Prof.
Office:
McKenzie 351
Office hours: Tues. 10:15-11:30,
Thurs.
1:00 - 2:45 (or by appointment)
Telephone: 346-4857 (office); 302-9032 (home)
Email: hessler@darkwing.uoregon.edu
History
507 [Seminar] STALINISM
Mondays, 3:00-5:50
Note:
most weeks, 3:00-5:00 = undergrads and grads; 5:00-5:50 grads only
Course description:
This five-credit seminar will explore the history and historiography of
the Stalin era, a formative period in Russian, Soviet, and contemporary
European history. Like other seminars,
it has methodological as well as substantive aims; class discussions and
assignments will focus on the practice of writing history as well as on the
specific subject matter of assigned texts.
Library assignments:
The course is directed toward the production of an original seminar
paper of roughly 25 pages, due the Friday of finals week. Toward that end, students need to familiarize
themselves with the sources available in the library. For the first few weeks, this course asks you
to spend a few hours perusing a major primary source and writing up an informal
2-page response paper, due in class.
Response papers should address as many of the following questions as
possible: What was your source? If you have read only part of a bigger
source, which part? What range of topics
does this source address? For what kinds
of research topic could it be used? How
would you assess its reliability? What
questions does the source raise?
Seminar paper:
A 507 seminar ordinarily involves writing a major paper based on primary
research. My recommendation would be to
define your problem around one of the recently published document collections,
which you can find through a keyword search in the library catalog, “soviet and
sources,” limited to works in Russian published after 1990. This will bring up a huge number of document
collections. Read through the titles and
see if anything interests you! If there
are any graduate students enrolled in this course who do not read Russian, you
may want to write a historiographical essay, in which you read and discuss a
group of historical monographs and articles on a broad interpretive issue, as
against a traditional research paper devoted to resolving a narrow historical
problem. Otherwise, make sure that you
define a research project that is feasible on the basis of English-language sources
alone. The topic may concern any aspect
of Soviet history in the Stalin era.
Paper proposals:
To do enough research for your paper, you need to start reasonably
early. This is one of the reasons for
the requirement that you turn in a formal proposal for your research paper on
Nov. 1. The other reason, of course, is
that you can get some feedback at an early stage as to whether your topic is
feasible and your approach sound. For
the proposal, try to formulate your topic in terms of a historical problem,
which is to say that you should frame it in the form of a question, but also
give some sense of why this question is interesting or significant, based on
the reading that you have already done.
In addition, you should try to give a sense of how you plan to go about
answering the question (your research strategy, and, if already possible, your
hypothesis or argument). Aim for roughly
two pages. You should also append to
your proposal a preliminary bibliography of at least eight items.
Grading:
55%
Class preparation and assignments
45%
Seminar paper
Required readings (undergraduate and graduate):
Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain
Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System
Lydia Chukovskaya, Sofia Petrovna
Jan T. Gross, Revolution from Abroad
Vladislav Zubok and Constantine
Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War
History 407 course packet
Required readings (graduate students only):
Peter H. Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin
Note: All of the books are on reserve at the
library and available at the bookstore, but they are also available through
Orbis. If you want to use copies from
Orbis, make sure that you look ahead so as to order them in advance!
SYLLABUS
Mon.,
Sept. 29
Introduction; documentary film on the
life of J. V. Stalin
Mon., Oct. 6 Industrialization and urban life
Reading (with
undergrads): Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 1-237. Note:
To get through this assignment, I strongly recommend that you skip the
endnotes. Instead, just glance over them
at some point to see what kinds of sources Kotkin uses.
Reading (grads
only): Amir Weiner, “Nature, Nurture,
and Memory in a Socialist Utopia,” American
Historical Review 104, 4 (1994):
1114-1155.
Terry Martin,
“Modernization or neotraditionalism?
Ascribed nationality and Soviet primordialism,” in Sheila Fitzpatrick,
ed., Stalinism: New Directions, pp. 348-67.
