Living the Revolution: The History of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991

When you have completed this course you will be able to:

• Understand major trends and debates in the historiography of the Soviet Union
• Be able to differentiate between political, social and cultural approaches to Soviet history and what those differences of approach imply in terms of understanding the causes of historical continuity and change.
• Understand the contested nature of history and how this is reflected in historiographical debates
• Critically analyse primary sources
• Use newspapers as primary sources a record of historical events and as a chronicle of contemporary opinions, aspirations, and debates
• Relate primary sources to historiographical debates
• Develop critical and comparative thinking to construct and develop a coherent argument about an issue, using primary sources as evidence.

A background of at least 30 credits in humanities or social sciences.

A good ability to read, write and understand English is required for this course.

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.

The course offers 12 one-hour lectures and 12 one-hour group teaching sessions. Group teaching sessions focus on developing research skills such as developing a research question, interpreting primary sources, and relating primary sources to historiographical debates. They also focus on presentation and discussion skills. Participants are asked to prepare the texts from the syllabus for discussion in each seminar session.

Compulsory assignment:

To qualify for the take-home exam, students are expected to give a presentation in the seminar on a set seminar question or questions for the week. The presentation is assessed as either pass or fail.

Three-day take-home final exam. This will be based on a set packet of primary sources distributed with the final exam question, which will be used in combination with secondary literature from the course to answer the exam question.

Digital home examination

The home examination is conducted in the digital examination system Inspera.You will need to familiarize yourself with the digital examination arrangements in Inspera.

Read more about home examinations using Inspera.

• Illness at exams / postponed exams
• Resitting an examination