20th-Century Russian History

3 units

In 2005, President Putin remarked that Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the major geopolitical disaster of the century. This course is a survey of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union from 1900 to the present. It covers the Imperial legacy, the several revolutions at the beginning of the century, Stalinism and de-Stalinization, retrenchment, Gorbachev's reforms and collapse, and post-Soviet developments. Emphasis will also be placed on the Soviet Union as a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual society, including relations with Chechnya and Ukraine, among other regions.