Library
assignment: Peruse Pravda on microfilm. I would
suggest that you choose two or three years, including one from the early 1930s
and one from the late 1930s, and compare the character of the headlines and
coverage at these points (obviously you can’t read very many days -- try to
come up with a scheme for perusing and comparing).
Mon., Oct. 13 Collectivization, politics, and social change
Reading (with
undergraduates): Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System (New
York: Pantheon, 1985) -- choose from
among “Social Crises and Political Structures in the USSR,” pp. 3-48 [1985];
“Leninism and Bolshevism: The Test of
History and Power,” pp. 191-208 [1984]; “Society, State, and Ideology During
the First Five-Year Plan,” pp. 209-240 [1978]; “The Social Background of
Stalinism,” pp. 258-285 [1977]; and “Grappling with Stalinism,” pp. 286-314
[1985].
Lynne Viola,
“Bab’i bunty and peasant women’s protest during collectivization,” (course
packet), pp. 213-30.
J. Millar and
A. Nove, “A debate on collectivization:
Was Stalin really necessary?” (course packet).
Reading (grads
only) (assign particular works):
D’Ann Penner,
The Agrarian “Strike” of 1932-33
(Kennan Institute Occasional Paper no. 269, on reserve).
Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin, 100-80 (on
reserve or Orbis). Try to evaluate
Viola’s use of the central OGPU document.
Figure out as much as you can about resistance to collectivization from
the document.
Terry Martin,
The Affirmative Action Empire, pp.
273-308.
Library
assignment: Spend a couple of hours
perusing one of the following document collections and write up a two-page
description of this source (see note on library assignments): *********
******* ******* ***-****-****, ********
********* *******, ********* ******* *
1929-1930, *************** * ******** ******..
Mon., Oct. 20 Terror and subjectivity
Reading (with
undergrads): Lydia Chukovskaya, Sofia Petrovna
Robert W.
Thurston, “Fear and Belief in the USSR’s ‘Great Terror’: Response to Arrest, 1935-1939”; reply by
Robert Conquest, “What is Terror?”; rebuttal by Thurston (course packet).
Reading (grads
only): Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 280-354.
Jochen
Hellbeck, “Fashioning the Stalinist Soul:
The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi (1931-1939),” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 44, 3 (1996): 344-73.
Oleg
Khlevniuk, *********: ********* ************ ****** (Peruse
conclusion and chapter 5). In English,
you may also want to read his “Objectives of the Great Terror,” in Soviet History 1917-53: Essays in Honour of R. W. Davies (Knight
reserve DK 266.S574 1995).
Library
assignment: No written assignment, but
come to class prepared to talk about possible paper topics in connection with
one or more document collections.
Mon., Oct. 27
Reading (grads
only) Peter H. Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin,
pp. 1-298.
Research paper
proposal due in class.
Mon., Nov. 3 Conquest and ethnic policy
Reading (with
undergrads): Jan T. Gross, Revolution from Abroad
Reading (grads
only): Terry Martin, “The Origins of
Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” Journal of
Modern History 70, 4 (1998): 813-61.
Yuri Slezkine,
“The USSR as a Communal Apartment,” Slavic
Review 53, 2 (1994): 414-52.
Mon., Nov. 10 Foreign affairs
Reading (with
undergrads): Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War
Reading (grads
only): Using book reviews, review
essays, and introductions to books, find out what the major debates on Soviet
foreign policy at the end of the war are, and be prepared to discuss the
position of Zubok and Pleshakov in relation to Vojtech Mastny, John Lewis
Gaddis (esp. his We Now Know), and
anyone else who seems important.
Mon., Nov. 17
Reading (grads
only): Peter Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice Under Stalin,
pp. 299-470.
Mon., Nov. 24
No class.
Mon., Dec. 1
No class. By
the end of the week, exchange paper drafts with at least one of your fellow
graduate students and comment on your partner’s paper.
Final papers due 4:00 p.m., Friday Dec. 12.