To
Dance (or not to Dance) with Stalin:
Eastern Europe under Communism, 1944-1989
History D330
spring 2003-2004
Professor
Marci Shore
office hours Thursdays 9-11, BH 833
855-8036; mshore@indiana.edu
grader
Deanna Wooley; dwooley@indiana.edu
office hours Tuesdays 1-2, main lobby of library
This is the follow-up lecture course to D300 (“The Trouble with Being Born”: Eastern Europe in the First Half of the Twentieth Century). The course begins inside the Second World War, when the interwar years have decisively come to an end, but no one yet knows what is to follow. We will then explore the history of Eastern Europe from the “liminal” years immediately following the end of the war, through the Stalinist period, the post-Stalin “Thaw,” the emergence of “revisionist” Marxism, “normalization” and dissent, and finally the revolutions of 1989. Within this narrative, topics will include the bloody Stalinist show trials, the Tito-Stalin split, the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, the reign of Ceaucescu in Romania, and the flowering of samizdat and dissident culture in the 1970s and 1980s. D300 is not a prerequisite for this class.
the following readings can be purchased at TIS or the IU Bookstore:
Rothschild, Return
to Diversity
Gale Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism
Milan Kundera, The Joke
Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star
Other course readings will be available via e-reserve and can be accessed through IUCAT. Click on reserves, type the instructor’s name, or course number, and click on the instructor or course. In the index provided, click on the course number followed by electronic reserves and give the password “grateful.”
course requirements:
Students are expected to attend all lectures and complete all reading assignments. Attendance will not, however, be taken at lectures. Anyone who misses one or more lectures should get the notes from someone else in the class. Forming study groups for the midterm and final is voluntary, of course, and strongly encouraged. Exam questions will be based on material from both the readings and the lectures. Make-up exams will only be permitted with a documented medical excuse. Please turn in your assignments on time; five points will be deducted from your grade for every day an assignment is late. Journal responses to the reading should include be typed and should include dated comments on each reading assignment (excluding the textbook by Rothschild and Wingfield). These entries are not full-blown traditional essays with an introduction, thesis statement, etc., but rather should be understanding as a space for brainstorming ideas and thoughts provoked by the reading. The point is not to be refined and conclusive, but rather to think creatively and to generate the kinds of analytical and critical ideas that could potentially form the basis for a more substantive paper. You should think about the different kinds of sources historians use, what the problems are with these sources. What do they reveal and what do they obscure? What do they reveal about the author? How do you feel about the author? Would you have coffee with him? You should use this as a place to articulate questions, without regard to whether or not you can answer them. I’m looking for you to draw on your creativity/imagination, to commune with the text, to begin reading sources critically, as an historian. I’m looking in these assignments for content, not organization.
academic misconduct: We expect you to follow the rules on academic honesty and intellectual integrity established by the Indiana University Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities and Conduct. Presenting someone else’s work as your own (this includes the work of another student as well as information from books, articles, and web sites) is plagiarism. Other forms of academic misconduct include, but are not limited to: using unauthorized books or notes to answer examination questions; exchanging knowledge with another student verbally or in written form during an examination; and writing for another member of the class. Anyone found guilty of academic misconduct will fail the course.
January 13: introduction to the course
And what, basically, is the West, what is the great French civilization, the idea of courtesy, other than a boundary that one accepts on account of reason; just do not go over the boundary; it doesn't pay; it is bad taste, etc. As for the Balkans, one cannot speak of civilization; there is no criterion for it; there, one is simply excessive."--- E. M. Cioran
January 15: What is Eastern Europe? (And does it exist?)
I assume there is such a thing as Central Europe, even though many people deny its existence, beginning with statesmen and journalists who persist in calling it ‘Eastern Europe’ and ending with my friend Joseph Brodsky, who prefers to reserve for it the name of ‘Western Asia.’”—Czesław Miłosz
Milan Kundera, “The Tragedy
of Central Europe” in From Stalinism to Pluralism
Czesław Miłosz, “About Our Europe” in Between East and West:
Writings from Kultura
chapter 1, Return to Diversity
January 20: What is Marxism and Where does it Come From?
