)
Week
VII (7, 9 Oct): The Stalin
Revolution, Collectivization, and Industrialization.
Suny, 217-251. Link to Suny study questions.
Discuss Siegelbaum Intro (see last week's links).
Siegelbaum,
28-157.
Week VIII (15, 17 Oct): Politics, purges, and terror in the 1930s.
Suny,
252-
Siegelbaum,158-281.
Week IX (22, 24 Oct): Stalinist culture and public life in the 1930s.
Suny,
Siegelbaum,
282-424.
Week
X (29, 31 Oct): Soviet foreign
policy and the USSR in the Second
Suny, 291-336. Link to Suny study questions.
Temkin,
entire book.
Week XI (5, 7 Nov): The origins of the Cold War and late Stalinism.
Suny,
Week XII (12, 14 Nov): The rise of Khrushchev.
Suny, 387-403. Link to Suny study questions.
Week XIII (19 Nov): The Khrushchev years.
Suny, 404-420. Link to Suny study questions.
Week
XIV (26 Nov): Brezhnev, the “Period of Stagnation,” and the early
Suny, 421-468. Link to Suny study questions.
Begin reading Kotkin!
Week XV (3, 5 Dec): Gorbachev’s reforms and the collapse of the USSR.
Suny, 469-504.
Finish
Kotkin.
Term Paper Due by Thursday, 5 December
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