RUSSIA AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER: HISTORY AND CHALLENGES
Carolina De Stefano, Allen Charles Lynch
Instructional goals
This course deals with Russia’s history, political culture, and its place in the world. Its main goal is to provide students with key elements to understand the roots of the current war in Ukraine.
On the one hand, the course will analyze the strong historical legacies of the Russian state and elite’s mentality since imperial times, including a specific way of looking at and perceiving the “West”. On the other hand, the lectures will identify and discuss with the students the specificities of the post-Cold War context and Putin’s domestic and foreign policy.
Prerequisites
A basic knowledge of European history is required, next to a personal interest in contemporary politics and Russia.
Intended learning outcomes
At the end of the course, students will have an essential and multidisciplinary knowledge of Russian political culture, institutions, and foreign policy, as well as of Russia's complex relation with the West and Ukraine.
These tools will be essential to interpret and understand the Ukraine War and put it in context.
Course Contents
The course will focus on three main dimensions:
1) The nature and key traits of the Russian state (geography, elite and political culture, institutions) from imperial times to nowadays
2) The evolution of interethnic relations in the Russian and Soviet multiethnic society, and its impact on today’s unresolved conflicts in the Post-Soviet space, beginning with the Donbas.
3) The relation between Russia and the West, traditionally made both of a sense of cultural proximity and fundamental misperceptions.
The course adopts an interdisciplinary approach, building on works of history, political science, and nationalities studies.
Reference Books
The course builds on a variety of reference books and chapters - as well as videos, podcasts, and primary sources for the online classes - depending on the subject of the lecture.
Also, compulsory materials include professor Lynch's recorded classes.
Teaching Methods
The course will make use of documentary excerpts, videos, podcasts, and analysis in class of primary historical sources.
Assessment Method
There will be three take-home essays, due at class time. These assignments will be analytical essays conducted on an open-book, open-notes basis. Work will be evaluated according to the following criteria: degree of command of readings and lectures, incisive and coherent analytical faculty, sound and original judgment, as well as clarity of prose. A grade between 28 and 30 denotes excellence on all counts. Please keep in mind that a grade between 23 and 27 denotes “good” performance. The first essay will count 20% toward your final grade; the second and final essays will count 40% each.
In addition, students will have the option of submitting one extra-credit essay, which will be due by 11:59 p.m. on the day of the last class and distributed one week before. If the quality of this essay is at least as good as the student’s work to date, it can result in an increase of 1 point out of 30. It will not necessarily do so.
Late work will be penalized 1 point of a grade for each day late.
Thesis assignment criteria
A proved deep interest in the subject, motivation, and regular active participation in the course.
Week 1 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Introduction. Continuity and change in Russian politics and foreign policy
READINGS:
• Kappeler, A. (2014) The Russian empire: A multi-ethnic history. Routledge, 1-33.
• Bushkovitch, P. (2011). Peter the Great. In A Concise History of Russia, Cambridge University Press, 79-100.
• Lieven, D. (1995) “The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as Imperial Polities.”, Journal of Contemporary History 30, no. 4, 607-636.
Week 2 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Historical patterns in Imperial Russia’s foreign policy
READINGS:
• Poe, M. (2003) The Russian Moment in World History, 46-57.
• Wesson, R. (1986) The Russian Dilemma: Empire, 1-28.
• Fuller, W. (1992) Peter the Great and the Advantages of Backwardness, 35-84.
• Holborn, H. (1962) Russia and the European Political System, 377-415.
Week 3 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
The Russian Revolution and the building of the Soviet State
READINGS:
• Bushkovitch, P. (2011). War and Revolution. In A Concise History of Russia, 293-317.
• Ball, A. (2006) Building A New State and Society: NEP,1921–1928. In Perrie, M., Lieven, D. C. B., & Suny, R. G. (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Russia: Volume 3, The Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, 168-191.
• Martin, T. (1999) “Borders and Ethnic Conflict: The Soviet Experiment in Ethno-Territorial Proliferation”, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, Bd. 47, H. 4, 538-555.
Week 4 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Stalinism (in domestic and foreign policy)
READINGS:
• Ulam, A. (1974) Transition: 1921-33, 126-208.
