Hist 853
History and Security: Russia and
Central Asia
Spring 2009, 3:30-6:20, Fridays, EH 201 and Leavenworth
Professor David Stone
Office: Eisenhower 318
email: stone@ksu.edu
Phone: 532-6730
This course will survey major issues and controversies in
twentieth-century Russian, Soviet, and Central Asian history.
There is no way to cover the breadth of this field in a single
semester. As a result, this course is necessarily
selective. Given its place as part of a security studies program,
I have chosen to emphasize those historical issues most relevant to
contemporary issues of national and international security, including
revolutionary ideology, ethnic and national strife, state- and
nation-building, state collapse, and forms and processes of
authoritarianism.
No previous background in Russian history is assumed. That said,
you will be reading in-depth monographs that do require a certain level
of background knowledge. I recommend reading the Soviet and
post-Soviet chapters of a good undergraduate textbook on Russian
history within the first week of the course to provide
background. Good possibilities would be the relevant chapters of
Riasanovsky's (now Riasanovsky and Steinberg's) History of Russia or MacKenzie and
Curran's A History of Russia, the
Soviet Union, and Beyond. For treatments of Soviet history
alone, try McClellan's Russia: The
Soviet Period and After, Moss' A
History of Russia (the post-1917 volume), Thompson's A Vision Unfulfilled, or
Treadgold's Twentieth-Century
Russia.
You will also need a good basic understanding of Marxism.
Class meetings will be discussion-based, and involve occasional
presentations by members of the class. As you should expect in a
graduate history course, the reading load is heavy and important.
Make every effort to keep up with it and not to miss class meetings.
Your grade will be based on class participation and on one long and two
very short papers. The short papers will be 500-word reviews of
books OUTSIDE the usual course readings and chosen from a list
distributed by the instructor. Your reviews will be distributed
to the rest of the class as well.
The longer paper of 25 pages will be an exploration of the
historiography of a particular issue in Russian / Soviet history.
I will discuss the nature and expectations involved in this assignment
further in class.
BOOKS:
Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization
and the Collapse of the Soviet State (ISBN 052100148X)
Brown, The Gorbachev Factor
(ISBN 0192880527)
Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian
Nationalism and the Soviet State (ISBN 0674004388)
Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik
Revolution (ISBN 0195026977)
Colton, Yeltsin: A Life
(046501271X)
English, Russia and the Idea of the
West (ISBN 0231110596)
Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed
(ISBN 0700608990)
Hanson, Rise and Fall of the Soviet
Economy (ISBN 0582299586)
Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire
(ISBN 0801486777)
Pipes, The Russian Revolution
(ISBN 0679736603)
Roy, The New Central Asia
(ISBN 0814775551)
Suny and Adams, Russian Revolution
and Bolshevik Victory (ISBN 0669208779)
Tompson, Khrushchev: A Political Life
(ISBN 0312163606)
Tucker, Stalin in Power (ISBN
0393308693)
Tucker, Lenin Anthology (ISBN
0393092364)--NOTE: you can quite easily find the contents of this book
elsewhere, including online for free.
We will be spending relatively little time on strictly military and
foreign policy issues. I do on occasion offer a full graduate
class in Soviet military history. As an introduction to the
subject, I modestly recommend my A
Military History of Russia (ISBN 0275985024). There is also
the pricier The Military History of
Tsarist Russia and The
Military History of the Soviet Union (Kagan & Higham, eds.)
for which I wrote the interwar chapters. I am happy to supply a
bibliography or reading list on particular topics of interest in
Russian / Soviet military history.
COURSE SCHEDULE:
January 16. Intro to class.
January 23. The February Revolution and Collapse of Tsarist
Russia. Richard Pipes, The
Russian Revolution, Chaps. 1-8; Suny and Adams, Russian Revolution and Bolshevik Victory,
pt. I.
January 30. Lenin and Leninism. Tucker, Lenin Anthology, Introduction, "What
is to be Done" "Two Tactics of Social Democracyy," and EITHER
"State
and Revolution" OR "Imperialism" (ideally, both) ; Pipes, Russian
Revolution, Chap. 9.
February 6. The October Revolution. Pipes, Russian Revolution, Chaps. 10-12;
Suny and Adams, Russian Revolution,
pts. II and III.
February 13. Approaches to Stalinism. Reading: Stephen F.
Cohen, Bukharin, esp.
Introduction and Chaps. 5-9 (skim Chaps. 1-4); Moshe Lewin, Making of the Soviet System, Chaps.
4-5; Robert Tucker, Stalin in Power,
Chaps. 4-9, 11; Sheila Fitzpatrick, "New Perspectives on Stalinism,"
Russian Review (October 1986),
357-373; Fitzpatrick, "Stalin and the Making of the New Elite," Slavic Review (1979), 377-402
February 20. Nationality Policy. Reading: Yuri Slezkine, "The
USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted
Ethnic Particularism," Slavic
Review
53.2 (1994), 414-453; Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire
February 27. High Stalinism and the Purges. Reading:
Tucker, Stalin in Power,
Chaps. 12-13, 15-19; Cohen, Bukharin
and the Bolshevik Revolution, Chap. 10; *Getty, Rittersporn, and
Zemskov, "Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A
First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence," American Historical Review 98.4
(1993), 1017-50.
March 6. Soviet Union at War. Reading: Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed.
March 13. Khrushchev's Experiment. Reading: Tompson, Khrushchev; Hanson, Rise and Fall, Chaps. 1-3.
SPRING BREAK
March 27. Russian Nationalism. Reading: Brudny, Reinventing Russia.
April 3. New Thinking in Foreign Policy. Reading: Robert
English, Russia and the Idea of the
West; Brown, Gorbachev,
Chaps. 1, 7.
April 10. The Problem of Economic Reform. Reading: Hanson, Rise and Fall, Chaps. 4-8; Brown, Gorbachev, Chap. 5; Stone,
“International Investment Bank.”
April 17. Political Change. Reading: Brown, Gorbachev, Chaps. 1-4, 6; Colton, Yeltsin, Chaps. 6-7.
April 24. Nationalism and Collapse: Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization; Brown, Gorbachev, Chap. 8; Colton, Yeltsin, Chaps. 7-8.
May 1. Yeltsin and New Russia. Reading: Colton, Yeltsin, Chaps. 9-17.
May 8. Development of Central Asia. Reading: Roy, The New Central Asia.
Final papers due by close of business Thursday, May 14.