Different approaches to Russia from the point of view of research: History, Culture and Literature, Sociology. Obligatory course for those who intend to make Russian Studies Programme.

The introduction course will address topics such as:

- An overview to the Russian history

- Periodisation of history in Russia and the Soviet Union

- Modernisation emphases of the state Mythmaking and propaganda in history

- Continuum in Soviet and Russian history

- Use of Past in the Soviet Union/Russia

- The legacy of the Soviet Union

- Key concepts of Russian cultural identity

- symbolic world of Russianness

- aspects of cultural history - cultural studies

- "New Man and Woman" - building a new Soviet man: kul'turnost'

- new Russian popular culture

- Russia's transition to a market economy, including the legacy of the Soviet economic system, the shadow economy and new forms of blat;

- Women in Russia, particularly their roles in business and the family

- Russia's transition to democracy, including presidential power, centralization and possibly state-media relations;

- How Russians have coped with the transition in daily life, for example facing changes in the workplace, economic insecurity and the growing gap between rich and poor (e.g. the "new Russians" versus the elderly poor).

Enrollment via NettiOpsu during the period of 20.8.-31.8.2010

No previous knowledge of the Russian language is required. The course is set around studying prepared texts, through which the main areas of the grammar will be covered. Active participation and production are the main goals of the course. The teaching language will be English. Students of any discipline are welcome. Those who already have knowledge of Russian language can participate courses at the Slavonic philology.

This course is for those who have never studied Russian before but think it would be a fun at least to try. The aim is to learn the Russian alphabet, to acquire fundamental vocabulary of 500-800 lexical units, to achieve basic skills in pronunciation and grammar, to study everyday communicative situations. This means that after studying Russian for one semester you will be able not only to read simple texts (names of the streets, signs, ads, short newspaper articles, etc.), but also to understand some spoken language, and even to communicate in everyday life situations.

Of course you heard many times, that Russian is a very difficult language with an alphabet nobody can learn, with lots of grammar forms nobody can understand, and hundreds of rules with thousands of exceptions nobody can remember. You have a chance to see for yourself whether is it true or maybe a slight exaggeration...

PLEASE NOTE:

Course book (available, for example, in the Juvenes book store after 15.08.2009): Karavanova N. B. (2008) Survival Russian: a Course in Conversational Russian. Moscow.

Enrollment via NettiOpsu

FINAL EXAM TAKES PLACE ON MONDAY 27TH OF SEPTEMBER AT 16-18. PLACE: PINNI A, Paavo Koli lecture hall .

SECOND CHANCE TO TAKE THE EXAM (OR RE-TAKE IT) WILL BE ON MONDAY 25TH OF OCTOBER AT 16-18. PLACE PINNIB5069.

Visual culture makes up a significant part of a particular national culture or civilisation and encodes the main values and attitudes of the people and state. For understanding Russia with her dramatic history this is particularly significant. The course aims at providing the students with knowledge of the Russian visual arts and contemporary visual environment with its semiotics and encoded social values.

Content of the course

Starting from the Russian icon and the 19th century painting, the course concentrates on Russian avant-garde art, the Soviet poster and Soviet/Russian art-photography with special attention to the following topics:

• The Russian avant-garde: in literature and in visual arts;
• The history of the Soviet poster;
• Photography and propaganda;
• Gender in Russian painting, poster and photography;
• Censorship in visual arts under Stalin;
• Famous Russian war photographs and photographers;
• Socialist realism in the visual arts (1950s-1980s);
• The re-emergence of fine-art photography in the 1970s;
• Outstanding contemporary Russian photographers.

The final part of the course deals with the Post-modernist 'visual quotation' in Russian pop-culture.

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

Syllabus:

Week 1

Mon 6 Sept:

Introduction: the roots of the Russian visual culture.

The icon as an entrance into spiritual world.

Lubok and the "low culture".

Tue 7 Sept:

The Russian art in  the 18-19th centuries.

Critical realism of Fedotov and the Wanderers (Itinerants): Perov, Kramskoi, Repin.

The national idea and the national ideal in the Russian visual arts: Nesterov, Vasnetsov, Kustodiev, Petrov-Vodkin, Glazunov.

Art for the sake of art: Mir iskusstva (the World of Art movement) and the Silver Age of Russian Culture: Levitan and Chekhov, Vrubel and Lermontov,

The idea of the feminine: Petrov-Vodkin and his reference to the spiritual values of the Russian icon, Kustodiev and his idealisation of provincial low-middle class life,

Refined  aesthetism of Zinaida Serebriakova

Mark Shagal's flying lovers  and his representation of the Jewishness.

