HI 273: The History of the Soviet Union

Fall 2023 – Alexis Peri 

Examines the tumultuous history of Russia’s revolutions and its 74-year experiment with socialism. Explores the new revolutionary state’s attempt to create a utopia by re-engineering human bodies, behaviors, and beliefs, and the successes and failures of that project. Effective Fall 2018, this course cannot be taken for credit in addition to the course with the same number that was previously entitled “Russia and Its Empires Since 1900.” BU Hub Areas (Effective Fall 2018): Historical Consciousness, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.

Additional Course Materials:

Course Trailer:

Course Description: “Those who do not miss the Soviet Union have no heart. Those who want it back have no head.” This infamous statement by Vladimir Putin speaks to the USSR’s complex legacy. The Soviet Union is remembered as the first polity that attempted to build an equitable and just society under socialism. It is also remembered for its violent and authoritarian tactics. In fact, both life in the USSR and the loss of that existence were experienced as traumatic. Surveys show that,  today, most Russians, Belarusians, Kazakhs and others miss the Soviet Union. And even as Gorbachev and Yeltsin were ending the Soviet Union, most of the USSR’s constituent republics, including all of the Muslim ones—voted to preserve it. How do we explain this? What was it actually like to live in that revolutionary society? HI273 will give you a deeper understanding of these questions. After this class, you will understand why the Soviet legacy permeates global politics so deeply today.

In HI273 we will explore the Russian empire’s tumultuous 74-year experiment with socialism. We will chart how it attempted to build a utopian society through re-engineering human bodies, behaviors, and beliefs. By examining secret party documents, novels, diaries, films, jokes, and visual culture, we will immerse ourselves in the dynamics of the Bolshevik party, the experiences of ordinary people, and the centrality of violence, which thoroughly shaped Soviet society.  We will end by evaluating the successes and failures of that project.

Course Themes:

• The Soviet project as revolution, socialism, imperialism and secular religion
• the diversity of the USSR’s 30+ ethnic and religious groups; ethnic nationalism’s role in precipitating the Soviet collapse.
• the intricacy of Soviet identity and enduring Soviet nostalgia
• the central role that women, Jews, Muslims, and ethnic minorities played in building socialism

Readings Include:

• Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution
• Mikhail Bulgakov, The Heart of a Dog
• Letters from Stalingrad
• Voices from Chernobyl
• Soviet Jokes

Instructor:

• 

  Alexis Peri

  Associate Chair; Associate Professor of History