Course Number:

Credit Hours:

4

Course Title:

History of the Soviet Union

Course Description:

Surveys social, political, economic, demographic, and cultural developments in the former Soviet Union since 1917: the legacies of war and revolution, the civil war between the communists and the anti-communists, famine, the New Economic Policy, competing perspectives on the new regime, the rise of Stalin, the Cultural Revolution, collectivization and industrialization, the Purges, World War II and its impact, the “two camps” and the origins of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the new East European system, Khrushchev, destalinization, intellectuals and the “thaw,” the Cuban missile crisis, the demise of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and the period of stagnation, the Gorbachev Revolution, Yeltsin, nationalism, and the dissolution.