Empire, War, and Revolution in Russia

Catalog description

Survey of Russian history since the advent of modern reform following the 1861 Serf Emancipation. The course treats the failure of an increasingly outdated monarchy to cope with the rise of an influential urban educated class, and industrial work force, and Populist and Marxist revolutionary movements. The course traces the degeneration of the 1917 socialist revolution into a hardened dictatorship which, forced by conditions outside its control, waged a destructive but victorious war, saving Europe from Nazism. It treats the 1991 Soviet collapse and the challenges and failures of the post-Stalin and post-Soviet periods.