Spring 1998

Professor Maria Bucur

Office Hours: W. 1-3:30, BH 719

Phone: 855-1993

email: mbucur@indiana.edu

 

D300/R303 EASTERN EUROPE PAST AND PRESENT

Ballantine Hall, 334, M, W, F 11:15-12:05

 

General Description

 

This course seeks to make sense of the sweeping changes that have taken place in Eastern Europe since the revolutions of 1989, using historical perspective. The class is divided into three segments: (1) historical development--focusing on the 20th century-to the present day; (2) political and socioeconomic issues in the recent past, including political and economic transition, foreign policy concerns, the environment, ethnic relations, the role of women, and the media; (3) culture, including education, religion, literature, film, and popular music.

 

Requirements:

 

Your performance in the course will be evaluated based on your participation in classroom discussions, on the three partial exams, and the two writing projects. The book review will be due on April 1st and will involve a critical discussion of the book you will select from a list I will hand out in class. The research project will be based on a group effort to put together a particular case regarding the issue of NATO expansion in Eastern Europe. Each group will have four members and will have to conduct some independent research to put together the best case and research paper that would support their stance on the issue. These projects will then become part of a debate we will hold in class on April 27.

 

Book review (5 pp.) 15%

Research Project (7 pp.) 20%

Exams 15% each

Discussion and class participation 20%

 

Required reading:

 

Phillip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe. From Prehistory to Postcommunism, 2nd ed.

Zoltan Barany and Ivan Volgyes, eds., The Legacies of Communism in Eastern Europe.

Lena Constante, The Silent Escape. 3000 Days in Romanian Prisons.

Milan Kundera, The Joke.

Liviu Rebreanu, Ion.

 

There will also be additional book chapters from works other than the ones above and essays required for some weeks. All these materials can be found on reserve in the Main Library, at the Media Reserve Desk. A copy of the additional materials can also be found in the REEI reading room in Ballantine Hall, 565.

 

Week 1

 

  1. Jan. 12. Introduction and Definitions.

    2. Read: Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, ch. 1, Gale Stokes,

    Three Eras of Political Change in Eastern Europe, ch. 1.

     

  2. Jan. 14. Legacies of the Pre-modern Era in the Ottoman Sphere of Influence

    3. Read: Longworth, ch. 9-10.

     

    Week 2

     

  3. Jan. 19. No Class.

    4.  

  4. Jan. 21. Legacies of the Habsburg Empire.

    5. Read: Longworth, ch. 7, 8;

     

    --visit to library and tour with the discussion sections.

     

    Week 3

     

  5. Jan. 26. From Cultural to Political Nationalism.

    6. Read: Longworth, ch. 6; Stokes, Three Eras , ch. 2.

     

  6. Jan. 28. Modernizaiton and Politics

    7. Read: Stokes, Three Eras, ch. 3.

     

    --read Ion for the discussion section

     

    Week 4

     

  7. Feb. 2. The Great Powers and Development Of Eastern Europe before WWI.

    8. Read: Longworth, ch. 5.

     

  8. Feb. 4. Interwar Period and Parliamentary Experiments

    9. Read: Longworth, ch. 4.

     

    --read Erno Szep, The Smell of Humans.

     

    Week 5

     

  9. Feb. 9. The Communist Takeovers and Beginning of Stalinist Regimes.

    10. Read: Longworth, ch. 3.

     

  10. Feb. 11. Thawing and Beginnings of Opposition: from the Hungarian Revolution to the Prague Spring.

    11. Read: Longworth ch. 2.

     

    --read The Silent Escape for discussion section.

     

    Week 6

     

    INVERSE THESE DATES: do review for the exam 16th, exam 18th, and lecture on Friday.

     

  11. Feb. 16. Midterm.

    12.  

  12. Feb. 18. From Solidarity to Glasnost and Revolution.

    13. Read: Stokes, Three Eras, ch. 9.

     

    Week 7

     

  13. Feb. 23. Transformation of Political Life: The Parties.

    14. Read: Longworth, ch. 1; Ivan Berend, Central and Eastern Europe, 1944-1993. Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P, 1996), ch. 8.

     

  14. Feb. 25. Local politics and development of pluralism.

    15. Read: Joanna Regulska "Local government reform in central and eastern Europe," in Robert J. Bennett, ed., Local Government in the New Europe, pp. 183-196; J. Regulska, "Transition to Local Democracy. Do Polish Women Have a Chance?" in Marilyn Rueschemeyer, ed., Women in the Politics of Postcommunist Eastern Europe, pp. 35-62.

     

    --watch first part of Snails’ Senator.

