East Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century

TA: Meg Williams (mkw2001)
Alex Toshkov (ast9)

This course is designed to provide a basic introduction to the twentieth-century history of the countries between Germany and the former Soviet Union. The materials are chosen to illustrate a variety of different types of issues: national, political, social, economic, cultural and intellectual. Similarly, the types of materials employed are varied: survey textbooks, selections from monographs, literary pieces, contemporary documents, interviews and films. The intent is both to explore the problematic history of the region, and to expose you to a variety of approaches and materials. It begins with World War One and the creation of what we now think of as Eastern Europe, and ends with the fall of communism.

Grading (undergraduate): Quizzes:                                   10%
Discussion Section/Film:            10%
Paper                                       20%
Midterm exam:                          25%
Final exam:                               35%

Grading (graduate):

Quizzes:                          15%
Final exam:                   42.5%
Research paper:            42.5%

Note: The midterm exam will have a take-home, essay component, and IDs, which will be done in class. The paper is a 5-7 page essay on one of the films you will be watching this semester (the first film is excluded from this). The final will be in-class, during the scheduled exam time.

Books required throughout (available at Labyrinth Books – 112^th between Broadway and Amsterdam):

R. J. Crampton. Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century – And After. Second ed. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Gale Stokes, ed. From Stalinism to Pluralism. A Documentary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945. Second ed. NY/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

All other readings, unless otherwise noted, are (or will shortly be) available in Butler Reserves and online.

20/22 January: Introduction: What Is Eastern Europe, and Why Is It Different From Western Europe?

27/29 January. Historical Background before World War One: Empires, Empires, Empires.

Crampton. Chapter 1.

Czesław Miłosz. “Introduction,” “Place of Birth” and “Ancestry.” In: Czesław Miłosz. Native Realm. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. 1-35.

3/5 February. The Empires Strike Out: From The Bosnian Crisis to World War One.

Alan Palmer. “To Sarajevo,” “The Universal War for the Freedom of Nations” and “The Making of Peace.” Chapters Six through Eight of The Lands Between. New York: Macmillan, 1970, 103-174.

Peter Hanák. “Vox Populi: Intercepted Letters in the First World War.” Chapter Eight of The Garden and the Workshop. Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. 179-212.

Karl Kraus. The Last Days of Mankind. In: In These Great Times. Manchester: Carcanet, 1984. 159-258.

Ivan Berend. “Class Revolutions – Counterrevolutions” and “Belated National Revolutions.” Chapters Five and Six of Decades of Crisis. Berkeley: University of California, 1998. 119-84.

Josef Roth. “The Bust of the Emperor.” In: Hotel Savoy; Fallmerayer the Stationmaster; The Bust of the Emperor. London: Chato and Windus, 1986. 157-83.

17/19 February. Interwar Politics: From Instability to Stability and Back Again.

Bradley Abrams. “Eastern Europe Between the Wars: A Schematic Approach.” ±20pp.

24/26 February. Interwar Politics Concluded, but Unfortunately Succeeded by the Great Depression and the Rise of Nazi German Hegemony.

Michael Henry Heim. “The Plague Years” and Karel Čapek. The White Plague. In: Cross Currents. A Yearbook of Central European Culture 7 (1988) 429-504.

Film: Eastern Europe 1914-1939. 8:00 Thursday in 717 Hamilton. [Count the mistakes! Show how much you’ve learned!]

E. A. Radice. “Economic Developments in Eastern Europe under German Hegemony.” In Martin McCauley, ed. Communist Power in Europe. London: Macmillan, 1977. 3-21.

E. A. Radice. “The Collapse of German Hegemony and its Economic Consequences.” Chapter Twenty of M. C. Kaser and E. A. Radice, eds. The Economic History of Eastern Europe 1919-1975. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986. 495-519.

Bradley Abrams. "Morality, Wisdom and Revision: The Czech Opposition of the 1970s and the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans." East European Politics and Societies 9 (1995) 234-55.

Collection of information on World War Two and the postwar states of Eastern Europe. [Handout]

23/25 March. A Moment’s Breather, but then More Trouble When the Communists’ Come to Power.

Bradley F. Abrams “The Second World War and the East European Revolution.” East European Politics and Societies 16:3 (Fall 2002) 623-64.

Hugh Seton-Watson. “The Seizure of Power.” In: The East European Revolution. NY: Praeger, 1951. 167-70.

Czesław Miłosz. “Preface,” “The Pill of Murti-Bing,” and “Looking to the West.” In: The Captive Mind. New York: Vintage, 1955. vii-53.

N.B. Quiz #2 will be on 1 April, and Thursday’s class will function as an enormous discussion section.

30 March/1 April. Stalinism (Bad) and Part One of Destalinization (Better, but Still Not Good).

Czesław Miłosz. “Ketman.” In: The Captive Mind. New York: Vintage, 1955. 54-81.

Tzvetan Todorov. Selections from Voices from the Gulag. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1999. 1-96.

Georgi Markov. Selections from: The Truth that Killed. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983. 3-61.

6/8 April. See? Things Don’t Just Get Worse: Part Two of Destalinization and the “New Relationship” of the 1960s.

Milovan Djilas. “The New Class.” From: The New Class. New York: Harper Torchbook, 1957. 37-69.

Selected documents from: Paul Zinner, ed. National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe. NY: Columbia UP, 1956.

Selected documents from: Edmund Stillman, ed. Bitter Harvest. The Intellectual Revolt behind the Iron Curtain. London: Thames and Hudson, 1957.

13/15 April. The Rise and Fall of “Reformed Communism”: What To Do Next?

Václav Havel. “The Power of the Powerless.” In: Steven Keane, ed. The Power of the Powerless. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1985. 23-96

20/22 April. Slouching Toward Armageddon: Economics and Society in the 1970s and Early 1980s.

Sabrina Ramet. “Rock Music and Counterculture.” In: Sabrina Petra Ramet. Social Currents in Eastern Europe. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 1995. 234-61.

Jiřina Šiklová. “The ‘Gray Zone’ and the Future of Dissent in Czechoslovakia.” In: Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz, ed. Good-Bye Samizdat. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992. 181-92.

Slavenka Drakulić. “Make-Up and Other Crucial Questions,” “The Strange Ability of Apartments to Multiply and Divide,” “A Communist Eye, Or What Did I See in New York,” “A Letter from the United States – The Critical Theory Approach” and “How We Survived Communism.” How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed. NY: Harper, 1991. 21-32, 82-92, 113-32, 179-90.

Roman Laba. “Introduction” and Chapter Nine, “Fashionable Myths and Proletarian Realities.” In: The Roots of Solidarity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. 3-12 and 169-82.

Rossen Vassilev. “Modernization Theory Revisited: The Case of Bulgaria.” East European Politics and Societies 13 (1999) 566-99.

Recommended: Katherine Verdery. “The ‘Etatization’ of Time in Ceausescu’s Romania.” Chapter Two of What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. 39-57.

Final N.B. I am going to try and leave the session for 29 April open for you to ask questions to help you prepare for the final. As you will see/have seen, I fall behind a bit, so this also gives us a cushion.

Send mail to gv36@columbia.edu with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: Wednesday, January 14, 2004

THE TURBULENT CENTURY: EASTERN EUROPE, 1914-1989