History 238
Russia: Empire to Revolution
History 238 studies the history of the Russian Empire from the eighteenth century, the height of its prominence, until the revolutions of 1917, the time of its collapse. The course considers how a European old regime developed over time, how modernity affected such a society, and how revolution occurred in it. The course also surveys imperial Russian identity, society, culture, economy, and politics---all of which imitated but also differed from the West. Finally, History 238 introduces selected primary and secondary sources from the literature of Russian history, and asks students to analyze them in both oral and written work.
Required for Purchase
Kappeler, Andreas, The Russian Empire: A Multi-Ethnic History (Longman, 2001)
Nikitenko, Aleksandr Up From Serfdom. My Childhood and Youth in Russia, 1804-1824 (Helen Jacobson, tr.; Peter Kolchin, for.) (Yale, 2001 )
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time (Random House, 1992)
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons (Norton; orig. published 1862)
S.A. Smith, The Russian Revolution. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2002)
Required ERes (course code wcis238) [also available on Blackboard]:
THE LIBRARY SITE LISTS THE TITLES THAT ARE IN BOLD
1)Daniel Field, "The Year of Jubilee," in Ekloff, Bushnell, Zakharova, Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881 (Indiana, 1994): 40-57
2)Vsevolod Krestovsky, from The Slums of St. Petersburg: A Book about the Hungry and Well-Fed (1864); no author, from How The Russian Gave It Hot to a German (1869), Fedor Ivan’ich Kuz’ma, Oh Those Yaroslavites, What a Fine Folk!; and no author, from The Slums of the Female Heart (1870) in James von Geldern and Louise MacReynolds, Entertaining Tsarist Russia (Indiana, 1998): 121-48
3)Vera Figner, from Memoirs of a Revolutionist in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters (Knopf, 1975), pp.1-58 Pt A and Pt B
4)Paul R.Gregory, "Economic Growth and Development of Tsarist Russia" in Before Command. An Economic History of Russia (Princeton, 1994), pp.14-36
5)T.H. von Laue, “A Secret Memorandum of Sergei Witte on the Industrialization of Imperial Russia,” Journal of Modern History 26, no.1, March 1954, pp. 60-74
6)Francis W. Wcislo, "Witte, Memory, and the 1905 Revolution: A Reinterpretation of the Witte Memoirs," Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 8, no. 2, December 1995: 166-78
7)Reginald E.Zelnik (ed.), from A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia. The Autobiography of Semën Ivanovich Kanatchikov
Pt A and Pt B
8)Programs of Russian Political Parties in Basil Dmytryshyn (ed.), Imperial Russia
9)Louise McReynolds, “Commercializing the Legitimate Stage,” in Russia at Play. Leisure Activities at the End of the Tsarist Era (Cornell, 2003), pp.45-75
10)Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia Chap 3: Childhood/Chap 7: Infanticide
11)Michael Ignatieff, The Russian Album, pp. 20-65 Mother and Daughter and Father and Son
Course Requirements
1)format: Lectures and tutorials, as scheduled below. Attendance is expected; participation is assessed.
2)readings: Books should be purchased. Reserve reading is on ERes http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/heard/finding1.shtml or OAK Blackboard http://www.vanderbilt.edu/oak/. Texts should be downloaded.
3)written electronic tutorial: Twelve lecture days have been allocated to tutorial discussion (expanded seminar; first-year law class, discussions focused upon particular readings and their analysis). Each tutorial has a reading and a general question associated with it in the syllabus. All students are required to write responses to tutorial questions on Blackboard. All course members are urged to read the responses posted by others; this accumulated record will be the best measure of excellent through poor work. I will read these responses as well; my overall assessment of your work will figure into a grade for class participation, at the midterm and final. These are reading responses, not draft essays. Feel comfortable writing a response, but be aware that quality will vary. High quality will influence the general success of the course, and be assessed accordingly. Class participation will account for 15% of the course grade. The minimal requirement for an A in this category is 10 entries.
