23 January. Introduction.

30 January. The East Looks at the West.

Jerzy Jedlicki. A Suburb of Europe. Nineteenth-Century Approaches to Western Civilization. Budapest: CEU Press, 1999.

6 February. Nineteenth-Century Nationalism.

Brian Porter. When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth Century Poland. New York: Oxford, 2002.

N.B. We’ll have to delay this session a few weeks, since the paperback edition is due out this month.

13 February. Nationalism and Empire.

Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen, eds. After Empire. Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Boulder: Westview, 1997.

Rogers Brubaker. “Rethinking nationhood: nation as institutionalized form, practical category, contingent event,” “National minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands in the New Europe,” and Aftermaths of empire and the unmixing of peoples.” Chapters one, three and six of Nationalism Reframed. Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. 13-22, 55-76 and 148-78. (Copies)

20 February. World War One and the Struggles of Nation-Building.

Nándor F. Dreisziger. “The Dimensions of Total War in East Central Europe, 1914-1918.” In: Béla K. Király and Nándor F. Dreisziger, eds. East Central European Society in World War I. Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs; New York: Distributed by Columbia UP, 1985. 2-23. (Copies)

Péter 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 UP, 1998. 179-212. (Copies)

Irina Livezeanu. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2001.

27 February. Problems of and Perspectives on Interwar Eastern Europe.

Ivan T. Berend. ­Decades of Crisis. Berkeley: UCP, 2001.

Recommended: Joseph Rothschild. East Central Europe between the Two World Wars. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974.

6 March. World War Two and the Coming of Communism.

Bradley Abrams. “The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation”: Czech Culture and the Rise of Socialism. Harvard Cold War Book Series. Oxford/Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, publication forthcoming in 2002.

13 March. The Problem of Stalinism.

Milan Kundera. The Joke. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Marci Shore. “Engineering in the Age of Innocence: A Genealogy of the Discourse Inside the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union, 1949-67.” East European Politics and Societies 12 (1998) 397-441.

20 March. Spring Break.

27 March. Nationalism in the Communist System.

Katherine Verdery. National Ideology Under Socialism. Berkeley: UC Press, 1991.

3 April. Crises in the Communist System.

Grzrgorz Ekiert. The State Against Society. Princeton: PUP, 1996.

10 April. Dissidents in the Communist System.

Milan Kundera. “A Kidnapped West, or Culture Bows Out.” Granta 11 (1984) 95-118. (copies)

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

Piotr Wierzbicki. “A Treatise on Ticks.” In: Abraham Brumberg, ed. Poland. Genesis of a Revolution. NY: Vintage, 1983. 198-211.

Adam Michnik. “Maggots and Angels,” “A New Evolutionism,” “The Prague Spring Ten Years Later” and “A Lesson in Dignity.” In: Letters from Prison and Other Essays. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. 135-48 and 155-98.

Gyorgy Konrád. Antipolitics. NY: Henry Held, 1984. 91-8, 104-96.

Bradley Abrams. “Alternative Political Visions in Central Europe 1968-1989.” (copies)

17 April. What Was Communism and Why Did It End?

Leslie Holmes. “Theories of the Collapse of Communist Power.” Chapter Two of Post-Communism. An Introduction. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1997. 23-62.

Ken Jowitt. “The Leninist Extinction.” Chapter Seven of New World Disorder. Berkeley: UCP, 1992. 249-283.

Daniel Chirot. "What Happened in Eastern Europe in 1989?" and Bruce Cumings. “Illusion, Critique and Responsibility: The ‘Revolution of 1989’ in West and East.” 100-28. In: Daniel Chirot, ed. The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left. Seattle: UWP, 1991. 3-32.

Katherine Verdery. “What Was Socialism, and Why Did It Fall?,” “The ‘Etatization of Time in Ceauşescu’s Romania,” and “A Transition from Socialism to Feudalism? Thoughts on the Postsocialist State.” Chapters One, Two and Eight in What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton: PUP, 1996. 19-57 and 204-28.

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

24 April. History and Identity.

Lucian Boia. Lucian Boia. History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness. Budapest: CEU Press, 2001.

1 May. The Balkans and the West.

Misha Glenny. The Balkans. Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999. New York: Viking, 2000.

Grading and requirements:

One-half of the grade will be based on your participation in the class, including presenting one week’s materials to class and leading (along with me, of course) the discussion. The other half will be based on your written assignment(s), as detailed below:

Ph.D. candidates:

1.       Write a standard 5-6 page review of one of the works we read. It must be a week in which there is a central text (e.g. not the fascism week).

2.       a. Write a 750-word quick review of a work we read.

b. Write a ten-page New York Review of Books-style review of the same book, and others that are related to it.

3.       Construct a syllabus for a course on Eastern European history. Make copies for each of the others (due the penultimate week of the semester) and be prepared to defend your choices.

Others:

You may either follow the guidelines for Ph. D. candidates, or write a twenty-page research essay on a topic of your choosing. I will be glad to discuss topics with you, and the only restriction is that the topic of your research must be historical, i.e. before 1989.

Send mail to gv36@columbia.edu with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: Friday, January 02, 2004

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