4:00-5:15P     TR     BH205

A portion of the above section reserved for majors
Above section meets with HIST T500

The global influence of Russian thought and the Russian intelligentsia
is just as apparent today as it has been over the last century.  In
the past year, we have seen self-proclaimed anarchists and
anti-capitalists leading protests with the same rhetoric and methods
of agitation developed over a century ago by the Russian
intelligentsia.  Terrorism, a crucial weapon in the arsenal of the
nineteenth-century Russian revolutionaries, continues to threaten
global stability.  At the same time, many people in Western societies
are looking for a return to spiritualism and the simple life, as
advocated by Leo Tolstoy.  Finally, the Soviet dissidents have
inspired all those who live under oppression to believe that
resistance is always possible.

This course will deal with the philosophical, social, religious,
aesthetic, economic and political thought of the Russian
intelligentsia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  We will
explore the thought of Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leon Trotsky,
Vladimir Lenin, the anarchists, the populists, the nihilists, the
dissidents, and of course, the communists.

Students will be graded based on a series of short papers.