1. Demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of modern Russian history and/or an appreciation of how significant themes in the country’s recent past manifest themselves in its contemporary form. Knowledge & Understanding

2. Understand major points of commonality and contention in the historiography of modern Russia, and build and sustain original arguments which engage with these in a rigorous and nuanced manner.
Analysis

3. Empathise effectively with Russian historical agents (citizens and decision-makers) at key moments in twentieth and twenty-first century history.
Application

4. Communicate well-informed arguments about modern Russia with precision and flare.
Communication

Assessment One: Research Paper
1,000 words, 20%
Learning Objectives 2 and 4
In this assignment, to be successful, students will need to engage thoroughly with a disagreement or disparity in the work of two or more historians. This will improve their critical thinking skills and their ability to perceive differences in argumentation in the historiography. These are skills they will then have to demonstrate again in essays two and three, meaning that the trajectory of their academic development should be clear across the three submissions.

Assessment Two: Essay ONE
2,500 words, 35%
Learning objectives 1, 2 and 4
This essay assignment asks students to respond to one of a series of questions relating to the history of Russia. As well as demonstrating a refined aptitude for interpretation and analysis, students will need to show their extensive knowledge of their topic.

Assessment Three: Essay TWO
2,500 words, 35%
All learning objectives
This final formal assessment will bring together the key areas of focus in the preceding two assessments (analytical rigour and extensive knowledge) and add a final point of emphasis: an appreciation for the strategic challenges posed to Russian decision-makers today and in the recent past. Students will do this by bringing Russia’s history into dialogue with its present and analyse extant consistencies and inconsistencies across periods.

Assessment Four: Participation
Word Count N/A, 10%
All learning objectives
Students will be assessed for the level and quality of their contributions to the discussion board forums on Blackboard. This ensures engagement throughout the module, interaction with their peers, and an ability to sustain a dialogue about academic matters in a style and tone that is appropriate at PG level. As in all three preceding assessments, the students’ ability to express themselves effectively in writing will be considered carefully.

Few countries have experienced modernity as dramatically and impactfully as Russia. Disruptive, wide-ranging and often violent change is visible in Russia’s recent past both in its most salient events and in the periods between those events. Within the first half of the twentieth century alone, Russia experienced three major political uprisings, two World Wars, a devastating Civil War, breakneck industrialisation, collectivisation and famine, mass political purges and the onset of the Cold War including the threat of nuclear confrontation. In between these events, Russian society radically altered its social, racial and gender norms, inverted its systems of status and hierarchy and rewrote its macroeconomic model three or perhaps four times. Needless to say, the face Russia presented to the world, and the face the world presented to Russia, also changed enormously in this time. The Russian Federation of today is a vastly different state to the Russian Federation of 1991, let alone the Russian Empire of 1900.

The contemporary international scene cannot be understood without understanding Russia, and Russia cannot be understood without understanding its past, particularly at a time of heightened Russophobia and cultural misunderstanding. This module is designed to help students understand where Russia and the post-Soviet space has been and where it might go in the future. Students will be encouraged to dispense with some common misconceptions and Cold War verities relating to the post-Soviet space and its people, and to learn to see the world from Russia’s varied and multifaceted perspectives. All references to Winston Churchill’s infamous description of Russia will be forbidden. Russia is a complex country but it is eminently understandable if concerted effort is made.

In this module, you should be doing five things in each week of the semester:

1. Review the relevant weekly lecture notes provided by the tutor
2. Read the relevant weekly essential reading in full, as outlined online. This is ordinarily a single book chapter or journal article, perhaps two, which can be found under the ‘Reading List’ tab.
3. Supplement this with wider reading relevant to the weekly topic. This should partly come from the relevant week’s folder in the ‘Learning Materials’ tab, and partly from your own independent literature search, an essential component of all postgraduate study. Primary sources here are
4. Contribute to the relevant weekly discussion on the Blackboard site, including making your own post and replying to the posts of others on the module.
5. Plan for, prepare for or write one of your three items of formal assessed work (that is: Essay ONE, the Critical Review, and Essay TWO).
Feedback will come in four primary forms: contributions from your tutor and your peers on the Blackboard discussion board, the Weekly Appraisal audio files, comments on any essay plans or questions you send to your tutor via email, and the formal feedback submitted in response to each of your pieces of assessment. Please take time to absorb feedback and act on its implications.

S. Lovell, The Shadow of War: Russia and the USSR, 1941 to the present (2010)
R. Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-first Century, 4th edition (2009)
R. G. Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR and the Successor States, 2nd edition (2010)
T. R. Weeks, Across the Revolutionary Divide: Russia and the USSR, 1861-1945 (2011)
J. N. Westwood, Endurance and Endeavour: Russian History, 1812-2001, 5th edition, (2002)

A KeyLinks page of online historiography will be required by students studying on this module.