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Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

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Page 1: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Russian 322Russia Today

Winter Term 09

Basic Historical BackgroundStephen Kotkin,

Armageddon Averted

Page 2: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Announcements

Sections – T 1-2, B124 MLB, W 3-4 1650 CHEM(Original syllabus had wrong rooms)

I have a meeting during my office hour today, will probably not be back until about 3.30

Page 3: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Some very basic historical background, I

Origins of Russia in Medieval Rus’, centered originally on Kiev

Medieval Rus’ overwhelmed by Tartars Muscovite city state emerges in

C14th/C15th Romanov dynasty comes to the throne in

C17th

Page 4: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Early Rus’ (Wikipedia, modified)

Khazars

Page 5: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

C10th Kievan Rus’

Page 6: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Principalities of C11th Kievan Rus’

Page 7: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Muscovy in 1533

Page 8: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Some very basic historical background, II

Transformed into major continental empire by C18th, St Petersburg new capital

1860s – reforms, late C19th Russia industrializing fast

First World War brings economic problems and exacerbates political discontent

Page 9: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Peter the Great, His Empire and His City

Page 10: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Some very basic historical background, III

1917 – Bolsheviks come to power, led by Vladimir Lenin

1920s – Soviet state becomes more and more centralized, by late 20s Stalin’s totalitarian regime in total control of country: command economy, highly supervised culture

Page 11: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

USSR in 1939

Page 12: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Some very basic historical background, IV

Second World War – at huge cost, a great victory (some 25 million dead, Fascism defeated)

Post-war period – Soviet state’s great achievements: education, basic prosperity for all

As a result of victory in WWII gains a buffer zone of satellite states in Europe

Stalin dies in 1953, period of relative, if unstable liberalism under Khrushchev

Page 13: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Some very basic historical background, V

Big achievements in science Optimism, cultural controls relaxed

(“thaws”) Disaster in foreign policy (Cuban crisis) Khrushchev falls in 1964 Leonid Brezhnev comes to power (as

General Secretary of CPSU), period of “stagnation”

Page 14: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

The Soviet Union in 1994

Page 15: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Khrushchev, Brezhnev

Nikita Khrushchev,(1894-1971,First. Sec. CPSU,53-64)

Leonid Brezhnev (1906-82,Gen. Sec. CPSU, 64-82)

Page 16: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Some very basic historical background, VI

Brezhnev dies in 1982 In rapid succession Andropov and then

Chernenko New generation comes to power with the

accession to position of General Secretary of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985

Page 17: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Some very basic historical background, VII

With Gorbachev comes reform, uncertainty, and the disintegration of many long-established features of Soviet life

Glasnost’ and perestroika August 1991 – an attempted coup, the failure

of which led directly to the disintegration of the Soviet Union by the end of the year

Gorbachev replaced by Boris Yeltsin as head of new Russian state

Page 18: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted Identity of the author

Stephen Kotkin, distinguished American historian (Princeton); has written and published extensively on Russia

His first major research project was on Magnitogorsk, a Urals steel town.

Provocative, original, challenges orthodoxies

Page 19: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

What is Kotkin’s big question? Why did it all happen peacefully? What are his points of comparison with

the west? Decline of major industry, responses to

economic change.

Page 20: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

What masked the decline (and fuels the Russian economy now)?

Page 21: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

What did the Second World War do to the USSR (in contrast to Japan and Germany)?

Page 22: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

What is Kotkin’s story of the Brezhnev years (Leonid Brezhnev, 1905-1982; General Secretary of the CPSU 1966-1982)

What came after him and why?

Page 23: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

How does Kotkin see Gorbachev?

And why? What is significant

about Gorbachev’s background and experience?

Page 24: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted When the Union

collapsed, what did the citizens of Russia want, according to Kotkin?

Did they get it – and if not, why not?

Page 25: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Changes in the economy and politics of capitalism made it impossible for the USSR to compete

Generational change brought to power a dedicated believer, who thought he could transform the country peacefully

Soviet institutions themselves facilitated disintegration, but bloodless disintegration

Page 26: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

The West is wrong to claim the credit for the disintegration of the Union, and wrong to blame itself for the subsequent “failure of reform”.

Sovietologists, left and right, got it wrong (the Soviet Union could not be transformed without disintegration; the CPSU did produce a serious reform movement)

Page 27: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

What did we have at the beginning of the C21st (when Kotkin finished his book)?

A country still in need of many reforms, and of good government; economic struggles, but a booming metropolis; a leader who seems to understand (as his immediate predecessors did not) that Russia is not in a position to make great-power claims.

Page 28: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Contrasting images of Russia at the beginning of the new century

Top left – Japanese restaurant with view of Kremlin, Moscow; top right, family at the table, village of Koshtugi (Vologda region); bottom left, main road from Vytegra to Kargopol’ (border of Vologda and Archangel regions, October 02); bottom right, road in cottage community, near resort for members of Presidential administration, Moscow region

Page 29: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

So what happened next? Russia puts the “R” in BRIC. Russia’s oil and gas boom, enriching the country (even reaching beyond the

elites) and giving the country new political clout. An increasingly re-centralized, more authoritarian political structure. More and more positive revisionism about the Soviet past, a very strong, state-

encouraged, discourse of national patriotism. Clear evidence that Russia wants to assert itself in the world again. Government control over corporate structures and the economic elite. Very little prospect for integration into European economic and other entities, as

Kotkin suggested might help. Russia’s political assertiveness seen regionally (Ukraine, Georgia),

continentally (gas disputes, the Lugovoi affair), and globally (missiles, naval power, role in Iran, Middle East disputes, relations with USA)

Continued demographic change and population decline Continued growth of the key cities, agricultural disintegration, decline of many

provincial cities

Page 30: Russian 322 Russia Today Winter Term 09 Basic Historical Background Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted

And what is still, as Kotkin suggested, the most unpredictable element for the future (now not only in terms of politics, but also economics)?