Knowing the key events of a nation’s history is essential for understanding the nation’s mindset. With a culture like Russia’s, knowing the main historical highlights is also instrumental for understanding current idioms, journalists’ references, and images evoked by politicians. In this course, we are going to read about some of the defining moments of Russia’s political history, watch relevant video materials, discuss the language (terms, clichés, famous quotes, and apocryphal anecdotes) related to them and find references to them in modern journalistic and political discourse, as well as analyze the significance and cultural interpretation of the events themselves.