HIS 3325 - Stalin

Credits: 4
This course will examine one of the twentieth century’s most notorious figures, Joseph Stalin, and his leadership of the Soviet Union. It will be both a history of the Stalin era and a study of historians’ changing interpretations of Stalin’s rule. Students will consider various attempts to define and understand “Stalinism” and its place in Russian, European, and world history. They will address topics such the political terror of the 1930s, Stalin’s “revolution from above” and the economic transformation of his country, social change and the status of women, the Soviet Union as a multiethnic state, Stalin’s engagement in World War II, and the onset of the Cold War.
McDaniel Plan: International; Social, Cultural, and Historical Understanding