| Course ID: | RUSS 2050. 3 hours. |
| Course Title: | 20th-Century Russian Culture: The Soviet Experiment and its Aftermath |
Course
Description: | Russian culture in the twentieth century. Examines both high culture (literature, art, architecture, classical music) and low or popular culture (film, popular music, various aspects of daily life) within the framework of the historical and political development of the period. No knowledge of Russian required. |
| Oasis Title: | 20th-Century Russian Culture |
| Grading System: | A-F (Traditional) |
|
| Course Objectives: | This interdisciplinary, multi-media course will introduce students to twentieth-
century Russian culture by examining art, literature, music and film from all
major historical periods, from the pre-Revolutionary decade through the post-
glasnost' era. Conducted in English.
The class will be discussion-oriented, with regular reading and occasional written
assignments, student oral presentations on selected topics, a mid-term exam and
a final paper. |
| Topical Outline: | (The following is a representative topical outline for RUSS 2050.)
Brief survey of Russian pre-twentieth century history and culture
The Silver Age (visual art, modernist poetry, Diagilev's Ballets russes,
music of Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, and Scriabin)
Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theater
Andrei Bely's novel "Petersburg"
Ivan Bunin's "The Gentleman from San Francisco"
The Revolution of 1917
The last Romanovs and Grigory Rasputin
Lenin
Avant-garde art (Malevich, Filonov, Tatlin)
Literature in the 1920s (Babel, Pilnyak, Bulgakov)
The filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein
Soviet-era architecture
Stalin and the purges of the 1930s
Anna Akhmatova's poem "Requiem"
The Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)
The Siege of Leningrad
The arts during WWII
Dmitry Shostakovich's Seventh ("Leningrad") Symphony
The history and design of the Moscow subway
The death of Stalin and The Thaw, Nikita Khruschev and the denunciation of the
cult of personality
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "Matryona's House"
The "Stagnation" period
The short stories of Tatyana Tolstaya
Dissidence and emigration; Sakharov
The short stories of Sergei Dovlatov
Gorbachev, perestroika and the coup of 1991
Russia during the post-glasnost' period (the 1990s)
The wars in Chechnya; the film "The Prisoner of the Mountains"
Postmodernism. The short stories of Victor Pelevin. |
| Honor Code Reference: | Students are expected to conform to the UGA Student Honor Code.
The instructor will communicate to students the required
documentation for written assignments, what constitutes
authorized assistance in course assignments and the effect
of dishonesty or unauthorized assistance upon grading. |