2 Area of Application and Regulatory References

/ National Research University - Higher School of Economics
Saint-Petersburg, Program 030600.62 “Colonization and De-Colonization: Russian Experience in Global Context”, Bachelor program in “History”

1  Course Summary

This class is not a history of all colonialisms and colonial situations. Rather, it aims to introduce students to key questions raised by discussions of colonialism, colonization and decolonization in the second half of the 20th century and to explore specific instances of Russian imperial history in light of these concepts. The course is taught in English.

2  Area of Application and Regulatory References

This Course Program establishes minimum requirements for skills and knowledge of the student and determines the content and the forms of educational activities and reporting.

The Course Program is designed for students of Bachelor Program 030600.62 “History”, Program “History”, Course ““Colonization and Decolonization: Russian Experience in Global Context”.

The Course Program has been developed in accordance with:

·  National curriculum standard

·  Education Program 030600.62

·  University Academic Plan of the Education Program 080200.68 (approved in 2011)

3  Course Goals

As a result of the course, students

·  will be able to participate in a global conversation on the historical experience and legacies of colonialism and colonization in world and Russian history.

·  They will become familiar with major interpretative frameworks (Marxist, post-Marxist, liberal, post-colonial) of historical colonialism.

·  They will also be introduced to the main colonial projects of the Russian empire (in Siberia, Central Asia, the Far East, and the Caucasus) and will be able to discuss the applicability of these models to the Russian case.

·  Finally, they will acquire and sharpen the skills of analytically reading a contemporary source and interpreting it from a particular methodological angle.

.

4  Students' Competencies to be developed by the Course

The student is supposed to:

·  Know key terminology and major theories of colonial studies.

·  Be able to read and discuss professional literature on colonization and decolonization in English.

·  Gain skills of academic writing, presenting and discussing in English.

The Course develops the following competencies:

Competencies / NC/NRU-HSE Code / Descriptors - the learning outcomes (the indicators of achievement) / Teaching forms and methods of that contribute to the development of a competence /
Professional / СК-Б1 / Capable to conduct academic discussions in English, evaluate critically methods of historical research, gain skills necessary for presentations / Lectures, seminars, individual work, and presentations
Professional / СК-Б6 / Students gain skills of information literacy, as well as of analysis of historical research in English / Lectures, seminars, individual work, and presentations, essays
Professional / СК-Б7 / Students gain skills of individual research in the field of history / Lectures, seminars, individual work, and presentations, essays
Professional / СК-Б9 / Students gain skills of academic writing and public discussion in English, using professional terminology / Lectures, seminars, individual work, and presentations, essays
Professional / ИК – Б 2.1_2.2_2.3_2.4_2.5_2.6_4.2_4.4 – Б / Students gain skills necessary for analyzing major debates on colonialism / Lectures, seminars, individual work, and presentations, essays

5  How the Course Fits in with the Curriculum

The Course is to be based on the acquisition of the following Courses (at the bachelor level):

·  Social Anthropology

·  English

·  Theory and History of Historical Knowledge

·  Political History of Russia

·  Global and Comparative History

·  Research Seminar

The Course requires the following students' competencies and knowledge:

·  Basic knowledge of world and Russian history

·  English skills

·  Skills necessary for addressing handbooks and encyclopedia

The main provisions of the Course should be used for further studies of the following Courses:

·  Social Modern History

·  History and Sociology of Humanities

·  History of Science and Technology

·  History of Russian state

6  Course Schedule

№ / Topic / Total amount of hours / Classroom Activities / Self-Study
Lectures / Seminars / Workshops
1 / Colonization in history: typologies of colonialisms and empires / 22 / 4 / 4 / 0 / 14
2 / Contemporary theorizing of colonialism / 22 / 4 / 4 / 0 / 14
3 / Colonialism and colonization in Russian history / 100 / 20 / 20 / 0 / 60
Total / 144 / 28 / 28 / 88

7  Forms and Types of Testing

W1 / Learning Tasks / Readings / Assessment
5 / Reviews – three reviews / Requested reading / Two article reviews and one book review in English
5 / Exam / Requested reading / Written exam in English: three questions to choose from five. Duration: 90 minutes. Requirements: no less than 500 words.

7.  Grading Criteria

Individual participation and individual oral presentations

As the course is based on discussion of challenging problems with no unique answer, each student must participate in general discussion during seminars. Discussion includes:

·  Individual oral presentations.

·  Answers to the Professor’s questions addressed to the general audience.

·  Answers to the Professor’s questions addressed to a particular students.

·  Students’ questions to the professor.

·  Mutual discussion between several students.

This means not only the quantity, but the quality of discussion. The quality includes, among other things:

·  Deep and assertive analysis of the problem (related problems).

