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Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09

Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09. Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted. Announcements . Sections – T 1-2, B124 MLB, W 3-4 1650 CHEM (Original syllabus had wrong rooms) I have a meeting during my office hour today, will probably not be back until about 3.30.

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Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09

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  1. Russian 322Russia TodayWinter Term 09 Basic Historical BackgroundStephen Kotkin,Armageddon Averted

  2. Announcements • Sections – T 1-2, B124 MLB, W 3-4 1650 CHEM(Original syllabus had wrong rooms) • I have a meeting during my office hour today, will probably not be back until about 3.30

  3. Some very basic historical background, I • Origins of Russia in Medieval Rus’, centered originally on Kiev • Medieval Rus’ overwhelmed by Tartars • Muscovite city state emerges in C14th/C15th • Romanov dynasty comes to the throne in C17th

  4. Early Rus’ (Wikipedia, modified) Khazars

  5. C10th Kievan Rus’

  6. Principalities of C11th Kievan Rus’

  7. Muscovy in 1533

  8. Some very basic historical background, II • Transformed into major continental empire by C18th, St Petersburg new capital • 1860s – reforms, late C19th Russia industrializing fast • First World War brings economic problems and exacerbates political discontent

  9. Peter the Great, His Empire and His City

  10. Some very basic historical background, III • 1917 – Bolsheviks come to power, led by Vladimir Lenin • 1920s – Soviet state becomes more and more centralized, by late 20s Stalin’s totalitarian regime in total control of country: command economy, highly supervised culture

  11. USSR in 1939

  12. Some very basic historical background, IV • Second World War – at huge cost, a great victory (some 25 million dead, Fascism defeated) • Post-war period – Soviet state’s great achievements: education, basic prosperity for all • As a result of victory in WWII gains a buffer zone of satellite states in Europe • Stalin dies in 1953, period of relative, if unstable liberalism under Khrushchev

  13. Some very basic historical background, V • Big achievements in science • Optimism, cultural controls relaxed (“thaws”) • Disaster in foreign policy (Cuban crisis) • Khrushchev falls in 1964 • Leonid Brezhnev comes to power (as General Secretary of CPSU), period of “stagnation”

  14. The Soviet Union in 1994

  15. Khrushchev, Brezhnev • Nikita Khrushchev,(1894-1971,First. Sec. CPSU,53-64) • Leonid Brezhnev (1906-82,Gen. Sec. CPSU, 64-82)

  16. Some very basic historical background, VI • Brezhnev dies in 1982 • In rapid succession Andropov and then Chernenko • New generation comes to power with the accession to position of General Secretary of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985

  17. Some very basic historical background, VII • With Gorbachev comes reform, uncertainty, and the disintegration of many long-established features of Soviet life • Glasnost’ and perestroika • August 1991 – an attempted coup, the failure of which led directly to the disintegration of the Soviet Union by the end of the year • Gorbachev replaced by Boris Yeltsin as head of new Russian state

  18. Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted Identity of the author • Stephen Kotkin, distinguished American historian (Princeton); has written and published extensively on Russia • His first major research project was on Magnitogorsk, a Urals steel town. • Provocative, original, challenges orthodoxies

  19. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • What is Kotkin’s big question? • Why did it all happen peacefully? • What are his points of comparison with the west? • Decline of major industry, responses to economic change.

  20. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • What masked the decline (and fuels the Russian economy now)?

  21. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • What did the Second World War do to the USSR (in contrast to Japan and Germany)?

  22. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • What is Kotkin’s story of the Brezhnev years (Leonid Brezhnev, 1905-1982; General Secretary of the CPSU 1966-1982) • What came after him and why?

  23. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • How does Kotkin see Gorbachev? • And why? • What is significant about Gorbachev’s background and experience?

  24. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • When the Union collapsed, what did the citizens of Russia want, according to Kotkin? • Did they get it – and if not, why not?

  25. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • Changes in the economy and politics of capitalism made it impossible for the USSR to compete • Generational change brought to power a dedicated believer, who thought he could transform the country peacefully • Soviet institutions themselves facilitated disintegration, but bloodless disintegration

  26. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • The West is wrong to claim the credit for the disintegration of the Union, and wrong to blame itself for the subsequent “failure of reform”. • Sovietologists, left and right, got it wrong (the Soviet Union could not be transformed without disintegration; the CPSU did produce a serious reform movement)

  27. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • What did we have at the beginning of the C21st (when Kotkin finished his book)? • A country still in need of many reforms, and of good government; economic struggles, but a booming metropolis; a leader who seems to understand (as his immediate predecessors did not) that Russia is not in a position to make great-power claims.

  28. Contrasting images of Russia at the beginning of the new century Top left – Japanese restaurant with view of Kremlin, Moscow; top right, family at the table, village of Koshtugi (Vologda region); bottom left, main road from Vytegra to Kargopol’ (border of Vologda and Archangel regions, October 02); bottom right, road in cottage community, near resort for members of Presidential administration, Moscow region

  29. So what happened next? • Russia puts the “R” in BRIC. • Russia’s oil and gas boom, enriching the country (even reaching beyond the elites) and giving the country new political clout. • An increasingly re-centralized, more authoritarian political structure. • More and more positive revisionism about the Soviet past, a very strong, state-encouraged, discourse of national patriotism. • Clear evidence that Russia wants to assert itself in the world again. • Government control over corporate structures and the economic elite. • Very little prospect for integration into European economic and other entities, as Kotkin suggested might help. • Russia’s political assertiveness seen regionally (Ukraine, Georgia), continentally (gas disputes, the Lugovoi affair), and globally (missiles, naval power, role in Iran, Middle East disputes, relations with USA) • Continued demographic change and population decline • Continued growth of the key cities, agricultural disintegration, decline of many provincial cities

  30. Kotkin, Armageddon Averted • And what is still, as Kotkin suggested, the most unpredictable element for the future (now not only in terms of politics, but also economics)?

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