These past few weeks I’ve been plugging away on finalizing my syllabus for next quarter’s history of communism. Mostly this means I’ve been re-reading various books and article, many of which I haven’t read in years.
Part of this is because I wanted to assign excerpts of longer works, but had to take the time to figure out which sections to assign. Along with that, I’ve also been making notes and coming up with questions for weekly discussions.
I’m reasonably pleased with the reading list I’ve compiled, which is reprinted below. It’s a bit heavy on elite-level sources, basically a lot of polemical texts by Communist heavyweights like Lenin, Mao and Castro, but I also have some good memoirs that capture a more popular perspective (John Scott’s recollections as an American in one of Stalin’s industrial showpieces are good, and Heda Kovály’s memoir of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia is especially heart rending and poignant). Plus, I get to make students read some great essays by Adam Michnik, a leading light of the Polish opposition/underground, and Václav Havel, the dissident playwright. On the whole, it’s a good mix.
Books available for purchase at University BookStore on the Ave:
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (the “Bible” for this course)
- Richard Pipes, Communism: A History (not very good, laden with oversimplifications, and over the top in its neo-conservative view of the Cold War — which means it serves the useful pedagogical purpose of giving students something to pick apart mercilessly)
- Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary History of Communism and the World: From Revolution to Collapse (heavy on high-level documents, but at the moment it’s about the only primary source reader of its kind … until one of my committee members publishes hers sometime in the next year or so)
- Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, To Speak the Truth: Why Washington’s ‘Cold War’ against Cuba Doesn’t End (it does a nice job of conveying how much the Cuban Revolution was oriented against American hegemony/imperialism/intervention in Latin America)
- Rae Yang, Spider Eaters (a good memoir of someone who grew up in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution and suffered its dislocations and hardships)
- Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (a nice, readable account of the decline of the Soviet Union)
Readings available to view, download and print on the internet:
- Friedrich Engels, “On Social Relations in Russia”
- Friedrich Engels, Afterword from 1894 to “On Social Relations in Russia”
- Vladimir Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?” (excerpts)
- Joseph Stalin, “Concerning the Policy of Eliminating the Kulaks as a Class”
- Joseph Stalin, “Dizzy with Success”
- • Joseph Stalin, “The Results of the First Five-Year Plan”
- “Sierra Maestra Manifesto”
- • Ludvík Vaculík, “The Two Thousand Words”
Readings available on electronic reserve:
- Vladimir Lenin, “State and Revolution” (excerpts)
- Alexandra Kollontai, “Communism and the Family” and “Prostitution and Ways of Fighting It”
- John Scott, Behind the Urals (excerpts)
- Jan Gross, “War as Revolution”
- Heda Margolius Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 (excerpts)
- Ponciano del Pino H., “Family, Culture, and ‘Revolution’: Everyday Life with Sendero Luminoso”
- Adam Michnik, “A New Evolutionism,” “Some Remarks on the Opposition and the General Situation in Poland,” “The Prague Spring Ten Years Later,” “A Lesson in Dignity,” “Maggots and Angels”
- Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”
It comes out to about 1800 pages for a ten-week course, which seems like an eminently manageable reading load, and hopefully will enable my students to keep up with the readings as we go so we can have substantive discussions each week. (I’m not overly optimistic, but I like to hope for good results.)
I’ve also tried to pin down my paper topics for the two papers in the course.
FIRST PAPER
Option 1: Compare the prescription for a Communist revolution outlined in the Communist Manifesto to the reality of the Bolshevik triumph in Russia. Did Lenin and the Bolsheviks adapt Marx to Russian conditions, or did they remain faithful to the letter and spirit of Marx’s views?
Option 2: Assess the extent to which Stalin preserved Lenin’s vision of a Bolshevik regime. Did Stalin uphold or betray Lenin’s legacy? Use the readings by Stalin and John Scott to compare Soviet rule under Stalin to the plans for a new government Lenin outlined in State and Revolution. What are the key elements of continuity and discontinuity between Lenin and Stalin?
Option 3: Compare the reactions of Anna Litveiko and Heda Margolius Kovály to the Communist takeovers in Russia and Czechoslovakia? Are their outlooks the same? What contextual factors explain their opinions of communism in 1917 and 1945-1948?
SECOND PAPER
Option 1: Compare the promises of female emancipation to the realities of women’s lives under communism. Drawing on at least two of the female authors we have encountered (Anna Litveiko, Alexandra Kollontai, Heda Margolius Kovály, Rae Yang), did women’s lives get easier or harder under communism? How did women experience life under communism differently from men?
Option 2: Compare the ways in which Sergei Eisenstein and Mikhail Kalatozov depict Russia and Cuba on the eve of revolution. What explanation do Battleship Potemkin and I Am Cuba offer for why Russians and Cubans embraced revolution and communism? How do these two Soviet-produced works of propaganda differ in their rendering of pre-revolutionary Russia and Cuba?
Option 3: Assess Rae Yang’s memoir of China’s Cultural Revolution. What was different – or the same – about “old” and “new” China? What is the special role of youth in the Cultural Revolution? What causes Yang to lose her revolutionary fervor and grow disenchanted with communism?
I may tweak the paper topics, especially the last one about Rae Yang, since I think the prompt is still a bit unfocused. I have a couple of weeks before my first class, so hopefully I’ll get around to it before then.
I’d like to get my lectures for the first week written this week, before I leave for break, just so I have everything ready to go when I return and can hit the ground running. It shouldn’t be too hard, since I’ll give a good chunk of the first day to introductory stuff — including, hopefully, showing a clip from The Simpsons of the Soviet Union returning with a vengeance — and half of the second day will be given to discussing the Manifesto (my class meets twice a week for two hours at a time, so I intend to lecture only about three hours a week). Of course, that requires me to summon the motivation to write my lectures this week, which is challenging, because I’ve been pushing myself pretty hard with various tasks the past few weeks, and mostly just want to relax before my marathon grading of seminar papers Friday afternoon/evening.
Still, I’m hoping this class turns out well, since it’s my first crack at teaching a lecture course, and I’ve put a lot more thought into it than I did for my seminar this quarter (I think some of the papers I get on Friday will be wanting, if the preliminary work I’ve seen is any indication). Plus, this class in particular is one I’ve wanted to teach since I first took an iteration of it midway through my sophomore year as an undergrad, and then took this very class my first quarter in grad school. As my adviser so aptly paraphrased Otto from The Simpsons, the feeling will be one of, “I used to ride the bus, now I drive the bus.”
Undoubtedly, those warm feelings of being handed the keys to the, uh, bus I’ve wanted to helm these many years will dissipate once I get students nagging me and all the other annoying grunt work of teaching a course.
Great syllabus! I like the combination of readings, both ideological and personal experience. This is a tough course to teach because it has to cover so much. It looks like you have a good balance and will be able to show the wide variety of communism out there. Good luck!
For a paper topic, how about: “Comrade Ho, Comrade Fidel or Uncle Karl–who had the best facial hair?”
I may have to make that an extra credit question on the final.