Syllabus
1) Colonial Studies: Cultural and Political Colonialism
2) Ukraine before WW II: Colonial Heritage of the Russian Empire
3) Soviet concept of Culture and the Question of Identity
4) Levko Lukianenko and “The Case of Lawyers”
5) The Thaw and the Sixtiers
6) “Internationalism or Russification?” and the beginning of the dissident movement
7) Helsinki Conference: Human Rights Movement
8) Strategies of individual protest
9) From Stalinists to Nationalists: the formation of the Dissident
10) Political Opposition during the Perestroika
11) The Collapse of the USSR and the role of the Dissidents
12) The heritage of Soviet Colonialism in Modern Ukraine
Annotation
The course will deal with the complex development of Ukrainian culture and opposition during the post-war period according to the approaches of colonial studies. During the course the main strategies of the Soviet policy in Ukraine will be analysed on the basis of colonial studies.
The development of the opposition movement as the reaction to this policy will be mapped. During the post-war period the first visible cultural opposition was formed by the generation of the Sixtiers during the Thaw (till 1964). The mass arrest of Ukrainian intelligentsia in 1965 have marked the emergency of dissident movement in Ukraine.
Following decade has become the period of human rights movement in Ukraine and united the logic of local dissidents with the dissident movements outside the USSR. The last decade before the collapse of the USSR was the period when dissident movement was transformed into the political opposition.
All these processes played an important role in the fall of the Soviet empire and are the key factors for understanding the modern history of Ukraine.