Denis Kozlov - Dalhousie University
Denis Kozlov Dalhousie University
Fall 2013 Department of History
Office: 3012 McCain Arts & Social Sciences
Office hours: Tuesday, Thursday, 14:00-15:00 or by appointment
Office telephone: (902) 494-6952
E-mail: denis.kozlov@dal.ca
HIST 3090/5090 // RUSN 3090
Twentieth-Century Russian History through Literature
Wednesday 12:35-15:25
MCCAIN ARTS&SS 1130
This is a seminar on the cultural and intellectual history of Russia in the twentieth century, most of which, 1917 through 1991, fell on the Soviet years. The Bolsheviks won as much by their pens as by their guns. Their revolutionary program, setting out What Is to Be Done, was titled after a novel. For them, universal literacy was a key to consciousness and a goal in itself; and in the end, the Soviet Union was supposed to be a nation of readers. This course will consider Soviet history through the prism of society’s interaction with literature. We will look at Soviet culture and politics through the eyes of an aristocratic family and a Jewish lad-turned-commissar, a New Soviet Man and a Soviet conman, a revolutionary poet who committed suicide when the Revolution was over and the wife of another poet who disappeared in Stalin’s prison camps, a youthful rebel infatuated with America, and a sceptical member of the late Soviet intelligentsia. We will think about the relationship between literature and revolution, avant-garde and socialist realism, between self, writing, and the historic epoch. Through literary texts (and, occasionally, readers’ responses to them), we will study the making of Soviet culture during the Revolution, the Civil War, the New Economic Policy, Stalin’s Great Turn, the Terror, and the Great Patriotic War. Following that, we will consider the unmaking of this culture during its late decades – the years of the so-called Thaw, Stagnation, and Reconstruction. Here we will revisit some of the old themes of the course from new standpoints: the impact and memory of World War II, the legacy of mass political violence, and the changing representations of the Revolution. We will also take up such issues as the birth and evolution of dissent, generational conflict, Western cultural imports, the city and the countryside, and the slow death of the Soviet experiment. In the course, we will read key literary texts that shaped the minds of Soviet readers, watch films, listen to sound recordings, and become familiar with some of the recent scholarship on 20th-century Russian politics, society, and culture.
Required Reading
Available at the Dalhousie University Bookstore + on the course reserve at Killam Library:
Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual
Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard
Andrei Platonov, The Foundation Pit
Lidiia Chukovskaia, Sofia Petrovna
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora
Sergei Dovlatov, The Suitcase
Handouts will be available on the course Blackboard site, under “Course Content.”
Journal articles and book chapters
Most are in print and available from electronic resources, such as JSTOR or Project MUSE. (Look up the journal’s title in the Novanet catalogue or in E-journals on the Library website ( look for the year and journal issue that you need ( locate the article in this issue).The articles, chapters, and other selections that are out of print will be available from the instructor and/or placed on reserve.
Background and Reference Readings
Ronald Grigor Suny, The Soviet Experiment (Course Reserve)
Wolfgang Kasack, Dictionary of Russian Literature since 1917 (Killam Reference Collection)
These readings may help you with contextualizing the literary developments we will discuss. The background readings are especially helpful to those students who have not taken a survey of Soviet history earlier.
Course Website on Blackboard
Access the course website through My.Dal ( Learning Resources. Some of the course materials will be there, usually under “Course Content.” Please check regularly.
Course Grade
Participation: 35%
Two written reviews of the readings and/or films: 3-4 pp. and 7.5% each
Oral presentation: 10%
Final paper: Undergraduate students: 15-25 pp., 40%. Graduate students: 25-30 pp., 40%
Evaluation of Graduate Students’ Coursework, Including Participation
Please consult the evaluation criteria as specified in the History Department’s Graduate Handbook (Section VIII):
Course Requirements
As a seminar, this course is based primarily on your contribution to the discussion as well as on your written work. Therefore, the assigned readings, attendance, and participation are mandatory. Your incorporation of suggested readings into the discussion and written assignments, while not required, is a major plus.
