GorbachevtoPutinSovietCollapse

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course is an introduction to how and why the Soviet Union imploded in the 1980s and how that chaotic, hopeful and sometimes violent process impacted the fifteen new countries that emerged in the 1990s. We will cover the underlying forces that created an opening for reform during the transition from Brezhnev to Andropov and Gorbachev and see how reform led to revolution and collapse in late 1991. The second half of the course will cover the very different stories of how the countries that emerged from the Soviet Union experienced the transition and the first decade of independence up to 2000 and how the legacy of those times persists today. Side plots will be learning how Western Sovietology observed this in real time – what it got right and what it got wrong--and exploring the transformation of daily life and political participation from the bottom-up. Source material will include Western analysis and Soviet primary sources materials from the time as well as popular film, music and other cultural products.