ANGELS OF DEATH: RUSSIAN UNDER LENIN AND STALIN
FALL 2008
Bob Weinberg
Trotter 218
328-8133
Office Hours:
Monday 1-3
Wednesday 1-3
By Appointment
This first-year seminar focuses on the history of Russia from the Revolution of 1917
through the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. Particular attention is paid to assessing the
impact of Lenin and Stalin on developments after 1917 and the interplay among
socioeconomic, gender, cultural, and ideological currents. We explore the significance of
the socialist experiment and try to explain how and why the Stalinist dictatorship
emerged. Topics focus on the Bolshevik seizure of power, the cultural dreams of
revolutionaries, the struggle to succeed Lenin, the rise of Stalin, the cult of personality,
collectivization and industrialization, the purges, and women’s emancipation. Course
materials include monographs, documents, memoirs, and films.
As a Writing Course, the seminar will devote special attention to developing your
expository and analytical skills as a writer. The seminar will focus on developing,
organizing, revising, and editing your papers and will help you to identify a thesis,
develop an argument, and analyze evidence to support your thesis.
Course Requirements
Attendance and active participation
Four six-page papers (two are revised)
Final Exam
Papers are due on these dates:
September 19
October 10
November 7
December 5
Revised papers are due ten days after I hand back the first version of the essays.
I have placed the following books on course reserve for students who desire more
background reading:
Gregory Freeze, ed., Russia: A History
Geoffrey Hosking, The First Socialist Society
Robert Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia
Ronald Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States
John Thompson, A Vision Unfulfilled: Russia and the Soviet Union in the Twentieth
Century
I also recommend that you peruse the following websites for your own edification and
enjoyment:
Communal Living in Russia: A Virtual Museum of Soviet Everyday Life
http://kommunalka.colgate.edu/ Site devoted to apartment life in the Soviet Union.
Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps
http://www.gulaghistory.org Site devoted to history of the gulag.
Lenin Mausoleum: A History in Photos http://www.aha.ru/~mausoleu
Site devoted to the history of the mausoleum. Includes text, audio, and photographs,
including those of Lenin and Stalin on display. Has links to other sites devoted to Lenin
and Stalin.
Lenin Museum http://www.stel.ru/museum
Site devoted to the life of Lenin as presented in the Lenin Museum in Moscow.
Red Files: Soviet Propaganda Machine
http://www.pbs.org/redfiles/prop/stry/index.htm
A production of PBS, this website explores through texts and images the role of
propaganda in the history of the Soviet Union.
REENIC: Russian and East European Network Information Center
http://reenic.utexas.edu/reenic/index.html
A website from the University of Texas at Austin that provides an exhaustive list of
websites about Russian and East European Studies.
REES Web: The World Wide Web Virtual Library for Russian & East European
Studies http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/reesweb/
The University of Pittsburgh has assembled a comprehensive website devoted to the field
of Russian and East European Studies.
Revelations from the Soviet Archives: Documents in English Translation
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/
Collection of documents and photographs from the archives of the Soviet Union from the
exhibit at the Library of Congress in 1992.
Seventeen Moments in Soviet History
http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php
A narrative history of Soviet history through an innovative use of texts, documents,
music, images, and video assembled by two professors at Michigan State University and
Carleton College.
Slavic and East European Library: Internet Resources
http://www.library.uius.edu/spx
The reference library at the University of Illinois has assembled a site devoted to internet
resources pertaining in part to the history of the Soviet Union.
Soviet Music
http://english.sovmusic.ru/
A website devoted to music written under communism. It is a collection of songs about
war, the military, patriotism, and leaders and also contains speeches and posters.
Stalinka: Digital Library of Staliniana
http://images.library.pitt.edu/s/stalinka
A digital library of texts and images about the Stalin phenomenon.
The Chairman Smiles
http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/chairman/
An on-line exhibit from the International Institute of Social History in the Netherlands
that focuses on posters from the Soviet Union, Cuba and the People’s Republic of China.
Paintings of the Gulag
http://www.jamestown.org/getman/php
Paintings of Nikolai Getman, a Hungarian who spent eight years in the gulag.
All students are expected to read the College’s policy on academic honesty and integrity
that appears in the Swarthmore College Bulletin. The work you submit must be your
own, and plagiarism will be penalized. I will submit papers suspected of violating the
College’s policy on academic honesty and integrity to the College Judiciary Committee.
Finally, unexcused absences will result in a lower final grade.
I have placed all books on course reserve and all articles/documents on Blackboard.
September 4: Introduction—Russia on the Eve of Revolution
Semen Kanatchikov, A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, pp. 1-209
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, introduction and chapter 1 (Access via
Tripod)
September 11: The Year of Revolutions
Mark Steinberg, ed., Voices of Revolution
Ronald Suny, “Revising the Old Story: The 1917 Revolution in Light of New Sources”
BB
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, chapter 2 (Access via Tripod)
September 18: The Crucible of the Revolution—Civil War and War Communism
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, chapter 3 (Access via Tripod)
Leon Trotsky, “Peculiarities of Russia’s Development” BB
Stephen Cohen, “Scholarly Missions: Sovietology as a Vocation” BB
Alexandra Kollontai, “The Family and the Communist State” and “Make Way for
Winged Eros” BB
P. Vinogradskaia, “The `Winged Eros’ of Comrade Kollontai” BB
Paul Avrich, “The Crisis of War Communism” BB
The Tenth Party Congress BB
Moshe Lewin, “A Dictatorship in the Void” and “Lenin’s Testament” BB
Watch The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (78
minutes)
September 25: The Quiet Before the Storm—NEP and the Rise of Stalin
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, chapter 4 (Access via Tripod)
Stephen Cohen, “Bolshevism and Stalinism” BB
Handouts (Please read in order)
October 2: The Revolution in Literature
Fedor Gladkov, Cement
Watch Bed and Sofa (75 minutes)
October 9 (Reschedule): The Revolution from Above--Collectivization
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, chapter 5 (Access via Tripod)
Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Cultural Revolution as Class War” BB
Lev Kopelev, The Education of a True Believer BB
Alec Nove “Was Stalin Necessary?” BB
Lynne Viola, “Babi’ Bunty and Peasant Women’s Protest during Collectivization” BB
Handouts (Please read in order)
Watch Happiness (65 minutes)
October 23: The Revolution from Above --Industrialization
John Scott, Behind the Urals
October 30: The Revolution and Culture
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, chapter 6 (Access via Tripod)
David Hoffmann, Stalinist Culture
Watch Man with a Movie Camera (70 minutes)
Public Lecture: Joshua Sanborn (Lafayette College) 4:30 PM
November 6: Revolutionary Cannibalism—Theoretical Approaches to the Purges
J. Arch Getty, “Afraid of Their Shadows: The Bolshevik Recourse to Terror,
1932-1938” BB
Robert Tucker, “Stalinism as Revolution from Above” BB
Amir Weiner, “Nature and Nurture in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet SocioEthnic Body in the Age of Socialism” BB
Peter Holquist, “State Violence as Technique: The Logic of Violence in Soviet
Totalitarianism” BB
November 13: The Purges—Personal Recollections
Evgeniia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind
Watch Burnt by the Sun (135 minutes)
November 20: Daily Life in the 1930s
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism
December 4: Assessing the Russian Revolution, 1917-1939
Georgii Vladimov, Faithful Ruslan