In addition, there are the following requirements:
Oral presentation:
You are to make one oral presentation in the course. Choose a writer and/or a particular book from the suggested readings or consult with me in advance about other possible topics. You are free to come up with your own topic for the presentation. Your oral presentation may develop into the final research paper about a particular author/book/problem of your choice.
Written assignments:
1. Reviews
You will write two reviews, 3-4 pages each, of any two sets of weekly readings/films of your choice. Your review should summarize the major arguments of the readings and offer an informed discussion and critique of them. The reviews will be evaluated according to the following criteria: a) presentation of the argument; b) sensitive reading of scholarly texts and primary sources, including fiction; and c) your ability to relate the readings to each other.
2. Final paper
At the end of the course, you will submit a paper on a topic of your choice. The topic needs to be discussed with me and approved in advance. The paper needs to be 15-25 pages in length (25-30 pages for graduate students) and should include additional sources and/or scholarly literature beyond the readings covered in class. Before discussing the topic with me in the middle of the course, you are expected to hand in a preliminary bibliography and outline for the paper (due Week 5). First drafts submitted no less than two weeks before the final deadline are encouraged: I will read them and will make suggestions for improvement. The final paper grade will take into account your work on the bibliography, the outline, and the first draft.
The penalty for written work submitted late is 10% of the grade per late day without prior and reasonable excuse.
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Office of Student Accessibility & Accommodation
Students may request accommodation as a result of barriers related to disability, religious obligation, or any characteristic under the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act. Students who require academic accommodation for either classroom participation or the writing of tests and exams should make their request to the Advising and Access Services Center (AASC) prior to or at the outset of the regular academic year. Please visit dal.ca/access for more information and to obtain the Request for Accommodation – Form A.
A note taker may be required as part of a student’s accommodation. There is an honorarium of $75/course/term (with some exceptions). If you are interested, please contact AASC at 494-2836 for more information.
Please note that your classroom may contain specialized accessible furniture and equipment. It is important that these items remain in the classroom, untouched, so that students who require their usage will be able to participate in the class.
Academic Integrity
All students in this class are to read and understand the policies on academic integrity and plagiarism referenced in the Policies and Student Resources sections of the academicintegrity.dal.ca website. Ignorance of such policies is no excuse for violations.
Any paper submitted by a student at Dalhousie University may be checked for originality to confirm that the student has not plagiarized from other sources. Plagiarism is considered a serious academic offence which may lead to loss of credit, suspension or expulsion from the University, or even to the revocation of a degree. It is essential that there be correct attribution of authorities from which facts and opinions have been derived. At Dalhousie there are University Regulations which deal with plagiarism and, prior to submitting any paper in a course, students should read the Policy on Intellectual Honesty contained in the Calendar or on the Online Dalhousie website. The Senate has affirmed the right of any instructor to require that student papers be submitted in both written and computer-readable format, and to submit any paper to be checked electronically for originality. As a student in this class, you are to keep an electronic copy of any paper you submit, and the course instructor may require you to submit that electronic copy on demand.
At Dalhousie University, we respect the values of academic integrity: honesty, trust, fairness, responsibility and respect. As a student, adherence to the values of academic integrity and related policies is a requirement of being part of the academic community at Dalhousie University.
What does academic integrity mean?
Academic integrity means being honest in the fulfillment of your academic responsibilities thus establishing mutual trust. Fairness is essential to the interactions of the academic community and is achieved through respect for the opinions and ideas of others. Violations of intellectual honesty are offensive to the entire academic community, not just to the individual faculty member and students in whose class an offence occurs.
How can you achieve academic integrity?
• make sure you understand Dalhousie’s policies on academic integrity
• give appropriate credit to the sources used in your assignment such as written or oral work, computer codes/programs, artistic or architectural works, scientific projects, performances, web page designs, graphical representations, diagrams, videos, and images
• Use RefWorks to keep track of your research and edit and format bibliographies in the citation style required by the instructor -
• do not download the work of another from the Internet and submit it as your own
• do not submit work that has been completed through collaboration or previously submitted for another assignment without permission from your instructor
• do not write an examination or test for someone else
• do not falsify data or lab results
[these examples should be considered only as a guide and not an exhaustive list]
What will happen if an allegation of an academic offence is made against you?
