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HISTORY OF THE SOVIET UNION, 1917-1991 David Brandenberger   This course traces the history of the Soviet Union from its origins in the late Russian imperial period through its collapse at the end of the twentieth century. Over the duration of the term, this course considers a variety of themes in addition to the 70-odd years narrative history, ranging from revolutionary culture and Marxist internationalism to the USSR's growing Russocentric etatism under Stalin. Pivotal questions concern the role of class, ethnicity and gender over the duration of the USSR's history; time periods like War Communism, NEP, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Fatherland War (1941-1945), the Thaw and Stagnation also add structure to the course. Controversial issues, like the Great Retreat and the rise of dissent, complement new views on the Cold War and the poorly-understood 1991 collapse.   introduction   WEEK 1: revolution and revolutionary culture Geoffrey Hosking, The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within, chapt. 1-4 Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore, 1917-1953, edited by James von Geldern and Richard Stites, 3-122 F. Gladkov, Cement WEEK 2: wax and wane of the New Economic Policy Hosking, The First Socialist Society, chap. 5 Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog Vladimir Brovkin, Russia after Lenin: politics, culture and society, 1921-1929 (New York, 1998) WEEK 3: cultural revolution and collectivization Hosking, The First Socialist Society, chap. 6 Mass Culture in Soviet Russia, 123-214 L. Viola, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: workers in the vanguard of Soviet collectivization, selections Miron Dolot, Execution by Hunger: the Hidden Holocaust, selections Revelations from the Russian archives: documents in English translation, edited by Diane P. Koenker and Ronald D. Bachman (Washington, D.C., 1997), selections WEEK 4: industrialization and "Speaking Bolshevik" Hosking, The First Socialist Society, chap. 7 John Scott, Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel, selections Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, 149-237 Jeffrey Rossman, "Weaver of Rebellion and Poet of Resistance: Kapiton Klepikov and Shop-Floor Opposition to Bolshevik Rule," Jahrbuecher fuer Geschichte Osteuropas vol. 44 no. 4 (1996): 374-408 WEEK 5: everyday life Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, selections Gennady Andreev-Khomiakov, Bitter Waters: Life and Work in Stalin's Russia (a memoir), selections G. Alexopoulos, "Portrait of a Con Artist as a Soviet Man," Slavic Review vol. 57 no. 4 (1998): 774-90 Mass Culture in Soviet Russia, 215-86 WEEK 6: the Great Terror Hosking, The First Socialist Society, chap. 8 Lydia Chukovskaya, Sofia Petrovna, entire Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind, selections Mass Culture in Soviet Russia, 287-332 WEEK 7: Great Retreat, Great Patriotic War Hosking, The First Socialist Society, chap. 10 film clips from Eisenstein's Aleksandr Nevskii (1938) Alexander Werth, Russia at War, pp. 175-97, 365-76, 508-33, 544-563, 687-98, 771-840, 884-99 Mass Culture in Soviet Russia, 333-410 WEEK 8: high stalinism Hosking, The First Socialist Society, chap. 11 Von Geldern and Stites, "The Postwar Era," in Mass Culture in Soviet Russia Chris Ward, Stalin's Russia, 2nd edition (London, 1999), selections Werner Hahn, Postwar Soviet politics: the fall of Zhdanov and the defeat of moderation(Ithaca, 1982), selections WEEK 9: origins of the Cold War Martin McCauley, The Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1949, 2nd edition (London, 1995) V. M. Zubok, Inside the Kremlin's cold war: from Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, 1996), selections John Lewis Gaddis, We now know: rethinking Cold War history (Oxford, 1997), selections John Young, The Longman companion to America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1941-1998, 2nd edition (New York, 1999), selections Documents on Korean War ("New Findings on Korean War", "New Russian Documents on Korean War", "Stalin's Conversations on with Chinese Leaders", "Korea 1949-1950: to attack or not to attack") WEEK 10: the "Thaw" Hosking, The First Socialist Society, chap. 12, 14 Khrushchev, "Secret Speech" in Crimes of the Stalin Era Ludmilla Alexeyeva and Paul Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Letter to the Soviet Leaders WEEK 11: everyday life, pt. 2 Hosking, The First Socialist Society, chap. 13 Natalya Baranskaya, A Week Like Any Other: Novellas and Stories, 1-62 Hedrick Smith, The Russians (New York, 1984), 135-227 WEEK 12: nationalism and the end of the USSR Hosking, The First Socialist Society, chap. 15 Roman Szporluk, "Dilemmas of Russian Nationalism," Problems of Communism (1989) Philip Roeder, "Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization," in The Soviet Nationality Reader: the disintegration in context, edited by Rachel Denber (Boulder, 1992), 147-78 Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: tombstone of Russian power (New Haven, 1999)