Introductory description

In Autumn Term we will be discussing how Polish, Russian and Ukrainian intellectuals and politicians in the 19th century 'imagined' their nations and how they tried to include the peasantry in the nation. In Spring Term the module concentrates on the 20th century, especially the period of the two World Wars (1914 - 1945) and the period from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

LECTURES
Autumn Term

1. History and the Present: the conflict in Ukraine
2. Nation and Memory
3. Russia's Mission
4. Poland's Misfortune
5. Ukraine's Struggle
   READING WEEK
6. Peasants into ... (Russians, Ukrainians, Poles)
7. Nation and Literature
8. Nation and Art
9. Nation and Music

Spring Term
10. And what about the Jews?
11. The Great War
12. The Russian Civil War
13. The Polish-Ukrainian War
14. War Remembrance
READING WEEK
15. Soviet nationality policy
16. Poland between the wars
17. Bloodlands: Atrocities and mass murder in the Second World War
18. Memory conflicts

SEMINARS
Autumn Term
A) The annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine
B) Theoretical Approaches
C) The Disputed Past
D) The Glorified Past
E) The Contested Past
READING WEEK
F) Empires, Nationalists and the Peasantry
G) Reading Clubs and National Poets
H) History Painting and National Styles
I) National Operas, Anthems and Folk Songs
Spring Term
J) Assimilation, Zionism and Anti-Semitism
K) Going to War
L) Nationalism vs. Socialism
M) War and Nation Building
N) The Political Cult of the Dead
READING WEEK
O) The Ukrainian Famine
P) Minority Policy and Anti-Semitism
Q) Survivor Testimonies
R) Giving National Meaning to War
Summer Term
S) The Next Generation: (Re-) Visiting Lviv and Czernowitz
T ) How Russians, Poles and Ukrainians see themselves

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• To gain familiarity with a wide range of sources (from historiography to works of art), connected with processes of nation building in Eastern Europe
• To understand the importance of cultural factors, shared memories and shared forgetting, common suffering and cultural artefacts in nation building
• To get an overview of Polish, Ukrainian and Russian history
• To be able of analysing visual as well as text sources
• To become acquainted with modern methods of presentation (PowerPoint)
• To write essays based on an up-to-date understanding of the state of the historical debate.

Indicative reading list

Davies, Norman, Heart of Europe. The Past in Poland’s Present (Oxford, 2001).
Lieven, Dominic, Empire. The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (London, 2000)
Smith, Anthony D., Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (London/New York, 1998).
Subtelny, Orest, Ukraine: A History (Toronto, 1988) (4th edition: 2009)
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism(London, 2nd edn., 1991).
Armstrong, John, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, NC, 1982).
Augustinos, Gerasimos (ed.), The National Idea in Eastern Europe: The Politics of Ethnic and Civic Community (Lexington, 1996).
Beiner, Ronald (ed.), Theorizing Nationalism (Albany, 1999).
Bideleux, Robert, and Jeffries, Ian (eds), A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change(London/New York, 1998).
Billig, Michael, Banal Nationalism (London, 1995).
Breuilly, John, Nationalism and the State (Chicago, 1985).
Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, 1996).
Crampton, Richard, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century and after (London, 1997).
Deutsch, Karl, Nationalism and Social Communication. An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (Cambridge, Mass., 1953).
Eley, Geoff, and Suny, Ronald G. (eds), Becoming National: A Reader (New York/Oxford, 1996).
Eley, Geoff, ‘Remapping the Nation: War, Revolutionary Upheaval and State Formation in Eastern Europe, 1914-1923’, in Aster, H., and P.J. Potichny (eds) Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective (Edmonton, 1990), pp. 205-246.
Geary, Patrick J., The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002).
Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983).
Hastings, Adrian, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism(Cambridge/New York, 1997).
Hechter, Michael, Containing Nationalism (Oxford/New York, 2000).
Hobsbawm Eric J., and Ranger, Terence (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983).
Hobsbawm, Eric J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990).
Hroch, Miroslav, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (Cambridge, 1985).
Kedouri, Elie, Nationalism (Oxford, 4th edn., 1993).
K³oszowski, Jerzy et al. (eds), Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine. The Foundations of Historical and Cultural Traditions in East Central Europe. International (Lublin/Rome, 1994).
Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in its Origins and Background (New York, 1948).
Krapauskas, Virgil, Nationalism and Historiography: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Historicism (Boulder, 2000).
Okey, Robin, Eastern Europe 1740 – 1980: Feudalism to Communism (London, 2nd edn., 1986).
Smith, Anthony D., National Identity (Reno/Las Vegas/London, 1991).
Smith, Anthony D., The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986).
Sugar, Peter F. (ed.), Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Lanham, Md., 1995).
Sugar, Peter F., and Lederer, Ivo John (eds), Nationalism in Eastern Europe (Seattle, 1994).
Sussex, Ronald, and Eade, J.C. (eds), Culture and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe (Columbus, 1985).
Todorowa, Maria, ‘Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Communist Legacy in Eastern Europe’, East European Politics and Societies, 7 (1993), pp. 135-54.
Todorowa, Maria, ‘The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of Eastern European Nationalism’, Slavic Review, 64 (2005), pp. 140-164.
Wandycz, P.S., The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (London, 1992).
Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914(Stanford, 1976).
Yuval-Davis, Nira, ‘Gender and Nation’, in Wilford, Rick, and Miller, Robert L. (eds), Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism (London/New York, 1998), pp. 23-35.
Zimmer, Oliver, Nationalism in Europe, 1890-1940 (Houndmills/Basingstoke, 2003).

Subject specific skills

-Gain familiarity with a wide range of sources (from historiography to works of art), connected with processes of nation building in Eastern Europe
-To get an overview of Polish, Ukrainian and Russian history
-To write essays based on an up-to-date understanding of the state of the historical debate
-To understand the importance of cultural factors, shared memories and shared forgetting, common suffering and cultural artefacts in nation building

Transferable skills

-To be able of analysing visual as well as text sources
-To become acquainted with modern methods of presentation (PowerPoint)