Soviet Society, Part III: Purges, War, and Stalin's last years

Friday, May 18th, 6pm
36 S. Wabash, Room 1440
(the office of News & Letters)

With this discussion we continue our attempt to understand the Soviet Union in terms of its underlying structural character and at the same time as it changed through history. The events of the period in question--the Spanish Revolution and Civil War, World War II, the beginings of the Cold War--offer us a chance to look at the role of the Soviet Union in its international context.

Readings:

We choose one text as a central background reading. In this case the text is fairly long, so we encourage everyone attending to look at it, but to read more carefully the sections of it that appear more interesting. It is a historical overview of the whole period in question, from the mid 1930s to the mid 1950s: Ron Suny, The Soviet Experiment "The Great Purges", "The Great Fatherland War", "The Cold War", "Late Stalinism"

Other texts discussed:
Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism
Peter Hudis, "The 1956 Hungarian Revolution with Eyes of Today"