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History 61:

History and Politics of Russia: Soviet Period to the Present

Instructor: James Seaman / Fall 2015
Email: / Online, 14 weeks
Instructor webpage: / Dates: 9/7/2015 – 12/13/2015
Class webpage: / Ticket:21090

Course Description

History 61 is a survey and evaluation of the Russian Revolution followed by an analysis of the major forces which shaped the Soviet Union's political, economic, and social systems. The course also includes the collapse of the Soviet Union and the new status of former Soviet republics.

Course Structure and Requirements

This is a fully online course. In lieu of traditional classrooms, we will be spending the majority of our time online in our Saddleback College Blackboard discussion forums, analyzing weekly discussion questions which will integrate the information from the recorded lectures, textbook, novels, and online videos. If you are unfamiliar with Saddleback College’s Blackboard content management system (or have other technical supports needs), please consult Saddleback’s Student Technical Support page at I am a history instructor; I don’t have training in technical support and am therefore unable to troubleshoot any technical problems.

Formal evaluation will be determined as follows:

Participation:22.5% (45 pts)

Weekly Quizzes:27.5% (55 pts)

Paper: 25%(50 pts)

Final Exam: 25%(50 pts)

Total:200 pts

  • Participation: Most weeks there will be one discussion question found in the “Discussion Forums” link in the main menu of our course Blackboard site (Week 10 has two questions). Students are required to respond to the discussion question(s) by Friday night (this is your “initial response”). Yourinitial response(s) must be at least 150 words, and must directly address each component of the discussion question. Students are also required to respond to at least one of your fellow students’ initial responses (in each question if there are two questions). These are “participation posts.” Each participationpost must be at least 100 words in length, and must directly engage your fellow students’ initial response. Simply saying “I agree” is not engaging. Additionally, your response must help move the conversation forward by perhaps adding additional information, elaborating upon a point, asking thoughtful questions, or even respectfully disagreeing with the original post. To be perfectly clear, you are required to submit 2 posts a week: 1 initial response and 1 participation response (in Week 10 you are required to submit 4posts: 2 initial responses and 2 participation responses).
  • Weekly quizzes: Every week (except for Weeks 1, 12 and 14) there will be a quiz which will cover content from the audio lectures, readings (both textbook and novels) and videos of that week. You can take the quiz any time during the week, but it must be completed by Sunday night at 11:59 PM. You get one chance to take the quiz, and each quiz is timed, so be sure to read the quiz instructions carefully before taking it. Technical difficulties are not sufficient excuses to retake an exam.I have carefully and intentionally calculated the time necessary to take each quiz, so please don’t ask for an extension.
  • Paper: The paper will be based on prompts analyzing the two novels required for the course. It is not a research paper, and the use of any sources outside of the two novels will result in an F for the assignment. A detailed “Paper Topic Handout” will be posted in the “Course Materials” link of the main menu early in the class. It will include the prompts, as well as various instructions, tips, and information pertaining to where, when and how to submit the paper online.
  • Final exam: The final exam will be similar to the weekly quizzes, only cumulative and longer (2 hrs).

Late Policy

No late work will be accepted. All discussion posts, quizzes, and papers will be time stamped upon submission. This timestamp will be the only factor used in determining whether or not an assignment, quiz or paper was submitted on time. There are no exceptions to this rule. Since you have plenty of time to submit your posts and papers, and to take your assignments and exams, there is no excuse for turning in work late. Plan ahead and turn your work in early in to avoid any unforeseen problems that may arise during the week. Saddleback College’s Pacific time will be the only time I recognize.

Participation

Participation is 22.5% of your course grade, so it is in your best interest to be active and do well in the “Discussion Forums” from the very first week in class. If you do not post in any forum during Week 1 nor contact me and tell me why you haven’t, you may be dropped from the course. If you want to drop the course, you must do so yourself, and not rely upon my doing so for you.

Plagiarism

In short, using someone else’s words and passing them off as your own by not properly quoting and citing them is plagiarism. This is a serious academic violation, and one that is all too common in online classes. If you find yourself copying and pasting anything from a book or a webpage, you are doing something wrong. This course requires you to think critically, to read and discuss historical topics using your own analysis. If you choose to support your ideas with someone else’s, you must put those words in quotes and properly cite where you received that information. Please note that should I discover someone is copying and pasting their responses in the discussion forums on in their paper, I will file an academic dishonesty report with the Dean’s office which could lead to your expulsion from the institution. Please carefully read Saddleback College’s “Student’s Rights and Responsibilities” at (paying particular attention to section Q of the Code of Conduct).

