PVP 3 - Introduction to the Research of Communist Dictatorship: From Totalitarianism to Current Historiography

Syllabus

!Due to the extraordinary measures connected with coronavirus, changes can be made to the syllabus and to the character of attestation. For the latest information please contact the lecturer!

1. Introduction

2. Founding of Totalitarism. Totalitarian Dictatorship by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinsky; The Czechoslovakia Communist Party in Power by Karel Kaplan.

3. Harvard Project. Between Anthropology, Sociology and History.

4. Soviet Political Culture. Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation by Robert Tucker and Stephen Cohen.

5. Regional Perspective of Dictatorship. Smolensk under Soviet Rule by Merle Fainsod.

6. Stalinist Terror. The Origins of the Great Purges by Arch Getty and Terror and Democracy by Wendy Goldman.

7. Soviet Everyday Life. Everyday Stalinism by Sheila Fitzpatrick.

8. Challenging of totalitarian paradigm in Czech context. How a Czechoslovak 1956 was Thwarted by Muriel Blaive.

9. History of Consumerism. Greengrocer and his TV by Paulina Bren.

10. Creation of new Socialist Cities and new Socialist Men. Magnetic Mountain by Stephen Kotkin and Unfinished Utopia by Katherine Lebow.

11. Communist Dictatorship and Gender. The Gendered Foundations of Hungarian Socialism by Joanna Goven.

12. End of semester, discussion.

Annotation

In the last seventy years interpretations of communist dictatorships underwent very significant transformations. Since the nascency of the conception of totalitarian domination till the current transnational and interdisciplinary approaches, both meaning of individual aspects of dictatorship and meaning of empirical research work shifted dramatically.

Seminar aims to introduce the most impactful interpretations, ponder their internal structure and their key thesis.