"What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."—Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
January 22: “Appeasement” at Munich
"I believe it is 'peace for our time.'"—Neville Chamberlain
chapter 2, Return to Diversity
January 27: One City and Two Uprisings
"Be well, my friend. Perhaps we shall meet again. The main things is the dream of my life has come true. I’ve lived to see a Jewish defense in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory."—Mordechai Anieliewicz
Michał Głowiński, “Fragments from the Ghetto,” The Chicago Review vol. 46, no. 3 and 4 (2000): 139-148; Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, trans. Barbara Vedder (New York: Penguin Books, 1976): 29- 49.
January 29: Polish-Jewish relations during WWII: the Jedwabne debate
“Indeed, as we now know beyond reasonable doubt, and as Jedwabne citizens knew all along, it was their neighbors who killed them.”—Jan T. Gross
Jan Gross, “Neighbors,” The New Yorker (12 March 2001)
February 3: 1945—Was it Liberation?
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."—Winston Churchill
“Report of the Crimea Conference,” “The Yalta Negotiations,” “Poland at the Teheran Conference,” “The Percentages Agreement,” “The Truman Doctrine,” “The Two-Camp Policy” (From Stalinism to Pluralism); chapter 3, Return to Diversity
February 5: The Communist Takeovers
"And so it happened that it February 1948 the Communists took power not in bloodshed and violence, but to the cheers of about half the population. And please note: the half that cheered was the more dynamic, the more intelligent, the better half."—Milan Kundera
Bradley F. Abrams, “The Second World War and the East European Revolution,” East European Politics and Societies vol. 16, no 3 (fall 2002): 623-664.
February 10: A Disagreement with Stalin (The Tito-Stalin Split)
"No matter how much each of us loves the land of socialism, the USSR, he can, in no case, love his own country less. . . "—Tito
“The Tito-Stalin Correspondence”
(From Stalinism to Pluralism)
chapter 4, Return to Diversity
February 12: A Trial in Prague
"Woe unto the defeated, whom history treads into the dust. . . With that my task is ended. I have paid; my account with history is settled. To ask you for mercy would be derision. I have nothing more to say.”—Rubashov (in Koestler's Darkness at Noon)
Marci Shore, “Narrative/Archive/Trace: The Trial of Milada Horáková;” “The Case for Stalinism,” “Ketman,” “The Trial of László Rajk” and “The Slánský Trial” (From Stalinism to Pluralism)
February 17: film: A Trial in Prague (83 minutes)
Rudolf backed away toward the door and, just as he stepped through it, the expression in his eyes changed suddenly, and what appeared in them for that brief moment I will carry within me as long as I live.”—Heda Margolius Kovaly
Heda Maroglius Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star
FIRST SET OF JOURNAL RESPONSES DUE
February 19: 1953 in East Germany
"No one has any
intention of building a wall."—Walter Ulbricht
chapter 5, Return to Diversity
February 24: 1956: The Hungarian Revolution
"We are going to die for Hungary and for Europe."—director, Hungarian News Agency
“Reform Communism” and “Contemporary Problems of Marxist Philosophy” (From Stalinism to Pluralism)
February 26: review for midterm
March 2: MIDTERM
March 4: film Tito and Me (104 minutes)
March 9: March 1968, the “Anti-Zionist” Campaign in Poland
"In silence I placed before him my Party card together with a declaration composed earlier on a sheet of paper saying the following: ‘In connection with the campaign being conducted by the Party concerning student activities, a campaign unworthy of the great traditions of our Party and hence villainous I ask that you remove my name from the list of members of the PZPR.’ I submitted my resignation and signature and still without a word left the room of farewells deep in silence. I felt then a tremendous relief, the nightmare that had throttled me for many years departed. . . . The decision was a difficult one, as it meant self-annihilation, the negation of my entire life.."—Aleksander Masiewicki
March 11: The Prague Spring, or “Socialism with a human face”
"But nevertheless, we have spoken out, and such a huge number of things have come out into the open that somehow we must complete our aim of humanizing this regime."—Ludvík Vaculík
“Towards a Democratic Political Organization of Society” and “Two Thousand Words” (From Stalinism to Pluralism); The Joke
March 16 and 18: no class, spring break
March 23: Ceaucescu's Romania
“Bourgeois sexual morality is probably less esteemed in Romania than anywhere else on the continent.”—Hugh Seton-Watson
March 25: The Case of Bulgaria
"The class approach requires from us, the Balkan socialist countries, to implement a consistent and unabated struggle against the influence of the imperialistic countries and mostly that of the USA in our region; against the Maoist attempts to turn the Balkans into a region, directed against the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries."—Todor Zhivkov
March 30: What was Happening in Albania?
