There were so many good posts and such a good array of topics this week! Besides the red star and comrades corner honorees, there were also wonderful discussions of the Stakhanovite movement and new labor laws, the building of the Great Fergana Canal, the 1936 Constitution, film, the opera, and of course, the purges…lots of purges. Certainly one of the main themes that comes from looking at all of the posts is the amazing juxtaposition of achievement and success (building the Metro, the Fergana Canal) against the trauma and tragedy of the Purges. I’m eager to see how the voting for student’s choice turns out. Have a good fall break!
Current Feature
7th Blogpost Guidelines
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This week we turn our attention to The Great Patriotic War (aka World War II) and the immediate post-war period. Please use one of the modules from 1943 or 1947 in Seventeen Moments in Soviet History on-line archive. You may also use the module on Soviet Territorial Annexations from 1939. You should consult Ch. 12 in the Freeze text. If you are writing about something specific to the war, it would be worth considering William C. Fuller’s discussion on pp. 383-392 of Freeze about the reasons for Soviet victory. You may focus on an event, a development or an individual. Your post should use (and cite) primary sources (texts, music, or images). You may also use a particular image or primary document as a focal point for your post. There’s plenty of action, drama, and complexity to keep us all engaged this week. Не шага назад!
Shockworking
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The Soviets may have completed the five-year plan in four, but I can’t make a comparable claim about this weekly edition. I’m sorry to be so late getting everything out today. The good news is I figured out how to animate the slider so you don’t have to click through the buttons anymore.
There were some terrific posts this week. I hope the tag cloud will help you find the relevant posts on the anti-religion campaign, which didn’t make it to the slider, but were quite good. We’ll talk tomorrow about the survey results and a new mechanism for identifying the student choice post.
6th Blogpost Guidelines
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Publicity poster from the USSR Pavilion on the Arctic at the 1939 World’s Fair. From Soviet Aviation (Moscow: State Art Publishers, 1939) http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&show=images&SubjectID=1936pilots&Year=1936&navi=byYear
For this week’s post, please choose a topic from the 1934, 1936 or 1939 section of Seventeen Moments of Soviet History and use it to examine the political, social, economic and cultural dynamics of the Soviet thirties. (Please save the module on “Territorial Annexations” for next week, as it is directly connected to World War II.) You should also consult second part of Ch. 11 (pp. 358-373) in the Freeze text. You may focus on an event, a development or an individual. Your post should use (and cite) primary sources (texts, music, or images). You may also use a particular image or primary document as a focal point for your post.
5th Blogpost Guidelines
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Comrades! Join us on the Collective Farm!
For this week’s post, please choose a topic in the “1929” section of Seventeen Moments of Soviet History and use it to examine the political, social, economic and cultural dynamics of the First-Five-Year Plan. You should also consult the last section of Ch. 10 in Freeze (pp. 329-340) and the first part of Ch. 11 (pp. 341-357). You may focus on an event, a development or an individual (starting with the 1929 module topics.) Your post should use (and cite) primary sources (texts, music, or images). You may also use a particular image or primary document as a focal point for your post.
If you choose “A New Way of Life” as your topic, you can incorporate insights from the film “Bed and Sofa” and related readings on the Seventeen moments site about gender relations after the revolution.
In any case, your post should help us understand the dynamics of rapid social, political, and economic restructuring in this period.
The Menshevik’s Hat
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A couple weeks ago, when we were working on the Revolution of 1905 and Cara’s “student choice” post on anti-semitism in Imperial Russia, was stimulating such good discussion, a colleague sent me a photograph of Nicholas II wearing cap like this one. He was interested in what the hat’s cockade meant, explaining that his grandfather,…
The Bolsheviks in Power
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Once again, it was tough to choose the posts for the weekly slider. This was the first week you had some flexibility in terms of whether of not you posted, and nearly everyone who submitted something made a fine contribution. Although we haven’t talked about culture much in class yet, there are some fine posts…
Fourth Blog Post Guidelines
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For your fourth blog post, use the resources in Seventeen Moments of Soviet History (1921 and 1924) to examine a significant aspect of the Russian Revolution. You should also consult the Freeze text (the rest of Chapter 9 and Chapter 10). You may focus on an event, a development or an individual. Your post should…
The Revolutions of 1917
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There were some terrific posts this week and putting the slider together was fun. I tried to highlight good posts that dealt with different aspects of the revolutions of 1917. I was surprised and impressed at how well the posts fit together to present a coherent view of the turbulent times of the revolutionary era.…
Third Blog Post Guidelines
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