I am required to report a suspected offence. The full process is outlined in the Discipline flow chart and includes the following:
• Each Faculty has an Academic Integrity Officer (AIO) who receives allegations from instructors
• The AIO decides whether to proceed with the allegation and you will be notified of the process
• If the case proceeds, you will receive an INC (incomplete) grade until the matter is resolved
• If you are found guilty of an academic offence, a penalty will be assigned ranging from a warning to a suspension or expulsion from the University and can include a notation on your transcript, failure of the assignment or failure of the course. All penalties are academic in nature.
Where can you turn for help?
• If you are ever unsure about anything, contact me
• Academic Integrity website. Links to policies, definitions, online tutorials, tips on citing and paraphrasing
• Writing Center. Assistance with proofreading, writing styles, citations
• Dalhousie Libraries. Workshops, online tutorials, citation guides, Assignment Calculator, RefWorks
• Dalhousie Student Advocacy Service. Assists students with academic appeals and student discipline procedures.
• Senate Office. List of Academic Integrity Officers, discipline flow chart, Senate Discipline Committee
Feel free to come to my office and to contact me by e-mail
if you have any questions about the course.
Week 1. September 11
Introduction: How to Learn History through Literature? (And How to Read in a Seminar)
Week 2. September 18
Utopia, Realism, Revolution
Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done – pp. 359-386, handout
Maksim Gorky, Mother – selections. Part 1: chapters I through VIII; X, XII, XIV, and XVI
through XX. Part 2: chapters III, IV, and X through XIX.
( Read at:
Katerina Clark, Soviet Novel, 3-67
Recommended:
Igal Halfin, From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary
Russia, 85-148, DAL Electronic Resources, via Novanet
Graduate students, in addition to the above:
1. Read Mother in full
2. Igal Halfin, From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary
Russia – pp. 1-205, DAL Electronic Resources, via Novanet
Suggested additional scholarly works – possible for presentation:
Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics
of Behavior
Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature,
1861-1917
Mark Steinberg, Petersburg Fin de Siècle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.
Olga Matich, Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in the Russian Fin-de-Siècle.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
Week 3. September 25
Literature of the Russian Revolution and Civil War
Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard
Isaac Babel, Red Cavalry – selections, handout
Vladimir Mayakovsky:
Visit the website and read some of his poetry. You can also visit the English version of the website of the Mayakovsky museum in Moscow:
Recommended:
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, chs. 1-3, DAL Electronic Resources, via Novanet
Graduate students, in addition to the above:
Read Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, in full
Suggested literary and political writings/authors – possible for presentation:
Alexander Fadeev, Rout
Dmitry Furmanov, Chapaev
Aleksandr Serafimovich, The Iron Stream
Boris Pil’niak, The Naked Year
Mikhail Sholokhov, Quiet Flows the Don
Leon Trotskii, Literature and Revolution
Suggested scholarly works – possible for presentation:
Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution
Mark Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination: Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia,
1910-1925
Donald Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary
Culture in Saratov, 1917-1922
Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language
and Symbols of 1917
Week 4. October 2
NEP as Revolution Betrayed?
