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Department
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SEMINAR IN RUSSIAN HISTORY: THE KGB (HISTORY 322)
Spring term 2001, Instructor: Dr. R. Bidlack Office hours in Newcomb 36B: Monday through Thursday, 10:45 to 11:45 a.m. Over the centuries, authoritarian states have relied on centralized and highly disciplined security forces to maintain order and promote loyalty to the autocrat. Henry VII of England had his court of the Star Chamber and Louis XIV of France his royal intendants. In Russian history the institution of the secret police began with Ivan the Terrible's Oprichnina in the mid-sixteenth century. In general, the more powerful the Russian tsar or tsarina, the more formidable was his or her police force. With the development of totalitarianism in many countries of the world in the twentieth century, the size and power of political police forces expanded almost exponentially. This course, which is a new topic for the ongoing Russian history seminar, examines the functioning of the Soviet secret police from 1917 to 1991. (Though it was referred to by its initials KGB - standing for the Committee for State Security - only from 1954, the term "KGB" has since become a general designation for state security during the entire seventy-four years of Soviet history.) We will explore the role of the KGB within the Soviet political system, how it operated, the results it produced, and its impact on other countries, particularly the United States after the Second World War. KGB archives remain essentially closed to researchers, though copies of some KGB materials show up in state and Communist Party archives, which have been opened to a considerable extent since the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will conduct our study mainly through a highly unusual source. An archivist named Vasili Mitrokhin for twelve years smuggled top-secret material from the KGB's foreign intelligence archive before he defected to the West. British historian Christopher Andrew used the "Mitrokhin archive" to write The Sword and the Shield, which serves as our main reading. We will supplement this book with a recent scholarly biography of Lavrenti Beria, Stalin's last secret-police chief (1938-53), and part of the newly-released voluminous recollections of Sergei Khrushchev regarding his father's period of rule (1953-64). Students who have not taken the Soviet history course (History 321) should also read as soon as possible pages 63 to 557 of John M. Thompson's A Vision Unfulfilled: Russian and the Soviet Union in the Twentieth Century. All of the required readings are available in the book store. Full titles are listed below: John M. Thompson, A Vision Unfulfilled (1996)
Class meetings will consist of structured discussions of the assigned
readings. Students are expected to attend every class meeting and
have completed the assigned readings for each session. Any student
who misses even one class meeting without a valid excuse will fail the
course. Excused absences include significant illness, family
emergency, and off-campus job interviews. Students are responsible for
contacting the instructor in case of an absence or prior to a planned absence.
Course requirements also include a one-hour midterm test and a final exam.
Grades will be based on the following formula:
Class schedule April 23: introduction April 25: Andrew and Mitrokhin (A&M), pp. 1-67; Knight, pp. 3-66 April 30: A&M, 68-136; Knight, 67-131 May 2: A&M, 137-175; Knight 132-175 May 7: A&M, 176-202; Knight 176-229 May 9: Khrushchev, 482-563 May 14: midterm test Khrushchev, 563-662 May 16: A&M, 203-275 May 21: A&M, 276-373 May 23: A&M, 374-436 May 28: A&M, 437-485 May 30: A&M, 486-565
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