• Yakovlev, A. (2002) The Intelligentsia, 105-151.
• Kissinger, H. (1994) Stalin’s Bazaar, 332-368.
Week 5 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Destalinization and Détente
READINGS:
• Taubman, W. (2003) From the Secret Speech to the Hungarian Revolution: 1956, 270-299.
• Gaddis, J.L. (1990) From Confrontation to Negotiation, 253-294.
Week 6 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
The Gorbachev era
READINGS:
• Brown, A. (2006), “The Gorbachev Era”. In The Cambridge History of Russia, 316-351.
• Kramer, M. (2011), “The Demise of the Soviet Bloc”, The Journal of Modern History, 83, no. 4, 788-854.
• De Stefano, C. (2023). At Any Cost. Gorbachev, the National Question, and His Struggle to Prevent the Country’s Disintegration. Russian History, 49(2-4), 146-167.
Week 7 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
The Soviet collapse and Yeltsin’s Russia
READINGS:
• McFaul, M. (2006). The Russian Federation. In The Cambridge History of Russia, 352-382.
• Oxana Shevel (2011) “Russian Nation-building from Yel'tsin to Medvedev: Ethnic, Civic or Purposefully Ambiguous?”, Europe-Asia Studies, 63:2, 179-202
• Pain, E. (2001). From the First Chechen War Towards the Second. The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 8(1), 7–19.
• Smith, H. (2014). “Democratization And War: The Chechen Wars' Contribution to Failing Democratization In Russia”. Demokratizatsiya, 22(4), 627-648
Week 8 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Yeltsin and post-Soviet foreign policy: the 90s
READINGS:
• Andrei P. Tsygankov (2007) “Finding a Civilisational Idea: “West,” Eurasia,” and “Euro-East” in Russia's Foreign Policy”, Geopolitics, 12:3, 375-399
• Svetlana Savranskaya (2018) “Yeltsin and Clinton”, Diplomatic History, Volume 42, Issue 4, 564–567.
• Sergey Radchenko (2020) ‘Nothing but humiliation for Russia’: Moscow and NATO’s eastern enlargement, 1993-1995, Journal of Strategic Studies, 43:6-7, 769-815
Week 9 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
The Putin’s regime
READINGS:
• Kryshtanovskaya, O. & White, S. (2003) Putin’s Militocracy, 289-304.
• Jack, A. (2004) Towards Liberal Authoritarianism, 297-340.
• Lynch, A. (2005) Putin’s Second Term: A Report Card, 23-33.
• Lynch, A. (2021) Vladimir Putin’s Neo-Patrimonial Façade Democracy, 157-173
Week 10 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Russia, the US, and Europe under Putin
READINGS:
• Trenin, D. (2006) Russia Leaves the West, Foreign Affairs, vol. 85 (2006), 87-96.
• Stent, A. (2007) Reluctant Europeans: Three Centuries of Russian Ambivalence toward the West, 393-435.
• Lynch, A. (2016) The Influence of Regime Type on Russian Foreign Policy toward the West, 1992-2005, Communist & post-Communist Studies, vol. 49 (2016), 101-111.
Week 11 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Russia and unresolved conflicts in the post-Soviet space
READINGS:
• Kazantsev, A.A., Rutland, P. Medvedeva, S. & Safranchuk, I.A. (2020). “Russia’s policy in the “frozen conflicts” of the post-soviet space: from ethnopolitics to geopolitics”, Caucasus Survey 8, no. 2, 142-162.
• Allison, R. (2008) “Russia Resurgent? Moscow's Campaign to 'Coerce Georgia to Peace'”, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944), 84, no.6, 1145-1171.
Week 12 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Russia and Ukraine, 2004-2022
READINGS:
• Ambrosio, T. (2007) Insulating Russia from a Colour Revolution: How the Kremlin Resists Regional Democratic Trends, Democratization, vol. 14, no. 2, 232-252.
• Lynch, A. (2014) The Russia-Ukraine Conflict.
• Mearsheimer, J. (2014) Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault: the Liberal Delusions that Provoked Putin, Foreign Affairs, vol. 93 (2014).
• Lynch, A. (2022) Explaining the Russian War in Ukraine.