Paper 1
Paper 1 – The Revolutionary Year, 1917 (PDF)
The Russian Revolutions of February and October 1917 have been extensively researched by a wide range of scholars so we now have elaborate chronologies of what happened on a day-by-day basis. Through concerted efforts scholars have collected primary documents in the form of letters, petitions, diary entries, and the like. Your mission will be to analyze documents listed in the prompt and write a 4–5 page paper.
Paper 1 is due during Session 6, with its rewrite due during Session 10. This paper is graded as an average of the original and the rewrite, and is worth 20% of the final grade.
Advice on Writing for Paper 1 (PDF)
Paper 2 and Paper 3
Paper 2 - Research Proposal (PDF)
This paper (3–5 pages) is in preparation for your final paper (Paper 3).
Paper 3 – Current Events and Their Historical Roots (PDF)
Your mission is to pick a current event or phenomenon (1999 to the present) and show both its significance and what might be its historical roots in the Soviet history we have studied this semester in a 15 page paper.
Paper 2 is due during Session 16, and is worth 20% of the final grade.
Paper 3 is due during Session 21, and is worth 30% of the final grade.
Outline on Putin’s Symbolic Politics
In this short set of notes (1–2 pages), I’d like to see you pull together a few thoughts about the Putin regime in light of what we have learned this semester about Soviet history. From what you can tell (given that, of course, your knowledge is limited), does it seem that the current regime is a throwback to the Soviet era? If so, in what ways? And what era or set of processes does it most closely resemble? If not, why not?
Alternatively, you might put together a few thoughts on your own research, stepping back and asking what it tells you about how the system works. If you worked on a historical topic, you can see if there are any parallels to the current moment, or you can comment on that moment and what it reveals about Soviet history in itself.
This “paper” can be in the form of notes or outline; it does not have to be written in carefully polished English. My goal here is to ask you to step back and see if you can think about how the current Putin era is unfolding.
The outline is due during Session 25, and is worth 10% of the final grade.