With this confidence we are celebrating the great holiday of the 44th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution and the great holiday of the 20th anniversary of the founding of our glorious Party. With this confidence, with the revolutionary banner of the victorious Leninism, with the unfurled banner of our heroic Party, we, the Albanian communists, together with our entire patriotic and fighting people, shall march forward with sure steps towards new victories, for the glory of Marxism-Leninism, for the glory of communism, for the glory of our socialist homeland.—Enver Hoxha
April 1st: no class —roundtable on post-communism
April 6: Yugoslavia and the Praxis Group
"When the new class leaves the historical scene—and this must happen—there will be less sorrow over its passing than there was for any other class before it."—Milovan Djilas
“The Origins of Self-Management in Yugoslavia,” “The Challenge of Self-Management,” “The New Class” and “The Praxis Group” (From Stalinism to Pluralism)
April 8: What is Solidarity and where does it come from?
"…History has taught us that there is no bread without freedom."—Solidarity's program
“The Kuroń-Modzelewski Open Letter to the Party,” “KOR’s Appeal to Society,” “Pope John Paul II Speaks in Victory Square, Warsaw,” “The Gdańsk Agreement,” “Solidarity’s Program,” and “Jaruzelski Declares Martial Law” (From Stalinism to Pluralism); chapter 6, Return to Diversity
April 13: Havel’s Greengrocer
"In the post-totalitarian system, this line runs de facto through each person, for everyone in his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system."—Václav Havel
“The Helsinki Accords,” “Charter 77,” “The Power of the Powerless,” and “Antipolitics” (From Stalinism to Pluralism)
April 15: Counter-culture and Parallel Polis
"Moreover, our friend Ivan Jirous and others, who were a little more familiar with politics, kept assuring us that things could not be the same for more than five years, and that we could outlast them even underwater. Well, they happened to miss out a couple of decades, but I think we did quite well underwater just the same."—Milan Hlavsa
Anna Vaníčková, “Deeper Underground: Reflections on Women Artists in the Czech Musical Underground 1968-1989”; excerpts from film The Plastic People of the Universe (to be shown in class)
April 20: Gender and communism (guest lecture: Jill Massino)
"The main task is to draw the women into socially productive labour, extricate them from "domestic slavery", free them of their stultifying and humiliating resignation to the perpetual and exclusive atmosphere of the kitchen and nursery."--Lenin
April 22: The Velvet Revolution and Its Discontents
"The truth will prevail!"—crowd on Wenceslas Square
Timothy Garton Ash, The
Magic Lantern, 78-130; “The Opening of the Berlin Wall” and “New Year’s
Day Speech, 1990” (From Stalinism to Pluralism)
chapter 7, Return to Diversity
April 27: A Return to “Europe”?
"But what that journalist did not understand, of course, is that this is precisely the point of Western names: to create the impression that you are already in the West."—Slavenka Drakulić
Slavenka Drakulić,
“Café Europa”
chapter 8, Return to Diversity
SECOND SET OF JOURNAL RESPONSES DUE
April 29: review for final
FINAL EXAM TUESDAY MAY 4th 5-7pm