None are so deaf as those that won't listen

The Guardian reports the Russian Ambassador to London’s accusations that the British media are involved in an anti-Russian campaign.

This is not news.

http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/cpgb_biblio/searchfrset.htm

In the past I have bemoaned the problems in finding good resources on the Gulag in English. This has now been rectified with a new site, Many Days, Many Lives. The site is excellent, and contains plenty of material that will be of use to students.

The Gulag was horrific, but as this site rightly points out there was no single unified experience. Vast numbers of people were sent into the camps, and they all have their own story. Some of these have been told. Many of them have not. This site will go some way to rectifying this situation.

I’d really like to put together a special subject that fits Soviet domestic politics under Stalin together with foreign policy.  As much as 50% of the module could deal with the foreign policy, and it would work well as a special subject, allowing students to engage with the historiography and with primary material relating to Stalin’s time in power.  It should also produce some interesting dissertations and recruit well.

Potential topics:

• Stalin’s rise to power
• The Great Break (1928 launch of FYP and collectivization)
• The Assassination of Kirov
• The Gulag
• Soviet culture and society under Stalin (several topics in this)
• Dissent
• The Great Retreat (Timasheff)
• The Third Period (Comintern 1928-1933)
• Collective Security 1933-1939
• The Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939
• The German Invasion, 22 June 1941
• The beginning of the Cold War 
• Identity
• Terror (including the Purges and the Gulag)
• Women
• ‘High Stalinism’

I’m putting on a new module at UWE next year.  I’ve taught a similar module at Leeds, but there are some structural differences between the two institutions that mean that some fairly sizeable changes need to be made to the seminars.  At Leeds the seminars all dealt with reasons for the Soviet collapse, and it would seem worth sticking to this format as it’s interesting and stops the module being a linear lecture/seminar course.  I need to think about what works in terms of the extra sessions needed.

The module has now had a complete run and I’m able to reflect on it, such that it can be ammended for the upcoming year.

The podcasts were seen as useful by students, particularly when it came to revision.  They weren’t much work to produce, but there were a few technical hitches (battery failure on the recorder; sound disappearing for some reason).  From my point of view I have a complete lecture run recorded, and will record again so will be able to see how the lectures evolve over time.  

100 word exercises - these were a lot of work to mark with such a large module.  Undoubtedly valuable to students, and many of them commented after the exam on how useful they had been in getting thought focused and communication of ideas succinct.

Content - see no need to change this.  The course is well structured and functions well.

Assessment - I split the exam into two sections - pre-1917 and post-1917 - and will split the essays in a similar manner next year.  This is the only real way I can ensure that students are assessed on the whole of the module, not just on a narrow field within it.

Reading lists - these could do with a little attention.  Students need to be pointed more in the direction of primary material.

Take a holiday, add warm weather, sprinkle with inebriated Russians dancing in the street.

As most people will know, Moscow’s Victory Day celebrations this year saw the return of tanks and missiles to the parade.  This is the first time this has happened in 20 years, and raises some issues.  The western media, yet again portraying Russia in a negative light and fanning the flames of a ‘new cold war’, have taken this as entirely negative and claimed that Russia is simply sabre rattling.  While there is a degree of sabre rattling going on, there is more to it than this - there is a large amount of making sure that the past isn’t forgotten.

This is further shown in a fantastic array of informational posters about the Great Patriotic War, ranging from recognising those who developed the technology to explaining what the medals mean (the only one i photographed is below, explaining the major medals).  This all indicates a generational shift - no longer is there a generation that implicity understands what Victory Day is about for Russia and its inhabitants.  It is about remembering the huge sacrifice that was made to fight for survival against the Nazi invasion.

Russia Today’s coverage of the parade:

I’m about to go to Joensuu in Karelia (Finland) on an Erasmus Teaching Mobility trip.  It seems that it’s going to be a good experience, and should be lots of fun.  I’m actually teaching an 8-hour lecture course (worth 2 ECTS credits) on Soviet Foreign Policy and the Comintern in the 1920s and 1930s.  The course will cover:

1. The Soviet takeover of diplomacy and the establishment of the Comintern
2. Soviet foreign policy in the 1920s: revolution or normalization
3. The Soviet stand against fascism: collective security, the popular front and the Spanish Civil War
4. The Soviet Union and its challengers: relations with Nazi Germany and Japan

Why do student’s feel the need to  repeatedly tell you things such as ‘the historian x’.  I know they’re a historian, it’s not a talking point, and is therefore a redundant phrase.