3.00 Credits
This course is a study of the internal development and external relations of Russia, the Soviet Union, and its successor states from the 9th through the 20th centuries. Topics of inquiry include geographic and climatic factors shaping Russian history; early Kievan Rus; religious, political, and economic influences on the development of Russian autocracy; Westernization in Tsarist Russia; reform and revolution in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries; the Soviet system and its cultural borrowings from the past; the East-West confrontation; nationalism and separatism in the Soviet republics; and recent developments in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).