     

    Week 8

     

  15. Mar. 2 Nationalism in the New Eastern Europe.

    16. Read: George Schopflin, "Nationalism and Ethnic Minorities in Post-Communist Europe," in Richard Caplan and John Feffer, eds., Europe’s New nationalism. States and Minorities in Conflict (New York: Oxford U.P., 1996), pp. 151-68.

     

  16. Mar. 4 Restoration of Baltic Independence and Its Aftermath. Guest Lecture: Toivo

Raun.

Read: Toivo U. Raun, "Ethnic Relations and Conflict in the Baltic Sates," W. Raymond Duncan and Paul Holman, Jr., eds., Ethnic Nationalism and Regional Conflict : The Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (Boulder, Co, 1994), 155-82.

--watch sencond part of The Snails’ Senator and discuss

 

 

Week 9

 

17. Mar. 9 Mass Media and Pluralism. Guest Lecture, Owen Johnson.

Read: TBA.

 

18. Mar.11. Religious Institutions and the Challenge of Pluralism in Eastern Europe.

Read: Sabrina Ramet, Social Currents in Eastern Europe. The Sources and Meaning of the Great Transformation, 2nd ed., pp. 133-73.

 

Week 10

 

  1. Mar. 23. Education Reform since 1989.

Read: Jozef Kuzma, "Polish Educational Reform from the end of WWII to

1997," East West Education 15 (1994), 153-64. Jan Sadlak, "In Search of the

"Post-Communist" University—the Background and Scenario of the

Transformation of Higher Education in Central and Eastern Europe," in Klaus Hufner, ed., Higher Education. Reform Processes in Central and Eastern Europe, pp. 43-62.

 

20. Mar. 25. Midterm—REVIEW ON THIS DATE AND GIVE EXAM FRIDAY

 

Week 11

 

21. Mar. 30. The New Security Issues. Guest lecture, David Albright.

Read: Barany, Legacies, ch. 2 and 6; David Albright, "Strategic Implications of

Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union," Joan Serafin, ed., East-

Central Europe in the 1990s, pp. 25-56.

 

22. Apr. 1. Economic Developments. Book reviews due.

Read: Barany, Legacies, ch. 3; Barry Ickes, "The Dilemma of Privatization," in

Joan Serafin, ed., East-Central Europe in the 1990s, pp. 107-36.

 

Week 12

 

23. Apr. 6. Environmental Legacies.

Read: Barany, Legacies, ch. 5; Cristalina Georgieva, "Environmental Politics and

Policy in Bulgaria: Challenges and Constraints to Democratization," in Crawford

D. Goodwin, and Michael Nacht, eds., Beyond Government. Extending the Public Policy Debates in Emerging Democracies, pp. 265-85.

 

24. Apr. 8. The Social Impact of the Free Market Economics.

Read: Gail Kligman: "The Social legacy of communism: women, children, and

the feminization of poverty," in James Millar and Sharon Wolchik, The Social

Legacy of Communism, pp. 252-70; Barany, Legacies, ch. 4.

 

Week 13

 

25. Apr. 13. Social Reconfiguration: Gender Roles in Transition.

Read: Georgiana Waylen, "Women and democratization: Conceptualizing Gender Relations in Transition Politics." World Politics 46, no. 3 (Apr. 1994): 327-55. Also on the WWW at: http://sbweb3.med.iacnet.com/infotrac/session/106/145/5387190/3!xrn_1&bkm_3

 

26. Apr. 15. Generational Gaps: New forms of Social Fragmentation.

Read: John Kramer, "Drug abuse in Central and Eastern Europe," in Millar and

Wolchik, The Social Legacy of Communism, pp. 149-77; Sabrina Ramet, Social

Currents…, 2nd ed., 234-61.

 

Week 14

 

27. Apr. 20. Central-European Literature in the from the 1940s to the 1990s. Guest

Lecture.

Read: TBA.

 

28. Apr. 22. New Literary Forms in the Balkans: guest lecture—Henry Cooper.

Read: TBA.

 

--discuss Milan Kundera’s The Joke.

 

Week 15

 

  1. Apr. 27 NATO expansion: presentation of research projects and debate. Group

projects due.

Read: background: Petr Lunak, "Security for Eastern Europe: The European Option," World Policy Journal, 11, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 128-132; Daniel Nelson, "NATO: Use Only in Moderation," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 50, no. 6 (Nov.-Dec. 1994): 32-37; Ronald Steel, "Eastern Exposure," The New Republic 217, no. 2-3 (July 14, 1997): 27.

 

30. Apr. 29. Recent reassessments of the post-socialist transition.

Read: Vladimir Tismaneanu, "The Leninist Debris or Waiting for Peron," and Daniel Chirot, "Why East Central Europe is Not Quite Ready for Peron, but May Be One Day," in East European Politics and Societies 10, no. 3 (Fall 1996), pp. 504-540.

 

Final Exam: May 6th, 12:30-2:30