Russia and the World

Catalog description

The course surveys the relationship between modern Russia and the rest of the world from 1917 to the present. It will begin with the Bolsheviks and their dream of worldwide socialist revolution as situated in its international context, the creation and expansion of the Soviet socialist state, the onset and development of Stalin's personal despotism, the experiences and consequences of World War II, and the various postwar reforms. Special attention will be paid to the dynamics of the new socialist society, the connections between Soviet domestic and foreign policies, the economics of the cold war, Soviet orientalism, the 1991 collapse, and the legacies of Soviet empire under Putin.