Wed 8 Sept:

Birth of Futurism.

The futurists manifesto "A slap in the publics face".

David Burliuk as the father of Russian futurism.

Mikhail Larionov and Natalya Goncharova.

Futurism in literature and in visual arts.  Book design and experiments in poetry. Kamensii, Kruchonych, Xlebnikov

Mayakovsky and Burliuk.

Malevich an Kruchonych. The first futurist opera The victory over the sun. 1913.

The birth of Malevich's The Black Square.

Malevich and his UNOVIS group.

Suprematism (non-objective art).

Malevich and his heritage today postmodernism.

Fri 10 Sept:

Pavel Filonov and his idea of the ?made? artwork.

Constructivism. Tatlin and his fantastic projects.

El Lissitzky, Bauhaus and Soviet propaganda. Birth of new visual language in photography and cinema. Dziga Vertov and His  Man with a moviecamera.

Alexander Rodchenko  and "The October Group".  

WEEK 2

Mon 13 Sept:

Story of the  Soviet poster. Dmitri Moor.

Arts under Stalin.  The doctrine of the Socialist realism.

Censorship and purges. Gustav Klutsis.

Manipulation with the works of art and photographs.

Tue 14 Sept:

The Socialist realism in the post-war Soviet Russia. The gender aspect of the socialist realism.

Search of the national idea. Ilya Glasgunov.

Depicting a woman: Socialist realists (Samokhvalov, Deineka, Laktionov against their predesessors  Zinaida Serebriakova, Mikhail Nesterov, Kuz'ma Petrov-Vodkin, Boris Kustodiev, 

Dissident and underground arts. The Bulldozer exhibition.

Ernest Neizvestnyi and leader of the state. Nikita Chrushchev.

Mikhail Shemiakin.

Visual arts in the post-modern times.

The Mit'ki group.  Komar and Melamid

Wed 15 Sept:

Photography as propaganda and as visual art.

Famous war photographs.

Photography in Russia in 1980s.

Photography in Russia today.

Documentary and fine-art-photography.

Photogphaphers of St.Petersburg

Fri 17 Sept:

Revision. Workshop and discussion on photography and visual arts.

Selected Literature:

Bowlt, John E and Matich, Olga. Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde And Cultural Experiment. NY, 1999.

Bown, Matthew Cullerne. Art under Stalin. New York : Holmes & Meier, 1991.

Condee,  Nancy.  ed..Soviet Hieroglyphics. Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia. London, 1995

Douglas, Charlotte. Kazimir Malevich. London, 1994

Elliott, David. New Worlds: Russian Art and Society, 1900-37. London, 1989.

Gray, Camille. The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863-1922. Thames and Hudson, Ltd. London: 1962.

Kelly,  Catriona and Shepherd, David eds. Constructing Russian culture in the age of revolution, 1881-1940. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998.

King, David. The Commissar Vanishes: The falsification of photographs and art in Stalin Russia.-  Edinburgh, 1997.

Lavrentiev, Alexander. Alexander Rodchenko. Photography. 1924-1954. Koln, 1995.

Tarasov, Oleg.   Icon and Devotion. Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia.- London, 2002.

Enrollment via NettiOpsu

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

Kurssin tavoitteena on antaa moniulotteinen kuva Venäjän ympäristökysymysten sosiaalisesta ja kulttuurisesta rakentumisesta ja ympäristöongelmien taustoista lähestymällä aihetta kulttuurintutkimuksen ja maantieteen kautta. Kurssi rakentuu maantieteen ja kirjallisuuden sekä elokuvan väliselle vuoropuhelulle. Ympäristöä lähestytään eri lähtökohdista: toisaalla kurssi rakentuu maantieteilijän silmin Venäjän ympäristöongelmien ja -kysymyksen historiaan tehtävien katsauksien kautta. Neuvostoliiton ja Venäjän ympäristöongelmia lähestytään sekä maantieteen keskeisten käsitteiden - tila ja paikka - että yhdyskunta- ja ympäristösuunnitteluun keskittyvän soveltavan maantieteen tutkimuskysymysten kautta. Toisaalla venäläistä luontoa lähestytään kaunokirjallisuuden ja elokuvien kautta. Erityisesti tarkastellaan kysymystä, miten kirjallisuuden ja taiteen kautta tuotetaan erilaisia luontokonsepteja ja miten kulttuurin ja luonnon välisiä eroja representoidaan mm. kulttuurisen muistin ja maiseman suhteiden kautta.

Luentojen lisäksi opiskelijat kirjoittavat esseen ensimmäisellä luentokerralla ehdotettavista teemoista. Kirjallisuuslista on saatava opettajilta ennen kurssi alkua.

