Early Twentieth-Century Russia: Revolutionary History vs. Revolutionary Culture

This course, a continuation of last year’s course on Nineteenth-Century Russian History, will examine the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the culture of this period – in effect, the opposition of revolutionary history and revolutionary culture. The beginning of the twentieth century went at an extremely rapid tempo and was characterized by social dynamics of a new kind. Three revolutions, the Russo-Japanese and World Wars, deep conflicts and reforms - all these events have changed Russia and indeed the entire world. At the same time this was the “Silver Age” of Russian culture, characterized by flourishing aesthetic searching and the development of new principles in social communications. The purpose of the course is to analyze the history of early twentieth-century Russia through the interaction of literature, culture, and art of the revolutionary process. In this course students will acquire new concepts and terms describing the social, political, and cultural realms