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HISTORY 232 – TWENTIETH-CENTURY RUSSIA
Fall 1999 -- MTH 11:20 -- 12:35


"The Captain of the Soviet Nation Pilots Us
From Victory to Victory!"
1933

Professor McKee

wamckee1@yahoo.com (note: NOT @american.edu)

Office Hours: 122 McCabe Hall Tuesdays 2-5 PM and by appointment

In 1917, a vast revolution swept away Imperial Russia's fragile political and social order. In its wake, the Bolsheviks set about building "socialism," an egalitarian, distinctly non-capitalist society for which neither they nor anyone else had the blueprints. Though the Bolsheviks managed to tap into popular enthusiasm for this project and create an industrial society that emerged from World War II as a superpower, within a single human lifetime the Soviet Union collapsed with hardly a shot being fired.

This course will examine why the Soviet experiment was tried and how it failed. Our focus will be on how rulers and ruled defined and experienced the tragic (and, at times, comical) process of building socialism. The causes and global consequences of post-Soviet Russia's continuing instability will also be discussed.

Students will write three essays (Two 4-6 pages-long; one 8-10). There will also be a mid-term examination. There will be no final for the course.

On both days, I will give lectures, though the lecture on Thursday will be shorter than that on Monday so that we can have some time for discussion. I encourage students to ask me questions that may occur to them during lecture. Have the week's readings done by Thursday.

Grading:
 


Papers must be handed into me in class on the date due. Late papers will be penalized by one full grade for every day they are late beginning at the end of the class in which they were due. In other words, an "A" paper turned in at 1 PM on the due date will receive a "B." An "A" paper turned in the next day at 10 AM will also receive a "B." But an "A" paper turned in at 5:30 the following day will receive a "C". No exceptions will be made to this policy (i.e., not even for computer crashes or crowded printers).

Extensions will be granted in cases of need.  Requests for extensions, however, must be made 24 hours before the paper is due.

For my expectations regarding your writing, see my writing rules.

For more information about the course, see my groundrules.

 

Readings and Course Materials

A note on the readings: The readings in the textbook, The First Socialist Society (see below), are not required (except the reading for week 9). They are suggested in case you need more explanation of topics covered in lecture. The textbook can also be used as a reference resource -- often you can find terms in the textbook index that appear in other readings for the course.

Concentrate on the other readings assigned each week!

S. Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin (movie: viewing arrangements to be announced)

B. Engel and A. Posadskaya-Vanderbeck, A Revolution of their Own: Voices of Women in Soviet History (available on reserve and at bookstore [referred to as Engel below])

V. Garros et. al., eds., Intimacy and Terror (available on reserve and at bookstore)

M. Ginsburg, ed., The Fatal Eggs and Other Soviet Satire (available on reserve)

G. Hosking, The First Socialist Society (available on reserve and at bookstore)

S. Kotkin, "The Rubble," The New Republic 25 January 1999 (available on Academic Universe)

V. Menshov, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (movie: viewing arrangements to be announced)

D. Remnick, Lenin's Tomb (available on reserve and at bookstore)

D. Remnick, Resurrection (available on reserve and at bookstore)

S. Schmemann, "How Can You Have a Bust if You Never Had a Boom," (available on reserve)

J. Scott, Behind the Urals (available on reserve and at bookstore)

R. Suny and A. Adams, The Russian Revolution and Bolshevik Victory (available on reserve and at bookstore)

B. Wolfe, ed. Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (Khrushchev's secret speech) (available on reserve)

V. Yerofeev, Moscow Stations (available on reserve)

Schedule

9/2 - A Brief Tour of the Empire on the Eve

Week's Readings: Hosking, ch. 1; Suny and Adams, 16-50
 
 

9/9-- Russia at War, 1914-1917

Week's Readings: Suny and Adams, pp. 50-69; Engel, pp. 1-46
 

9/13 -- The February Revolution and its Aftermath

9/16 -- A Party of A New Type?: Marxism, Lenin, and the Bolshevik Party

 

Week's Readings: Hosking, ch. 2; Suny and Adams, pp. 70-115, 166-95, 220-289

 
9/20 -- The October Coup and The Russian Civil War
9/23 -- War Communism and the origins of NEP
Week's Readings: Suny and Adams, pp. 401-31, 457-92; Ginsburg, pp. 3-27; Engel, pp. 85-100

Lenin Speaking in Red Square, 1920

 

9/27 -- Soviet Culture during the 1920s -- Essay #1 Due

9/30 -- The Path to Socialism, the Crisis of NEP, and Collectivization

Week's Readings: Hosking, ch. 5; Eisenstein; Engel, 117-31, 155-174; Ginsburg, pp. 191-215
 
 


Who will beat whom?
"Either perish or catch up to the leading countries and overtake them economically as well . . .
Either perish or drive full steam ahead.  Thus has the question been posed by history"
I. V. Stalin
  Propaganda Poster -- 1929

10/4 - The Great Break in Industry
10/7 -- The Great Break in Culture
Week's Readings: Hosking, ch. 6; Scott, parts 1-6; Engel, pp. 101-116, 132-54
 

10/14 - The Great Terror

Week's Readings: Hosking, ch. 7-8; Garros, pp. 111-215, 291-331; Scott, part 7; Engel, pp. 47-84
 


We Will Exterminate the Spies
and Saboteurs, the Trotskyite-
Bukharinite Agents of Fascism
(1937)

10/18 - The Great Terror; Review
10/21 - In-Class Mid-Term Examination
No readings
 
 

They Come to Know Grief
(WWII -- Date Unknown)

10/25 - The Great Patriotic War and Reconstruction

10/28 - Dividing the World in Two: Stalin's Last Years; Review of Exam

Week's Readings: Hosking, chs. 10-11 (NB: This reading in Hosking is required.); Engel, pp. 175-221.
 
11/1 -- Khrushchev and the Attempt to Recover Leninism
11/4 - Revolutionary Overreach: Khrushchev's Fall -- Essay #2 Due
Week's Readings: Hosking, chs. 12; Wolfe (entire speech)
 
11/8 -- The Brezhnev Era: Socialism Achieved?
11/11 -- The End of Détente and the Subsidence into Stagnation
Week's Readings: Hosking, ch. 13; Yerofeev (entire); Menshov
 
11/15 -- The Roots of "Reform Communism" and the Rise of Mikhail Gorbachev
11/18 -- Perestroika, Glasnost' andDemokratizatsiia
Week's Readings: Hosking, ch. 15; Remnick, Lenin's Tomb, chs. 2-3, 6, 8, 10-13.
 
 

The Verdict of History
(P. Kapustin 1988)
11/22 -- The Revolutions of 1989 and the Russian smuta of 1991
11/25 -- Happy Thanksgiving
Week's Readings: Remnick, Lenin's Tomb, chs. 14, 15, 19, 21-22, 24-25, 27, part IV.
 
  Week 14:
11/29 -- Yeltsin and the Revolutionary Quest for Normalcy.
12/2 - Mafiosi, Oligarchs, and the Senseless Dreams of Empire
Week's Readings: Remnick, Resurrection, chs. 1-3; 6; 9-1, Epilogue and Afterword; Kotkin, "The Rubble"; Schmemann, "How Can You Have a Bust if You Never Had a Boom."
 
12/6 - Whither Russia? -- Essay #3 Due

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