The University of Minnesota

            HIST. 3244: HISTORY OF EASTERN EUROPE

Fall semester 2009                                                              Prof. Gary B. Cohen
                                                                                           Heller Hall 918 & Soc. Sciences 314
Office hours:                                                                        ph. 612-624-5712, or 624-3886
Tuesday & Thursday, 11:15 - 12:00 (Heller 918);                e-mail: gcohen@umn.edu
Tuesday, 1:30-2:30 (Heller 918)
and by appointment (624-3886)

The following required books are available in paperback and are recommended for purchase:

R. J. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the 20^th Century and After (Routledge)

Deborah Dwork & Robert Jan van Pelt, Holocaust: A History (Norton)

Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down (Oxford University Press)

Gale Stokes, ed., From Stalinism to Pluralism: A Documentary History, 2nd ed. (Oxford Univ. Press)

Gordon Wright, The Ordeal of Total War 1939-1945 (Waveland Press or Harper & Row)

http://eres.lib.umn.edu/eres/courseindex.aspx

Topics and Assignments for Each Class Meeting

Week 1 - Sept. 7-11: THE LEGACY OF DEPENDENCE

a) Europe's eastern borderlands: backwardness & dependence.

b) Old empires and the national movements; R. J. Crampton, Eastern Europe, pp. 1-27.

Week 2 - Sept. 14-18: THE ERA OF INDEPENDENCE AFTER 1918

b) Aspirations and realities in the interwar period; Crampton, pp. 51-94, 107-143, 152-176
           (read for concepts and trends, not for the fine details!)

Week 3 - Sept. 21-25: THE ADVANCE OF NAZI GERMANY

b) Nazi and Soviet occupation policies; Wright, pp. 107-166; Crampton, pp. 181-209; Dwork and Van Pelt, 133-201.

Week 4 - Sept. 28 - Oct 2: THE WAR-TIME ORDEAL

b) The victims in East European society; Dwork and Van Pelt, 337-386

Week 5 - Oct 5-9:  CHARTING THE POSTWAR WORLD

a) FIRST EXAMINATION, Tuesday, October 6.

b) Allied conflicts over the peace arrangements; Wright, pp. 182-254, 263-67; Stokes,

ed., From Stalinism to Pluralism, pp. 12-32.

Week 6 - Oct. 12-16: THE BEGINNING OF PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACIES

b) Communist coercion: Poland, Bulgaria, & Romania; Crampton, pp. 217-21, 225-31;
Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 33-42.

Week 7 - Oct. 19-23: THE TACTICS OF PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACY

b) International politics and Soviet calculations; Crampton, 240-260; Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 43-50, 57-65.

a) Communist consolidation: control & purges; Crampton, 261-274, Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 51-56, 66-77.

b) The new course and Khrushchev; Crampton, pp. 275-283, 308-11; Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 94-106.

Week 9 - Nov. 2-6: STALIN'S LEGACY

b) SECOND EXAMINATION, Thursday, November 5

Week 10 - Nov. 9-13: THE RETREAT FROM STALINISM

b) Contrasts: Gomulka and Kadar; Crampton, pp. 316-19, 348-50; Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 107-114, 137-138, 144-149.

a) Economic difficulties and centripetal forces; J. Lovenduski and J. Woodall, "The Implementation of Economic
Reform in Eastern Europe" (electronic reserve); Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 183-192.

b) Stagnation & reform efforts in Czechoslovakia; Crampton, pp. 319-36; H. G. Skilling, "Czechoslovakia" (electronic reserve);
Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 122-130, 150-155.

a) No class meeting, Tuesday, Nov. 24

b) Thanksgiving holiday.

a) The Soviet response and the Brezhnev doctrine; Crampton, pp. 336-48; Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 131-34;
Stokes, The Walls, pp. 3-34.

b) Poland: The Solidarity movement and the stalemate of the 1980s; Crampton, pp. 359-76; Stokes, The Walls,
pp. 34-45; Stokes, From Stalinism, 193-215; M. Malia, "Poland: The Winter War" The New York Review of Books,
March 18, 1982, pp. 21-26 (full article free online at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/6682  from within umn.edu domain; otherwise go
to electronic reserve list for this course on the U of MN Libraries website)

Week 14 - Dec 7-11 - BREZHNEV, GORBACHEV, AND THE COLLAPSE OF EAST EUROPEAN COMMUNISM

a) Immobile regimes; Crampton, pp. 352-59, 379-86; Stokes, The Walls, pp. 46-68; Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 160-180.

b) Disintegration in Poland and Hungary and the collapse of the hardliners; Crampton, pp. 391-400, 405-15;
Stokes, The Walls, pp. 68-167; Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 224-53, 289-91.

a) Hopes, fears, and the Yugoslav tragedy; Stokes, The Walls, pp. 168-260; Crampton, pp. 350-352, 386-389,
400-405, 419-458; Stokes, From Stalinism, pp. 257-58, 273-288.

b) University study day; no class meeting.

THIRD/FINAL EXAMINATION, Saturday, December 19, 1:30 pm- 3:00 pm

Class sessions will be conducted in a mixed lecture-discussion format. The readings listed for each meeting should therefore be completed before class. Please bring to class with you Gale Stokes, ed., From Stalinism to Pluralism, whenever there is an assignment in that book, since the class will discuss the documents and articles in that collection. You are REQUIRED TO ATTEND CLASS, but class time will not be wasted in taking roll. Frequent absences nearly always result in poor performance in the course.

Please turn off all cell phones and pagers when you come to class, and try to sit toward the front of the classroom, so that we can have effective discussions. The use of laptop computers in class is permitted for taking notes and viewing documents that are the subject of class discussion, but NOT for doing e-mail, instant messaging, work for other classes, web surfing, or gaming, all of which are a serious distraction from the work of the class. Those using laptops are requested to sit near the front of the classroom.

No research paper is required, but there will be one take-home essay assignment of nine pages (maximum). Questions for the essay will be distributed on Tuesday, November 10. Two weeks before each of the three examinations, study sheets will be distributed with lists of possible identification items and topics for possible essay questions. The third examination, during finals, will cover only the final one-third of the course. The take-home essay and the three examinations will each account for an equal portion of the final course grade. In the interests of fairness, every member of the class is expected to take the same examination at the same time as everyone else. Make-up examinations will be given only in the case of a verified serious illness or verified death of a spouse, parent, or sibling. Do not even think about other reasons! Each student must take all three of the examinations and submit a take-home essay to be eligible to pass the course. The quality of class participation will count for up to 10% of the course grade. No quizzes will be given unless bad attendance or neglect of the readings warrants extraordinary measures. University rules regarding academic misconduct, i. e., cheating, will be duly enforced. Students who wish to withdraw from the course should do so formally according to established university procedures.

Please feel free to ask questions during class, after class sessions, or during office hours (See the schedule at the head of this syllabus). Any student with a documented disability condition (e.g., physical, learning, psychiatric, systemic, vision, hearing, etc.) who needs to arrange reasonable accommodations should contact the instructor and U. of M. Disability Services at the beginning of the semester.

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