Stalins Shadow: Soviet 1953-91

Catalog description

This course examines the evolution of the Soviet Union from Stalin's death until its collapse in 1991. Its primary focus is on the important changes that occurred in the political, cultural, and social spheres within the Soviet Union itself and in the stances that the Soviet Union adopted toward the rest of the world. The initial changes, which contemporaries described as the thaw, witnessed a liberalization that culminated in an explicit denunciation of many of Stalin's policies. The course concludes with an inquiry into the Gorbachev reforms of glasnost and perestroika, which culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.