Kurssi järjestetään yhteistyössä Aleksanteri-instituutin Venäjän ja Itä-Euroopan tutkimuksen maisterikoulun kanssa.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään yhden kerran.

Ilmoittautuminen tapahtuu NettiOpsussa 20.8.-24.10.2010 välisenä aikana.

Welcome to the closing symposium of the research project Generation, National Identity, the Body: Polish and Russian Women's Writing in Transformation (PURU, www.womenswriting.fi) affiliated to the University of Tampere, School of Modern Languages and Translation Studies (2007-2010). The aim of the PURU research group has been to investigate what happens to feminist literary theories and concepts when applied in the (post-socialist) East European context; to engage a comparative approach to women's writing and to investigate subjectivities situated in Russian and Polish culture and literature. For this symposium the research group has invited well-known scholars of Polish, Finnish, and Russian literature to look at women's writing in a cross-cultural feminist perspective.

Students can gain 2 ECTS by listening to all of the presentations given in the symposium and writing a learning diary of at least 10 pages based on five (5) presentations. The learning diary must be turned in as a printed version to prof. Arja Rosenholm (room PinniB 5053) by November 30th 2010.

The programme of the symposium can be found here

Enrollment via e-mail: sirje.lalla(at)uta.fi

The course gives general view on Russian media and presents various points of view to Russian media. The main focus is on the realisation of freedom of speech in Russian media. The course will discuss freedom of speech in Soviet media, liberation under Gorbachev, freedom of speech under Eltsin era, as well as challenges to freedom of speech under Putin and Medvedev. The course will pay attention also to development of freedom of speech in other former Soviet countries.

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

Enrollment via NettiOpsu during the period of 10.12.2010 - 10.1.2011.

This course deals with forms and processes of the Russian culture of 2000s. It is focused on analyses of cultural texts belonging to literature, art, music and theatre as well as TV, radio and the Internet. It aims to present and interpret popular novels, films and shows from the point of view of their cultural meanings and relevant cultural languages.

It also studies widespread cultural practices with their specific features, like blogging, mass engagement into social nets, shopping, taking pictures and visiting photo exhibitions, listening to FM radio and reading "ironic crime stories", etc. - in order to come to better understanding of the variety of today's Russian culture.

One of the main goals of this course is to show interconnections between presumably "high" and "low" cultural forms, which are mixed and synthesized into the "nobrow" culture of the global information society.

Methodologically this interdisciplinary course is linked to cultural studies, semiotics and discourse analysis. Therefore keywords for interpretation of cultural forms and practices are: language, cultural meanings, text, narrative, discourse, representation, ideology, media, everyday life, subcultures and audiences.

"Contemporary Russian culture: introduction into cultural studies" is addressed to students of the Russian language and culture as well as to those who study European media, arts and literature of the 2000s.

Prospective themes:

• "Serious media" vs "media entertainment": changing landscape of Russian radio and TV
• Internet: cultural specifics of Russian blogs and social nets
• Internet: users' identity and autobiography in "100 facts about yourself"
• Popular literature: quest for new forms and cultural play with readers
• Popular literature: phenomenon of women's crime stories
• Cinema: blockbusters and experimental forms
• Languages of the contemporary Russian art
• Photography: cultural "boom" of 2000s
• Innovations and traditions in theatre and performance
• Pop- and rock music in today's Russian culture
• Fashion: haut couture and everyday styles.

The course aims at examining the problem of dramatic transformations in attitudes towards the Soviet past undergone by the Russian society since 1985 till nowadays.  Representations of Stalinism and that of Soviet regime have diverged over this period from a predominant radical denial of "everything Soviet" manifested in the heated public debates and wages of public revelations of Stalinism and the Soviet terror (1986-1991) to a sudden loss of interest in and an ignorance of the Soviet heritage (1992-1997) followed by the mass nostalgia for the Soviet times, revisionism and glorification of Stalinism (1999-2009). Alongside these transformations, debates on the Soviet past have moved to the very center of internal affairs and foreign politics. The course will consider the theoretical problems that this process in the Russian historical memory poses to the memory studies.

• Introduction: History and memory as related concepts. Origins of historical memory studies, their place and role in the XX century historiography. How historical memory is transmitted: collective memory, memory of social groups or individual historical memory? Sources to study historical memory: oral history, life story, opinion polls, fiction.

