Russian Politics as Culture

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

In this course, we shall study Russia from 1855-2018 as a traditional society confronted with the challenge of modernity. Our primary source materials will be taken from some of the major works of Russian literature and cinema of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, Pudovkin, and Eisenstein, among others, will provide us with the living material through which we shall trace changes and continuities in Russian society over the last 150 years. In our post-Soviet unit, we shall pay particular attention to the role of Ukraine in the formation of modern Russian self-identity, in view of current events. We will also consider the present-day importance of the 1917 centennial.