| Unit name | Thaws and Freezes: The Soviet Union after Stalin |
|---|---|
| Unit code | RUSS20051 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Connor Doak |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Russian |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
The unit explores Soviet Russian culture of the period between two momentous events that had significance not just for the Soviet Union, but for the entire world: the death of Stalin in 1953 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. What was the impact of Stalin’s death on Russian literature and art? Why were the years under Brezhnev called “Stagnation”? How are we to imagine cultural life during Perestroika?
A major aim of this unit is to enable students to understand the close-yet-complicated relationship between political upheavals and cultural representation. Major historical events, such as the Prague Spring in 1968, will be examined as a backdrop to cultural developments. The focus is on the relationship between culture and power. We will explore a wide range of civic and cultural expression in a society that remained highly ideological and repressive, including political dissidence as exemplified by Solzhenitsyn and others versus the aesthetic dissidence manifest in 1970s underground culture.
Students will work with a range of sources that include from factual documents, such as Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” (1956) in which he denounced Stalinism, to literature, both “official” and “unofficial”, non-conformist fine art, and 1980s rock music, a particular form of youth culture that invites comparison with Western models. By doing so they will develop a sophisticated critical idiom and learn to adapt and apply it to variety of different situations and art forms.
On successful completion of this unit, a student will be able to:
1) demonstrate a high degree of understanding of the situation in the late Soviet Union, from a historical as well as a cultural point of view, and articulate this in writing
2) articulate an advanced understanding of a given work’s relationship to the historical and cultural context
3) use an appropriate critical idiom for interpreting literature and other modes of cultural production.
4) show sensitivity in working with a cultural context that is very different from their own
5) demonstrate an appropriate level of analytical skills in reading texts
6) demonstrate an appropriate level of analytical skills in reading images/film
2 Hours per week - Lecture/seminar. Lecture to be used more at the beginning of the TB.
2x 2000 words essay (50% each).
The first essay, to be written after week 6, will be on a historical topic. (ILOs 1&2)
The second essay, to be written at the end of the unit, offers students the choice between either a comparison of several texts/artworks or a broader, conceptual approach to the period as a whole. (ILOS 3,4,5,6)
Primary Texts
Evgenii Evtushenko, “Babii Yar”, “Nasledniki Stalina” (poems)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Odin den’ Ivana Denisovicha
Venedikt Erofeev, Moskva-Petushki
Dmitrii A. Prigov, Selection of short poems from Sovetskie teksty (Limbakh, 2016)
Rock music: Playlist including music from Akvarium and Kino; films ASSA, Rok
Liudmila Petrushevskaia, Vremia noch
Secondary Reading
Ronald Grigor Suny (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia. Volume 3. The Twentieth Century (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Liudmila Alekseeva, Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious and Human Rights (Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press, 1987)
Deming Brown, The Final Years of Soviet Russian Literature: Prose Fiction 1975-1991 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Mark Lipovetsky, Russian Postmodernist Fiction: Dialogue with Chaos (Armonk, N.Y.; London : M.E. Sharpe, 1999)
Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd (eds.), Russian Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
