Course Description
This course uses a variety of source material, including diaries, letters, memoirs, fiction, and film to examine the experience of living in a dictatorship. The primary cases featured will be the Soviet Union (1917-1991), Fascist Italy (1925-1943), Nazi Germany (1933-1945), and the communist-led governments of Eastern Europe after World War II (1948-1989).
Athena Title
Dictatorships in 20th C Europe
Pre or Corequisite
One course in HIST or POLS or INTL or WMST or RUSS or GRMN or CMLT or ENGL 1101 or ENGL 1101E or ENGL 1101S or ENGL 1102 or ENGL 1102E
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
At the end of the course, the student will be able to: Identify the defining features of dictatorial governments. Understand the limits that dictatorships have placed on individual freedom and civil and political liberties. Explain the limits of dictatorial power. Compare and contrast the major dictatorial governments of twentieth-century Europe.
Topical Outline
• State power and liberal government in nineteenth-century Europe. • The deep origins of dictatorship in twentieth-century Europe. • The impact of World War I on European governments, states, and societies. • The Bolshevik Revolution and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in Russia. • From Lenin to Stalin. • Everyday life in Stalin's Soviet Union. • The Rise of Fascism in Italy. • The Fascist Dictatorship and the concept of "totalitarianism." • The 1930s in Fascist Italy: "years of consent"? • The limits of dictatorship in Fascist Italy. • The rise of Nazism in Germany. • The Nazi dictatorship. • Active and passive consent, opposition, and resistance in Nazi Germany. • Communist dictatorships in postwar Eastern Europe. • Government crackdowns and thaws. • The impact of international relations on Eastern European dictatorships. • The "velvet revolutions" of 1989.
Syllabus