Stalin and the Great Terror

9 units · Undergraduate

Intermittent: 9 units Joseph Stalin has been vilified and praised, damned and worshipped. He left behind a mixed and complex legacy. He created an industrialized modern economy in the Soviet Union and won a great and painful victory over the Nazis. At the same time, he built a police state, sent millions to labor camps, and destroyed the possibilities for socialist democracy. When he died, thousands of Soviet citizens wept at his funeral and the prisoners in the camps toasted his death. This course will examine Stalin, the man, and Stalinism, the phenomenon. Using history and film, we will explore one of the most complicated and influential dictatorships of the 20th century.