The Soviet Experiment and its Aftermath

Description

This is a course about Soviet Communism, the greatest social experiment in the history of humankind—from its utopian origins in Marxist ideology and violent beginning in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 through to its collapse in 1991 and the legacies that it left behind. Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks pursued a lofty goal: they wanted to push Russia and the world onto what Marx and Engels said was to be the next stage of historical development: a society in which there will be no social injustice, no rich and no poor, where everyone will have equal rights and prosper by working freely and happily for the benefit of all. Was this goal ever achievable? Why did the road to Communist paradise have to go through the hell of totalitarianism and the Gulags? Could the experiment be saved after Stalin? Why did the Soviet colossus crumble so swiftly under Gorbachev? Was the end of the Communist rule in the Soviet Union predetermined? Together we will look for answers to these crucial questions.

The first part of the course will examine the beginnings of Soviet Communism, its roots in the ideology of Marxism and the causes of Bolshevik victory in the revolution 1917 and the Civil War that followed. We will also investigate the experimental nature of Bolshevik transformation of the Soviet society in the 1920s.

The second part of the course will focus on the roots of Stalinism and what many historians regard as a second revolution orchestrated by Stalin in 1929-1934 in which Soviet Russia was industrialized at an enormous human cost. We will examine Russia’s darkest hour of terror in 1936-38 and consider why and how Stalin’s economic and political machine was vindicated by Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II and what this victory meant for the Soviet Union and the rest of the world.

The third part will cover the period from 1953 to 1991 during which a succession of Soviet rulers attempted to rescue and relaunch the experiment compromised by totalitarian terror. We will examine Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation and policy of peaceful coexistence with the capitalist West. Among other things, we will look at the space race and other Cold War competitions between the superpowers. This section will conclude with an examination of how Gorbachev attempted to breathe life into the stagnating regime in the late 1980s and why instead of reviving the USSR, his reforms ended with the collapse of the Soviet empire and of the entire Soviet experiment.

Part four will trace the years of post-Soviet transition in which Russia has been trying to recover from 74 years of Communist rule. How do Soviet legacies continue to haunt Russia to this day?