166-235 Dictatorships, Democracies and Transition: Russian and East European Politics

Note

Available as 166-335 at 3rd-year level.

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Normally 25 points of first-year Politics; students with only 12.5 points in Politics may apply to the 2nd/3rd-year coordinator.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

Explores the reasons for the collapse of communist power and the emergence of post-communism in what used to be Eastern Europe and the USSR. Issues studied include democratisation, marketisation and privatisation, gender, nationalism and ethnic problems, and the environment. There is also a series of lectures on individual countries. Both the problems and the achievements of the still fragile post-communist countries will be analysed. On completion of this subject students should be able to: provide a comprehensive analysis of the numerous explanations of the 1989-91 East European Revolutions, and the 1991 collapse of the USSR; prove a brief analysis of the political, social and economic systems of the eight East European states and the USSR up to 1989; prove an up-to-date analysis of the various problems and achievements of both transitional- and post-communism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; briefly compare and contrast communism as a political theory with communism as a power-system; consider gender and ethnic issues of both late communism and early post-communism; assess what post-communism might mean as an abstract concept.

Assessment

Essay work or equivalent totalling 5000 words.

Prescribed Texts

A book of readings will be available from the Department.