Mikhail Zoshchenko, Nervous People – selections, handout
Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia,”
The Journal of Modern History, vol. 65, no. 4. (Dec. 1993), 745-770, JSTOR
Graduate students, in addition to the above:
Katerina Clark, “The ‘Quiet Revolution’ in Soviet Intellectual Life,” in Russia in the Era of
NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Richard Stites (available from the instructor)
Suggested literary texts/authors – possible for presentation:
Ilya Il’f and Evgenii Petrov, Twelve Chairs
Ilya Il’f and Evgenii Petrov, The Little Golden Calf
Boris Pil’niak, Mahogany
Suggested scholarly works– possible for presentation:
Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Russia
Robert Maguire, Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920s
Alan Ball, Russia’s Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921-1929
Igal Halfin, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918-1928
Week 5. October 9 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND OUTLINE FOR THE PAPER DUE
Revolution Restaged: The Great Turn and Socialist Realism
Andrei Platonov, The Foundation Pit
Valentin Kataev, Time, Forward! – selections, handout
Katerina Clark, Soviet Novel, 91-155, 255-260
Evgenii Dobrenko, "The Disaster of Middlebrow Taste, Or, Who 'Invented' Socialist
Realism?" in Socialist Realism without Shores, ed. Thomas Lahusen and Evgenii Dobrenko (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 135-64, handout
Graduate students, in addition to the above:
Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization chs. 2-6
(pp. 72-279), DAL Electronic Resources, via Novanet
Suggested literary texts/authors – possible for presentation:
Fedor Gladkov, Cement
Suggested scholarly works– possible for presentation:
Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture \
of Peasant Resistance
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village
after Collectivization
Lewis Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity
Week 6. October 16
The Great Terror: Human Experiences and Varieties of Writing
Lidiia Chukovskaia, Sofia Petrovna
Arkadii Gaidar, Tale of the Military Secret
Nadezhda Mandelshtam, memoirs – in The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader,
ed. Clarence Brown ( “A May Night,” “Last Letter” (pp. 403-412), handout
FILM: Burnt by the Sun (Nikita Mikhalkov, 1994) – Time and place TBA
Graduate students, in addition to the above:
Jochen Hellbeck, “Working, Struggling, Becoming: Stalin-Era Autobiographical
Texts,” Russian Review, Vol. 60, No. 3. (Jul., 2001), 340-359, JSTOR
Suggested literary texts/authors – possible for presentation:
Anna Akhmatova, Requiem:
Suggested scholarly works– possible for presentation:
Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia
Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements
Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing A Diary under Stalin, DAL
Electronic Resources
Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Signals from Below: Soviet Letters of Denunciation of the 1930s,”
The Journal of Modern History 68, no. 4 (Dec. 1996), 831-866, JSTOR
Sheila Fitzpatrick, “How the Mice Buried the Cat: Scenes from the Great Purges of 1937
in the Russian Provinces,” Russian Review 52, no. 3 (1993), 299-320, JSTOR
J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction
of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939 (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1999)
Terry Martin, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” The Journal of Modern History,
vol. 70, no. 4 (1998): 813-61
Week 7. October 23
War and Postwar
Viktor Nekrasov, Front-Line Stalingrad, selections, handout
Elena Zubkova, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments – pp. 3-39, 74-98,
101-108, 117-148 – handout
Watch the film: The Cossacks of Kuban (Ivan Pyr’ev, 1950)
Graduate students, in addition to the above (and strongly suggested for undergraduate students):
Clark, Soviet Novel, 159-209
Suggested literary texts/authors – possible for presentation:
Vasilii Azhaev, Far From Moscow
Anatolii Kuznetsov, Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel
Suggested scholarly works– possible for presentation:
Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
Thomas Lahusen, How Life Writes the Book: Real Socialism and Socialist Realism
in Stalin's Russia
Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate
of the Bolshevik Revolution
Karel Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under the Nazi Rule
Week 8. October 30
After Stalin: Thaw, Youth, West?