·  Ability to use productively the course’s materials and your own experience and common sense.

·  Ability to sharpen and to enhance the discussion, including the willingness to propose or to support unpopular opinions, use of logic and arguments in defending your position.

·  Professionalism of your behavior (preparedness, quality of oral speech, respect to the teacher and to your colleagues and to their input to the common work).

Final exam

Final individual exam will prove the student`s ability to write in proficient academic English, demonstrate his or her knowledge of professional literature, analyze arguments given in the literature.

8  The Course Content

Module 1

Lecture 1 (2 classes) Introduction, logistics. Imperial Typologies and Forms of Colonialism

C. Lloyd and J. Metzer, Settler Colonization and Societies in World History: Patterns and Concepts, in C. Lloyd, J. Metzer and R. Stuch, eds, Settler Economies in World History (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 1-34

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “A Tale of Three Empires: Mughals, Ottomans, and Habsburgs in a Comparative Context,” Common Knowledge 12, no. 1 (2006): 66–92.

Seminar meeting

Tom Griffiths, Ecology and Empire: Towards an Australian History of the World, in Libby Robin and Tom Griffiths, Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 1998).

Recommended literature: Edward Gibbon Wakefield, A View of the Art of Colonization (1849) (one of the key texts on colonization by a "father" of Australian colonization). Wakefield's theory of colonies became the subject of Marx's critique in the third volume of Capital (se below).

Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 33 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch33.htm

Lecture 2 (2 classes) Contemporary Theorizing of Colonialism

Patrick Wolfe, “History and Imperialism: A Century of Theory, from Marx to Postcolonialism,” The American Historical Review 102, no. 2 (April 1997): 388, doi:10.2307/2170830.

Ann Laura Stoler, “Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 01 (1989): 134–61, doi:10.1017/S0010417500015693.

Seminar meeting: Discuss Edward Said Orientalism (Praeger, 1978), Introduction and Ch. I

Recommended literature: Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Жорж Баландье, “Колониальная Ситуация: Теоретический Подход,” Ab Imperio 2013, no. 2 (2013): 29–64, doi:10.1353/imp.2013.0050; Jean-­François­ Bayart, “Postcolonial Studies: A Political Invention of Tradition?,” Ab Imperio 2013, no. 2 (2013): 65–96, doi:10.1353/imp.2013.0054.

Lecture 3. (2 classes) Colonialism and Colonization in Russian History: Siberia

Sergey Glebov, Siberian Middle Ground: Languages of Rule and Accommodation on the Siberian Frontier, in I. Gerasimov, J. Kusber, A. Semyonov (eds), Empire Speaks Out: Languages of Rationalization and Self-Description in the Russian Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2009);

Sergey Glebov, Siberian Ruptures: Dilemmas of Ethnography in an Imperial Situation, in An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR (Central European University Press, 2014), http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7829/j.ctt5hgzz6., pp. 281-310.

Seminar meeting:

A. Remnev, Sibir' v sostave Rossiiskoi imperii, M., NLO, pp. 302-330

Discuss N. Iadrintsev, Sibir' kak koloniia (selections)

Questions: Why does Iadrintsev consider Siberia to be a colony? What are the consequences of Siberia's colonial position, according to him? What are some of his historical parallels? How does Iadrintsev use ecological specificity of Siberia to forward his claims?

Recommended literature: Edward Grey, The Other Continental Empire: American Perceptions of the Russian Empire, 1776-1789, in Ab Imperio 2-2008, pp. 21-45; Jan Kusber, “Mastering the Imperial Space: The Case of Siberia; Approaches and Recent Directions of Research,” Ab Imperio, no. 4 (2008): 52–74; Anatoliy Remnev, ed., Sibir’ v sostave Rossiiskoi imperii [Siberia in the Russian Empire] (Moscow: NLO, 2009); Anatoliy Remnev, “Siberia and the Far East in the Imperial Geography of Power,” in Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, eds. J. Burbank, M. von Hagen, and A. Remnev (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), 425–453; Mark Bassin, “Inventing Siberia: Visions of the Russian East in the Early Nineteenth Century,” American Historical Review 96, no. 3 (June 1991): 763–794.

Lecture 4 Colonialism and Colonization in Russian History: Alaska, Amur region, Primor'e

Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 174-205;

A. Remnev, Rossia Dal'nego Vostoka. Imperskaia geografiia vlasti XIX- nachala XX vv. (OmGU: Omsk, 2004), pp. 199-315;

Ilya Vinkovetsky, Circumnavigation, Empire, Modernity, Race: The Impact of Round-The-World Voyages on Russia’s Imperial Consciousness, in Ab Imperio 1-2/2001, pp. 191-210.