• Ideology of the Soviet intelligentsia (1960-1980ss). Debates over Stalinism during perestroika. Representations of the West and "market discourse" in mid-90s.
• Concept of totalitarianism and its role in the discourse over the Soviet past. The comparison of German and Soviet totalitarianism and its influence over perception of Stalinism in post-Soviet Russia.
• Soviet myth of the "Great Patriotic War" (1941-1945) and its role in the historical memory of Stalinism. 60s anniversary of the II WW and its impact on the historical memory and public debates.
• False memories as a new problem in memory studies: Russian and French cases. "Golden myth of Stalinism" and the selective historical amnesia in post-Soviet Russia. Opinion polls and oral history interviews on the memory of Stalinism.
• Memory wars and memory politics in post-Soviet Russia (2006-2010).  State politics in history education: textbooks on the Soviet history. Memory laws and academic freedom
• Closing discussion: Concept of trauma and its relevance for the post-Soviet case. Historical memory and current debates in historiography. 

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

Enrollment via NettiOpsu

The collapse of the Soviet Union prompted unprecedented forms of social dislocation: steep and rapid stratification, widespread poverty, a deterioration of welfare institutions, and the emergence of the social group of "New Rich". All these processes are closely linked with the re-formation of class relations and identities in contemporary Russia. This course examines this re-formation from a variety of disciplinary, theoretical and methodological perspectives. The lectures examine how class is represented and evaluated in public discourses; how class positions are constituted in various institutional practices; and how class is experienced, lived, and embodied at the level of subjectivity and identity. The course, firstly, offers a historical background by examining the constitution of class relations in Imperial and Soviet Russia, and secondly, discusses class formation in a range of sites and practices in contemporary Russia, including media, consumption, popular culture, everyday life, health, education and politics.

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

Programme:

• Introduction (Suvi Salmenniemi) Tuesday 8.3. 16-18

• Class relations in Imperial Russia (Arja Rosenholm) Thursday 10.3. 16-18

• Social divisions in the Soviet Union (Harri Melin) Tuesday 15.3.2011 16-18

• Contemporary Russian class structure (Harri Melin) Thursday 17.3.2011 16-18

• Film: Moscow does not believe in tears Tuesday 22.3. 16-19

• Social welfare and class (Maija Jäppinen) Tuesday 29.3. 16-18

• Class and health practices (Marja Rytkönen) Thursday 31.3. 16-18

• Class in Russian politics (Sirke Mäkinen) Tuesday 5.4. 16-18

• Media from a class perspective (Jukka Pietiläinen) Thursday 7.4.2011 16-18

• Class, gender and consumption (Saara Ratilainen) Tuesday 12.4.2011 16-18

• Class and education politics (Nelli Piattoeva) Thursday 14.4.2011 16-18

Enrollment via NettiOpsu

After the collapse of the Soviet Union a geopolitical boom overtook new Russia. Discussions touched upon questions such as Russia?s position and role in the world, for example, whether Russia was part of the 'Wes'/Europe, or the 'East'/Asia, or something unique, Eurasia. There were also debates on with whom Russia should have cooperated, who its partners were, and who its adversaries. New Russia was compared both with the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and the Soviet Russia.

In the course "Geopolitics in Contemporary Russia" we will focus on how different (political) actors in Russia in the 1990s and 2000s have

1) understood the position and role of Russia in the world,
2) defined the concept of geopolitics.

The approach of the course is that we can study geopolitics from the texts in which Russian actors construct Russia?s place in the world in relation to other actors. Geopolitics can thus be understood as arguments, stories or discourses built by these actors.

Lectures will be based on analyses of the texts produced by the political leadership of Russia, political parties and scholars/teachers. The texts that they have produced include official documents and programmes, speeches, interviews, university textbooks and lectures. As an introduction we will also touch upon the history of geopolitics as a field of study in the 'West'.

The course "Geopolitics in Contemporary Russia" will consist of two parts: lectures and seminars. There will be eight lectures (16 hours). Those who will attend the lectures only will write a lecture diary as their assessment (2 ECTS). After the lectures students may continue participating in the seminars, which will elaborate the themes of the lectures. In addition, each student participating in the seminar will write an essay on the topic of the course, that is, on geopolitics and/or Russian politics. Essays will be discussed and commented during the seminar (altogether four seminars = 8 hours). The maximum number of students in the seminar is 10. Those having Political Science or IR as their major and having already completed most of the intermediate studies will be given preference. Participating in the seminars and writing an essay will give an extra 3 ECTS.

Compensations:

Political Science
VALTA7, 2-5 cr or VALTS2f, 2-5 cr  or VALTS2g, 2-5 cr

or

International Relations
KVPOA2, 2-5 cr or KVPOA6, 2-5 cr or KVPOS3, 2-5 cr.