Tsarist and Imperial Russia
Peter W. Petschauer
Fall, 1999
Office WH 216
 Phones: 828-262-6023 (office); 264-5514 (home)
e-mail:  petschauerpw@appstate.edu
web page through student access to this class; I will tell you in class.
 

 The basic purpose of this seminar is to trace the history of what is usually called Russia from the consolidation of the Muscovite territories to the rise and fall of the Romanov dynasty.  Our concentration will be on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The text is a new effort: Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire (Harvard University Press, 1997); it is in paper.  Please also read Nadezhda Durova, Cavalry; Journals of a Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars (Indiana University Press 1988), Alexander Herzen, Childhood, Youth and Exile (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); Aleksandr Nikolaevich Engelgardt, Letters From the Country, 1872-1887, ed. and trans. Cathy A. Frierson (New York: Oxford, 1993.
 In addition to discussing the topics indicated below, please pick a topic from them and work with it to your own, your colleagues, and my satisfaction.  That is, each of you will submit a computer generated discussion/paper (in the range of 15 pages for undergraduates and 20+ for graduates) to outline your resolution.  This project may be on any Russian history topic before 1918 and be in any variety of approaches and take up any issues that you chose.  The project should show that you have searched the net for your topic, but it should definitely not show that you used the net exclusively to generate its points.  Before finalizing this project, each of you will submit to me a draft outline of it; a draft that I will carefully read, correct, and discuss with you.  Finally, each individual will do a presentation of this project’s outcome to class.  The project must not be completed when you present your topic.
 I expect, yes indeed I do! that each of us in the course reads the text and other readings before we come to class;  that is, even if I sometimes lecture/lead, this way everyone in class will find the interacting so much more pleasant and productive.  In order to help the reading, I would like for each of you, every time you come to class, to provide for me an admit card.   Please tell me on this piece of paper what you have read for this course and for your other courses since the last class.
 We will also view and comment intelligently on four films.  We will develop an appropriate list over next two weeks.
 Each person's grade will be based on contributions to class, the admit cards, her or his project, the way in which the classmates perceive each individuals' presentation, the reviews of the four films, and the awareness of Russian history each exhibits in a final exam.  We will discuss a few weeks into the semester if we also want to have a mid-term examination; and if we have one of these, and then it will of course also count toward your grade.
 
 
 

Topics:
8/19  Introductions
8/24-8/26 gathering of Lands/Ethnic Issues Raised/
  Kievans, Tatars, Novgorodians
8/31-9/2 Muscovites/Romanov Consolidation and Beginnings of State
  Consolidation
9/7  Peter I
9/9  (Convocation and Assessment Day)
9/14-9/16 German Successors/Presentations Begin
9/21-9/23 Catherine II
9/28-9/30 Paul/Drafts of Papers Due
10/5-10/7 Alexander I/Cavalry Maiden
10/12-10/14 Decembrist Revolt
10/19  Nicholas I
10/26-10/28 Karl Marx in Russia/Herzen
11/2-11/4 Alexander II and the Great Reforms
11/19-11/11 Engelgardt
11/16-11/18 Nicholas II and Stolypin/Papers Due
11/23  1905
11/30-12/2  WWI
12/7  The Great Revolution
12/9  Reading Day
12/10-15 Final Examination