Seminar meeting: N. Przheval'skii, Puteshestvie v Ussuriiskom krae, 1867-1869 (selections); E. Burachek, Vospominaniia zaaumurskogo moriaka (selections).

Questions: How do Przheval'skii and Burachek describe the newly acquired territories? How do they perceive Russian settlers and Chinese and native populations? Do you see any Saidian orientalism in their works? Are there any meaningful references to other colonial experiences? What are some of the differences between colonization of Siberia and the Amur and Maritime provinces? Do you think we can call the regime in the Far East "colonial"?

Lecture 5 Colonialism in Russian History: Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia, First Printing edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 45 - 79;

Alexander Morrison, Peasant Settlers and the Civilizing Mission in Russian Turkestan, 1865-1917.

Seminar: Lev Tolstoi, Khadzhi Murat.

Lecture 6 Was there Soviet Colonialism?

Terry Martin, "Affirmative Action Empire" (excerpt, ca 10 pp.)

Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union, pp. 101-144

Alexander Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1980), pp.3-67

Seminar: Stalin, Marxism i natsional'nyi vopros (1913); Mir-Said Sultan Galiev, Ibzbrannye trudy (Selections)

Lecture 7 Post-Colonialism in Post-Soviet Contexts

Forum in Ab Imperio:

A. Etkind, Dyra v kartine mira. Pochemu kolonial'nye avtory pisali o Rossii, a post-kolonial'nye net;

Sergei Ushakin, V poiskakh mesta mezhdu Stalinym i Gitlerom;

Anatoliy Remnev, Kolonial'nost', postkolonial'nost', i "istoricheskaia politika" v sovremennom Kazakhstane

(all three in Ab Imperio 1/2011. )

Seminar: I. Gerasimov, S. Glebov, M. Mogilner, “The Postimperial Meets the Postcolonial: Russian Historical Experience and the Postcolonial Moment,”Ab Imperio,no. 2 (2013): 97–135.

Module 2

Seminar meeting 1 Theories of colonization.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield, The Art of Colonization(selections, ca 30 pp.)

Karl Marx, Critique of Colonization (CH. 33 of the Capital)

Seminar meeting 2 Theories of colonialism and imperialism

Joseph Schumpeter, The Sociology of Imperialisms (Chs The Problem, Imperialism in the Absolute Monarchy, Imperialism and Capitalism)

John Hobson, Imperialism

Lenin, Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Ch. VII, Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism)

Seminar meeting 3 Colonization as a state project

A. Remnev, Sibir' v sostave Rossiiskoi imperii, pp. 42-75

Kolonizatsiia Sibiri v sviazi s obshchim pereselencheskim voprosom (St. Petersburg, 1900), Chs. 3-4

Seminar meeting 4 Analyses of Russian Colonization in post-Reform era

Willard Sunderland, Empire without Imperialism? Ambiguities of Colonization in Tsarist Russia, in Ab Imperio 2/2003, pp. 101-114

Chia Yin Hsu, A Tale of Two Railroads: “Yellow Labor,” Agrarian Colonization, and the Making of Russianness at the Far Eastern Frontier, 1890s–1910s, in Ab Imperio 3-2006, pp. 217-253

Seminar meeting 5 Pitfalls of Comparisons

Lieven, D. (1995). The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as imperial polities. Journal of Contemporary History, 30(4), pp. 607-636.

Kuzio, T. (2002). History, Memory and Nation Building in the Post-Soviet Colonial Space. Nationalities Papers, 30(2), 241-264.

Seminar meeting 6 Soviet coloniality?

M. Lipovetsky, The Poetics of ITR Discourse, in the 1960s and Today, in Ab Imperio 1-2013, pp. 109-139

Brs. Strugatsky, Trudno byt' bogom.

Seminar meeting 7 Soviet colonization

Douglas Wiener, Little Corners of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (intro, ch. 1)

Valentin Rasputin, Proshchanie s Materoi.

9  Educational Technologies

The course is built around lectures and seminars.

10  Grading Procedures

The course is based on a rather complicated method of grading.

Each class meeting will continue of two lectures and one seminar meeting. The first lecture will be devoted to the overview of the material; the second lecture will be in the form of a dialog with the students on the readings. The seminar meeting will focus specifically on a primary or secondary text with a set number of questions.

Students will be required to submit online two sets of questions for the lectures and the seminar by the morning of the day of the class meeting.

The basic grading looks as follow:

Final score =

Attendance and participation: 15%

Questions on the readings submitted online and reviews: 35%

Final exam (8 pages) on a pre-assigned topic: 50%

11  Teaching Methods and Information Provision