Vasilii Aksenov, Starry Ticket – selections, handout
Denis Kozlov and Eleonory Gilburd, “The Thaw as an Event in Russian History,” in Kozlov and
Gilburd, eds., The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture during the 1950s and 1960s (University of Toronto Press, 2013) – handout
Oksana Bulgakowa, “Cine-Weathers: Soviet Thaw Cinema in the International Context,” in
Kozlov and Gilburd, eds., The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture during the 1950s and 1960s – handout
Watch the film: Nine Days of One Year (Mikhail Romm, 1962)
Graduate students, in addition to the above:
Clark, Soviet Novel, 210-233
Suggested literary texts/authors – possible for presentation:
Ilya Ehrenburg, The Thaw
Vladimir Dudintsev, Not by Bread Alone (1956)
Anatolii Gladilin, The Making and Unmaking of a Soviet Writer: My Story of the "Young
prose" of the Sixties and After
Suggested scholarly works and memoirs – possible for presentation:
Liudmilla Alekseeva, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the
Khrushchev Era, ed. Polly Jones
Grigorii Svirskii, A History of Post-war Soviet Writing: the Literature of
Moral Opposition
William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
Week 9. November 6
Revisiting the Soviet Past: Terror and Revolution
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Denis Kozlov, “Remembering and Explaining the Terror during the Thaw: Soviet Readers of
Ehrenburg and Solzhenitsyn in the 1960s,” in Kozlov and Gilburd, eds., The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture during the 1950s and 1960s – handout
Suggested literary texts/authors – possible for presentation:
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
Evgeniia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind
Iurii Trifonov, House on the Embankment
Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales
Ilya Ehrenburg, Memoirs (People, Years, Life) – note the role of the terror in the book
Suggested scholarly works– possible for presentation:
Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia
Leona Toker, Return from the Archipelago: Narratives of Gulag Survivors
Miriam Dobson, Khrushchev's Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of
Reform After Stalin
Polly Jones, Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union,
1953-1970
Denis Kozlov, The Readers of Novyi Mir: Coming to Terms with the Stalinist Past
Week 10. November 13
The Past as Redemption: War, Village, Empire, Memory
Bulat Okudzhava – Good-bye, Schoolboy! – handout
Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora
Watch the film: The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovskii, 1974):
Bulat Okudzhava – listen to the recordings of his songs and read some of the lyrics:
Lyrics:
Lyrics:
Lyrics:
Short article and recordings:
Recordings (MP3):
Graduate students, in addition to the above:
Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, 234-250
Suggested literary texts/authors – possible for presentation:
Vasilii Grossman, Life and Fate
Vasil’ Bykov (Vasil Bykau), The Ordeal
Suggested scholarly works – possible for presentation:
Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia
Yitzhak Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State,
1953-1991
Kathleen Parthé, Russian Village Prose: The Radiant Past
Gerald S. Smith, Songs to Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetr and Soviet "Mass" Song
Rachel Platonov, Singing the Self: Guitar Poetry, Community and Identity in the Post-
Stalin Period
Week 11. November 20
The West as Salvation? No Salvation?
Eduard Limonov, It’s Me, Eddie – selections, handout
Alexei Yurchak, ch. 5 (“Imaginary West”) from Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was
No More: The Last Soviet Generation – handout
Suggested scholarly works– possible for presentation:
Kristin Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire
That Lost the Cultural Cold War
Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the
End of the Cold War
David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during
the Cold War
Joshua Rubenstein, Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg
Suggested literary texts/authors, memoirs, and journalism – possible for presentation:
Vasilii Aksenov, The Island of Crimea – selections, available from the instructor
Vasilii Aksenov, The Burn
Ilya Ehrenburg, People, Years, Life (note the role of the West in this memoir)
Viktor Nekrasov, Both Sides of the Ocean
Week 12. November 27
The Collapse and After
Sergei Dovlatov, The Suitcase
Alexei Yurchak, ch. 4 (“Living ‘Vnye’”) from Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was
No More: The Last Soviet Generation – handout
Il’ia Kukulin, “Alternative Social Blueprinting in Soviet Society of the 1960s and the 1970s,
or Why Left-Wing Political Practices Have Not Caught on in Contemporary Russia,” Russian Studies in History, vol. 49, no. 4 (Spring 2011): 51-92 – Dal Electronic Resources via Novanet
Graduate students, in addition to the above:
Clark, Soviet Novel, 251-253, 265-286
Kathleen E. Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR
selections (available from the instructor)
Suggested scholarly works– possible for presentation:
Vladislav Zubok, Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia
Vladimir Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power: The Post-Stalin Era
Joshua Rubenstein, Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggle for Human Rights
Suggested literary texts/authors, memoirs, and journalism – possible for presentation:
Raisa Orlova, Memoirs
Lev Kopelev, Ease My Sorrows: A Memoir
Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs
Russia at the Barricades: Eyewitness Accounts of the August 1991 Coup. Edited by
Victoria E. Bonnell, Ann Cooper, and Gregory Freidin
The following two works together:
Nikolai Shmelev, “Advances and Debts,” in The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse,
ed. Alexander Dallin and Gail Lapidus. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995, 261-270;
Nina Andreyeva, “I Cannot Forgo My Principles,” ibid., 288-295
December 3 – THE FINAL PAPERS ARE DUE
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