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January
11 Introduction: History of the present. History and culture. Europe divided.
Reading: Lieven on Intelligentsia
13 The house that Stalin built. Reading : Remnick, Chapters 1-5.
18 “Unsocialist” Realism. Reading : Solzhenitsyn’s “Matryona’s House.”*
20 Brezhnev and the great Stagnation. Life in the “Sovok,” generational divides, social attitudes.
Reading: Remnick: Chapters 6-12.
25 Russian women’s lives. Discussion of film : Moscow does not believe in Tears.
Reading: Tatiana Tolstaya, “Women’s Lives.”*
27 The “Bards”: Galich, Okudzhava, Vysotskii.*
February
1 East or West? Solzhenitsyn vs Sakharov.
Readings: Sakharov, “The Democratic Vision.”* Solzhenitsyn: “Harvard Speech.”
3 Irony and emigration Reading : Dovlatov, The Suitcase.*
Book report due
8 Gorbachev: perestroika, glasnost and democratization
Readings: Gorbachev, “The Revolutionary Promise”*; Remnick: Chapters 13-18
10 The Influence of the Nobels: Joseph Brodsky.*
15 The gathering storm: velvet revolutions and falling walls: the cultural revolution.
17 The putsch of 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union
Remnick: Chapters 23-27, Parts IV-V.
29 Mid-term exam
March
7 The Eltsin era I: privatization and the rise of the Oligarchs.
9 Postmodernism: SotsArt; Viktor Pelevin, Omon Ra.
14 Russians, New Russians, and Rossians: Nationality and ethnicity
16 Chechnya: the challenges of a multi-confessional state.
21 Vladimir Putin: the man and the plan. Reading: Hahn: Lessons Unlearned
23 Punks and politics: Edward Limonov and Voina
Term paper due
28 The tandem: the Monarchist revival.
30 Nikita Mikhalkov: The Manifesto and The Twelve
April
4 Back to the future:Russia reverts to type?
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