HIS554: Revolutionary Russia

This course examines Russian history from the Decembrist uprising of 1825 to Stalin's show trials and the destruction of the Old Bolsheviks in the late 1930s. After a brief survey of autocracy and orthodoxy in Old Russia and westernization under Peter the Great, students focus on the 19th and early 20th centuries, with emphasis on the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the development of the revolutionary tradition, the rise of Marxism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Civil War, Marxist-Leninist theory in practice, and Stalin's dictatorship. Special attention is given to Russian literature, with works by Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Koestler.