4)essays: two; write one from group a, and one from group b:
a)Essay I (5 pages) expands the tutorial response for Nikitenko’s memoir, Up from Serfdom, or Mikhail Lomonosov’s A Hero of Our Time, due 9/22
b)Essay II, a review of S.A. Smith, The Russian Revolution. A Very Short Introduction, due 12/6
5)examinations: typed take-home midterm (10/25-10/29) and comprehensive final, drawn from lectures and especially tutorials. The final will be distributed on the last day of class and due at the later of the two scheduled examinations for this course.
6)honor code and dishonesty/plagiarism: Plagiarism, the representing of another's idea as your own, is a capital offense at Vanderbilt University. It is punishable under the Honor Code by sentences that include expulsion. See especially chapter 8 of the Student Handbook. Both print and especially consulted electronic resources are included. When in doubt about using a source, footnote it, and allow the reader to assess the quality of your choice. Failure to footnote the source is concealment of its use, i.e., plagiarism.
7)grading and late policy: essay I, 15%; midterm takehome, 20%; essay II, 15%; final exam, 30%, class participation, 15%. Please note the backloading of grade weight.
PLEASE NOTE: All course members have three late days to use at their discretion (all three on essay I, one day on each assignment, etc.) on essay assignments I and II. After an individual has used these days, however, late assignments will be graded down 1/2 grade (A, A-) per 24 hours. Extensions will not be considered except for grave and documented reasons. This policy does not apply to either takehome exam.
Introduction: The Eighteenth Century
Reading: Kappelar, Nikitenko, Lomonosov
8/25 lecture: Geography and History
8/27 lecture: Autocracy and the Petrine State
8/30 electronic writing tutorial: Kappeler, Intro-3. Russian Empire. How to distinguish between the noun Russia (Rossiia) and the adjective, rossiiskii, it created in the 17th century. From your reading of Kappelar, what are the distinguishing characteristics of the Russian Empire (rossiiskaia imperiia)?
9/1 lecture: Economy
19/3 lecture: Society of Estates (soslovie) in an Agrarian World of Serfdom
9/6 electronic writing tutorial Nikitenko, Up from Serfdom, 1804-1824. Characterize the world of serfdom into which Nikitenko was born and in which he grew to adulthood.
9/8-10 lecture: The Napoleonic Era and Its Long Twilight: Political Culture under Alexander I and Nicholas I (1801-1855)
9/13 electronic writing tutorial Gender and Empire. Nothing us more about a society than the way it views men and women, or constructs images of gender, i.e., the definitions of “man” and “woman” that are shaped by and reflect the mores, values, prejudices, and aspirations of the culture from which they arise. Historians of gender tell us that few places offer a better perspective to these images, and thus the society and culture from which they come, than the so-called borderlands of empire. Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time
Modern Russia and the Great Reforms: the Middle-19th Century
Reading: Turgenev, Kappelar, ERes
9/15 lecture: Significance of the Great Reform Era
9/17 lecture: The Abolition of Serfdom
9/20 electronic writing tutorial: Peasant perceptions of the abolition of serfdom? How great was this great reform in peasant eyes. Reading: ERes: Daniel Field, "The Year of Jubilee," Russia's Great Reforms: 40-57
9/22 Two Generations of the Russian Intelligentsia Essay I due
9/24 electronic writing tutorial Together with your reading of Turgenev, Fathers and Children, read one of the selections in ERes, Entertaining Tsarist Russia: 121-48. Choose one from: Vsevolod Krestovsky, from The Slums of St. Petersburg: A Book about the Hungry and Well-Fed (1864); no author, from How The Russian Gave It Hot to a German (1869), Fedor Ivan’ich Kuz’ma, Oh Those Yaroslavites, What a Fine Folk!; or no author, from The Slums of the Female Heart (1870). What are some of the prominent themes of popular culture reflected in this widely published literature?
