Professor: Larissa Stiglich 

4 credits

After the collapse of communism, former citizens of the Soviet bloc found themselves grappling with the question of how a system that seemed like it would last forever had disintegrated so rapidly. Western observers, too, sought to explain this stunning course of events and ultimately attributed the end of the Cold War to the victory of capitalism and democracy over communism. But as the shine of consumer goods and free travel wore off, post-socialist citizens found themselves grappling with a new set of challenges that came along with life in a capitalist system, making them wonder at the ultimate cost of freedom.

This course uses the long history of the collapse of communism throughout the eastern bloc as a case study to investigate the relationship between citizen-led efforts at social and political reform, state repression, and revolution. Moving chronologically and thematically, we will examine the series of bottom-up attempts to reform the Soviet system from within, and the pattern of violent state repression that emerged in response in East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, among others. We will explore the domestic and international conditions that gave way to the wave of largely peaceful revolutions throughout the eastern bloc, culminating in the collapse of communism. Finally, the course will consider the long-term implications of these transitions for citizens living in newly capitalist and democratic states.

In this course, students will learn the fundamentals of historical inquiry augmented by approaches from other disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and political science. Reading a combination of primary source evidence and scholarly secondary sources, and considering other forms of cultural expression, students will learn to interpret these sources and form their own arguments about the factors leading to the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War, as well as the early challenges of the post-Cold War world order.