Russian Revolutionary History

Catalog description

This lecture course principally examines the writings and visual art of the Russian intelligentsia in relation to the idea of revolution (approximately from the 1820s to the 1920s). How did the intelligentsia constitute itself as the revolutionary force through its writings? What were the ways it imagined revolution, a revolutionary party, and a revolutionary people? What role did the intelligentsia play in Russian revolutionary history? And finally, how did modernization, revolution, war, and the construction of the world’s first socialist society affect the intelligentsia’s composition, political thought, literature, and art? We will examine the era’s major politico-cultural trends (Nihilism, Anarchism, Populism, Terrorism, Bolshevism, Pacifism, etc.) and readings will include works of literature (e.g. Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bely, Mayakovsky) as well as classic pieces of political writing (e.g. Herzen, Bakunin, Lenin). (HIST-HEU)