Courses

This class focuses on the history of the Soviet Union and Russia between the death of Stalin/the end of totalitarianism and the present. It spans the turning-point date of 1991 when the Soviet Union abolished itself and was replaced by successor states, the most important of which is Russia. Not ending Soviet history with 1991 and not beginning Russian history with it either, we will seek to understand continuities as well as change. We will also draw on a diverse set of texts (and movies), including history, political science, journalism, fiction, and memoirs, feature and documentary movies. Geographically weighted toward Russia (and not the other also important successor states), in terms of content, this class concentrates on politics and society, including, crucially, the economy. These concepts, however, will be understood broadly. To come to grips with key issues in Soviet and Russian history in the historically short period after Stalinist totalitarianism, we will have to pay close attention to not only our analytical categories, but also to the way in which the political and the social have been understood by Soviet and Russian contemporaries. The class will introduce students to crucial questions of Russia's recent past, present, and future: authoritarianism and democratization, the role of the state and that of society, reform and retrenchment, communism and capitalism, and, last but not least, the nature of authority and legitimacy.