9/27 lecture: Russian Populism
9/29 electronic writing tutorial: Discuss Evgenii Bazarov and Vera Figner to consider the reasons why radicalism and terrorism became means to political ends in the 1860s and 1870s. Why use radicalism and terrorism as means to achieve political ends? Reading: Turgenev, Fathers and Children and ERes: Vera Figner Pt A and Pt B (from Memoirs of a Revolutionist) : 1-58
Imperial Society and Culture at the End of the Long 19th Century
10/1 lecture: The Assassination of Alexander II and the First Crisis of Autocracy
10/4 lecture: Character and Extent of Russian Industrialization
10/6 electronic writing tutorial: industrial modernity in the Age of Empire. Characterize the industrial culture found in these two readings; the first is the work of an economic historian, the second a primary document from the archives of the Ministry of Finances. Readings: ERes: Paul R. Gregory, "Economic Growth and Development of Tsarist Russia" in Before Command and “A Secret Memorandum of Sergei Witte on the Industrialization of Imperial Russia" [“Report of the Minister of Finances to His Majesty on the Necessity of Formulating and thereafter Steadfastly Adhering to a Definite Program of a Commercial and Industrial Policy of the Empire (22 March 1899)”]
10/8 lecture: The Orthodox Church
10/11 electronic writing tutorial: How did the Russian Empire confront the challenge of nationalism? Kappeler, chs. 5-7
10/13 lecture: The Decline of the Hereditary Nobility?
Michael Ignatieff, The Russian Album (Viking, 1987), pp. 20-65
10/13 MidTerm Deficiencies Due
10/15 lecture: Russia’s “Middle Classes”
excerpt Louise McReynolds, “Commercializing the Legitimate Stage,” in Russia at Play. Leisure Activities at the End of the Tsarist Era (Cornell, 2003), pp.45-75
10/18 No Class October Break
10/20 lecture: Industrial Labor
10/22 electronic writing tutorial: From rural peasant to urban worker. What could be more distant from the life experience of the vast majority of our early 21st-century first world, yet few pathways in the first world of the 19th century were more worn than this path of internal migration from village to city. Characterize the experience.
Reading: ERes: A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia. The Autobiography of Semën Ivanovich Kanatchikov
10/25 electronic writing tutorial: Peasant Daily Life (Byt). Be a peasant.
Reading: ERes: Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia
TAKEHOME MIDTERM DISTRIBUTED
Ideologies, Proto-Parties, and Politics 1890-1914
10/27 lecture: Political Liberation from the Autocracy and the “All-Nation Movement”
10/29 lecture and discussion: Liberalism
reading: ERes: Program of the Russian Constitutional Democratic Party, 1905 in Programs of Political Parties, Imperial Russia
MIDTERM TAKEHOME DUE
11/1 lecture and discussion: Neo-Populism
reading: ERes: Program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1905 in Programs of Political Parties, Imperial Russia
11/3 lecture and discussion: Marxism, Social Democracy, and Bolshevism
reading: ERes: Program of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Bolshevik), August 1903 in Programs of Political Parties, Imperial Russia
The Old Regime before 1914
11/5 lecture: The Year "1905"
Reading: ERes: Wcislo, "Witte, Memory, and the 1905 Revolution”: 166-78
11/8 lecture: Defeating Revolution: Reform and Repression, 1906-1907
11/10-12 lecture: The Stolypin Coup, Bureaucratic Reform, and “Constitutional Monarchy”
11/15 electronic writing tutorial How did the Russian Empire confront national revolutions? Kappelar, ch.8-9.3
11/19 annual convention of American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, no class
11/22-26 Thanksgiving Break
The Era of War, Revolution, and Recovery, 1914-1920s
[Smith, Kappelar]
11/29 lecture: The Place of World War I in 20th-century Russian History
12/1 electronic writing tutorial: “From February to October”: From the collapse of the Romanov Dynasty to the Bolshevik Seizure of Power. Read and assess Smith, ch. 1 “From February to October” and Kappelar, 9.4
12/3 tutorial Civil War and the Making of the Bolshevik Regime. Read and assess Smith, ch.2-3
12/6 tutorial: The New Regime in the Postrevolutionary Era. Read and assess Smith, chs.4-con. and Kappelar, ch.10, Essay II due
12/8 Conclusion: writing of final exam