Course Goals and Student Learning Outcomes

By the end of the semester:

  1. Students will have learned about some of the basic movements, events, and people in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.
  2. Students will have learned about the various types of historical inquiry, focusing on the differences between political, economic, social, and intellectual history.
  3. Students will have learned how to evaluate primary sources in history.
  4. Students will have learned to study history objectively, by setting aside their own political, religious, or social beliefs in the pursuit of historical understanding.
  5. Student will have learned some basic Soviet and Russian political and physical geography.

Accommodations for Students with Disabilities

This course meets the requirements set forth in the accessibility checklist and universal design grid provided by Special Services. The Web pages, video presentations, textbooks and class materials used in this course are accessible to students with disabilities.

Required Readings

Textbook:

  1. Robert Service. A History of Russia: from Tsarism to the 21-st Century. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780674034938.

Novels:

  1. Arthur Koestler. Darkness at Noon. New York: Scribner, 2006. ISBN: 9781416540267.
  2. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. New York: NAL Trade, 2009 reprint. ISBN-13: 9780451228147.

I strongly suggest you do not use editions of the required readings other than the ones listed above. I will, in part, be testing out of readings from the books above, and if you have different editions, the page numbers listed on the syllabus for your weekly readings will not correspond to your books. Also, when you write your paper, I will check your quotes using the page numbers from the novels listed above. If the citations in your paper do not correspond to the proper page numbers of the novels, I will have to assume you are fabricating them.

Schedule

Week / Topic / Readings
1
(9/7) / A. The Revolutionary Movement to 1904 / A. Text: 1-23
Novel: One Day in the Life: Introduction and Forward
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 1 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videos listed under Week 1 link.
3. Participate in theDiscussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. No quiz in Week 1.
2
(9/14) / A. Revolution, Reaction, and Reform, 1905-1914 / A. Text: 1-23
Novel: One Day in the Life: 1-21
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 2 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videoslisted under Week 2 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
3. Take Week 2 Quiz. (5 pts)
3
(9/21) / A. War and Revolution, 1914-1917 / A. Text: 24-44
Novel: One Day in the Life: 22-45
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 3 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videoslisted under Week 3 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take Week 3 Quiz. (5 pts)
Week / Topic / Readings
4
(9/28) / A. From March to November 1917 / A. Text: 45-100
Novel: One Day in the Life: 46-65
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 4 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 4 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take Week 4 Quiz. (5pts)
5
(10/5) / A. Civil War, War Communism, NEP, and the Power Struggle,1917-1927 / A. Text: 101-149
Novel: One Day in the Life: 66-93
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 5 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 5 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take Week 5 Quiz. (5 pts)
6
(10/12) / A. The Politics of Stalinism, 1928-1941 / A. Text: 150-253
Novel: One Day in the Life: 94-118
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 6 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 6 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take Week 6 Quiz. (5 pts)
7
(10/19) / A. The Great Transformation / A. Text: 150-253
Novel: One Day in the Life: 119-143
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 7 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 7 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take Week 7 Quiz. (5 pts)
Week / Topic / Readings
8
(10/26) / A. War and Reconstruction, 1941-1953 / A. Text: 254-330
Novel: One Day in the Life: 144-178
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 8 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 8 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take Week 8 Quiz. (5 pts)
9
(11/2) / A. The Khrushchev Era, 1953-1964 / A. Text: 331-375
Novel: Darkness at Noon: 1-30
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 9 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 9 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take Week 9 Quiz. (5 pts)
10
(11/9) / A. The Brezhnev Era, 1964-1982
B. The Soviet Gerontocracy, 1982-1985 / A. Text: 376-427
Novel: Darkness at Noon: 31-75
B. Text: 428-447
Novel: Darkness at Noon: 75-107
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 10 lectures and presentations that correspond to the topics above.
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 10 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (6 pts)
4. Take Week 10 Quiz. (5 pts)
11
(11/16) / A. The Gorbachev Revolution, 1985-1991 / A. Text: 448-466
Novel: Darkness at Noon: 108-168
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 11 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 11 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take Week 11 Quiz. (5 pts)
Week / Topic / Readings
12
(11/23) / A. The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990-1992 / A. Text: 467-508
Novel: Darkness at Noon: 169-216
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 12 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above..
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 12 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. No quiz.
5. Paper due in “Submit Paper Here” link by the Sunday night of Week 12 (see Paper Topic document for details). (50 pts)
13
(11/30) / A. The Yeltsin Years, 1991-1999 / A. Text: 509-546
Novel: Darkness at Noon: 216-246
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 13 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above..
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 13 link.
3. Participate in both Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take Week 13 Quiz. (5 pts)
14
(12/7) / A. The Putin Presidencies / B. Text: 547-574
Novel: Darkness at Noon: 247-273
Assignments:
1. Listen to and watch the Week 14 lecture and presentation that correspond to the topic above.
2. Watch the videos (if any) listed under Week 14 link.
3. Participate in the Discussion Forums. (3 pts)
4. Take theFinal Exam. (50 pts)