Sprachenübergreifend: The Soviet Union and the 'Soviet Man' - Detailseite

The course is designed as a historical introduction into Soviet history and the phenomenon of a ‘Soviet man’ (sovetskii chelovek) to be combined with Prof. Susi K. Frank course ‘(Anti)heroes of Soviet literature’. The course focuses on the phenomenon of the Soviet state and society in their dynamic historical development. Special attention would be paid to the experiences of the Civil war, collectivization, the Second World War and the ‘Cold war’ era and their influence on everyday life, gender, and images of the West. The correlations and conflicts between the Soviet and the Russian, the Soviet and the Ukrainian would be analyzed in the context of changing nationality politics of the USSR. Close-reading of the historical documents and discussing of the Soviet movies are planned as an essential part of the course.

Selected bibliography

- Beyond Totalitarianism. Stalinism and Nazism Compared, Ed. by M. Geyer, S. Fitzpatrick (Cambridge, 2008).

- Brandenberger, David: National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).

- Fascination and Enmity. Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914-1945, Ed. by M. David-Fox, P. Holquist, A. M. Martin (Pittsburgh, 2012).

- Fürst, Julianne: Stalin`s Last Generation. Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (Oxford, 2010).

- Krylova, Anna: Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Cambridge, 2010).

- Martin, Terry: The Affirmative Action Empire. Nationas and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, 2001).

- Merridale, Catherine: Ivan`s War. Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 (New York, 2006).

- Plokhy, Serhii: The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (New York, 2014).

- Simon, Gerhard: Nationalismus und Nationalitätenpolitik in der Sowjetunion. Von der totalitären Diktatur zur nachstalinistischen Gesselschaft (Baden-Baden, 1986).

- Szporluk, Roman: Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union (Stanford, 2000).

- Weiner, Amir: Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2001).

- Yekelchyk, Serhy: Stalin`s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination (Toronto, 2004).