The course explores number of issues central for the understanding of the Stalin's regime - the origins of the terror, the beginning of the Second World War and the ideological/cultural underpinnings of Stalinism. The key question which we are going to address is that of the degree to which Communist regime was able to mobilize support of Soviet population and the means it was using in order to achieve it. Politics of terror and politics of culture will be considered as two parallel and interdependent strategies of gaining such support. The course is based on newly published archival sources and presents a discussion of recent historiography of Soviet history. Students are expected to produce papers discussing the themes of the seminar.

The main themes of the course are the following:

1. The problem of totalitarianism and the origins of Stalinism. Recent historiography of Soviet history. The problem of archives. The concept of totalitarianism: history, promises and limitations. Three projects for the twentieth century: liberal democracy, fascism and communist. Nazism and Stalinism: what did they have in common?
2. Stalinism: organization of power. The making of the Stalin's regime. Everyday administration in 1930s. The Red Army and the party-state. Stalinism in Russian regions. Stalinist elites: fathers, sons and the origins of terror.
3. Stalinism: mobilization of support and the forms of protest. Cui prodest? Social mobility and forms of socialization. Stalinism and nationalism. A society organized for war? Was there any space for public protest? Was there any space for privacy? "Soviet subjectivity" under debate.
4. The politics of terror. Recent historiography of Goulag. Numerical estimates. Whom should we count as victims? The logic of terror (if any). The key question - how could it happen? What does terror reveal about human condition? The task of a moral history.
5. Assessing the efficiency of the Soviet System: the debate of the origins of the Second World War. Recent historiography of the war. The role of the war for the making of the Soviet system. Did Stalin plan a preventive war? Why did the Red Army surrender in 1941? War and terror: the experience of the extreme. 
6. Stalinism as a form of thought. Stalinism in the light of the 'linguistic turn'. Framing the mind: reading the "Short Course". Stalin and intelligentsia. Mass culture in the age of terror.
7. Stalinism after Stalin. The dismantling of Stalinism and its limits. The concept of the "cult of personality". A Neo-Stalinist state? Stalinism worldwide: is communism without terror possible? "Stalinism in its time": the problem of comparison in history.

The course is organized in cooperation with Aleksanteri Institute's Russian and East European Master's School.

Enrollment via NettiOpsu