Examines the rise, development, and collapse of the Soviet Union, the world's first communist regime. Topics include the Russian Revolution, Stalinism, war, culture, and society.
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August 24:
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August 26:
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September 3:
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September 3:
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Expanded Course Description
This course is an introductory lecture survey of twentieth-century Russian history. The focus of the course is the Soviet period. Major topics include the causes and course of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which brought communism to power for the first time in world history; the impact of the revolution on the economy, society, and culture of Russia and the other Soviet republics in the 1920s; the societal upheavals connected with Stalin's centralization of power and attempt to build a planned economy in the early 1930s; Stalin's terror; the Soviet experience of total war and factors contributing to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany; the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower in the postwar period; political, social, and cultural shifts in the 1950s-1980s and the dissident movements; the politics of ethnicity and the differential experience of Soviet power in the non-Russian periphery; repeated failed attempts to reform the Soviet economy without jeopardizing the political system; and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. We will also briefly survey developments in contemporary Russia at the end of the course to identify ways that the Soviet experience has continued to shape the present.
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