Var. of Dissent in E. Europe

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This course examines the history of political dissent and popular resistance in Eastern Europe. Beginning in the early 19th century with the movements of national liberation, it explores the ideas, values, emotions, and aims that fueled revolutionary action and tracks their evolution over two centuries of history. We shall also consider the different strategies of resistance adopted by political non-conformists—everything from armed revolt to strike action, civil disobedience, and forms of nonviolent resistance, including literary and symbolic protest, foot-dragging, and other so-called “weapons of the weak.” Finally, we shall investigate moments of revolutionary outburst when ideology, strategy, and history intersected to radically shift the path of historical development of Eastern Europe peoples, moments such as the Spring of Nations, the January Uprising, the Hungarian Revolution, the Solidarity movement, the events of 1989, and the color revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan.