Università Roma Tre

Introduction: from Kievan Rus' to Ivan IV the Terrible; The First Modernisation of Russia: Peter the Great and the birth of a Great Power; The long Russian 19th century from the Napoleonic wars to the reforms of Alexander II; The Russia of Nicholas II: The contradictions of an impetuous and disorderly development; The First World War and the end of a world; The Bolshevik revolution, its origins and affirmation; The Russian civil wars and the origins of the Soviet state; The NEP, the rise of Stalin, Collectivisation, industrialisation and the birth of Stalin's USSR; The Great Terror; The Comintern, Communist parties and traditional foreign policy; The Second World War; Victory and the birth of a superpower; The Cold War: The USSR and the West; Chhrushchev and the 20th Congress of the PCUS; The Brezhnev years: consolidation and stagnation; The impossible reform of the system: Gorbachev between perestroika and glasnost'; The end of the USSR and the birth of the Russian Federation; Yeltsin and the age of turbulence; A new strongman? Putin the new Russia and its wars: ambitions and contradictions of a regime.

1) A. Graziosi, L'Unione Sovietica 1914-1991, Bologna, Il Mulino

3) F. Benvenuti, Russia oggi, dalla caduta dell'Unione sovietica ai nostri giorni, Roma, Carocci.

for non-attending students: P. Paul Bushkovitch, