BA Russian and Japanese

This course focuses on the idea of Empire as a thread linking various phases, events, and discourses across Russian and Soviet history. Entangled with this, the module investigates Russia’s relationship with its ‘others’ – East and West – and their role in the construction of Russia’s culture and national identity. Through the analysis of literary and visual primary sources and secondary sources, the course explores the influence of Empire on Russian political narratives from the 19^th century to the present day, as well as how Russian artists, writers and intellectuals have questioned, endorsed or contested it.

This course aims to:

• Investigate Russia’s recurrent issues and debates about national identity, as well as their significance in its history and culture from the 19^th century to the present day;
• Analyse how Empire is represented in Russian culture;
• Study the role of the West and the East in Russian culture and nation-building;
• Examine colonialism in Imperial, Soviet and post-communist Russia.

Students will develop:
• A knowledge of imperialism and colonialism in Russia and the Soviet Union;
• A knowledge of the multiple and complex relationships between culture and power in Russia;
• An understanding of the historical development of key ideas and issues in Russian culture and nationhood;
• An understanding of how these ideas and issues play out in the present moment.

Students will develop:
• The ability to connect important concepts with each other;
• The ability to connect culture to politics and vice-versa;
• The tools to understand and situate Russian culture in its historical context and across different periods.

Students will develop:

• The ability to present written and oral work in a coherent, well-structured and well-articulated form;

• The tools to work effectively as a team;
• The ability to select and use primary and secondary sources successfully.

Students will develop:
• Expertise in problems affecting Eastern Europe at present;

• The ability to form and sustain robust arguments;
• An interdisciplinary approach to work and problem-solving.

Oral Presentation  - Summative - 30%

Essay Plan - Formative

Essay - Summative - 70%

Resit assessment: Essay

• Byford, Andy, Doak, Connor, Hutchings, Stephen (eds.) Transnational Russian Studies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2020 (Introduction and Chapters 1-5).
• Greenfeld, Liah. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1992 (Chapter 3).
• Hosking, Geoffrey. A History of the Soviet Union 1917-1991 (Final Edition). London: Fontana. 1992 (particularly Chapters 9 and 14).
• Hosking, Geoffrey. Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917. London: Fontana. 1998.
• Kolstø, Pål, Blakkisrud, Helge (eds.) The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000–15. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2016.
• Leyton, Susan. Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994.
• Morozov, Viatcheslav. Russia’s Postcolonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World. London: Palgrave. 2015.
• Tolz, Vera. Russia: Inventing the Nation. London: Arnold. 2001.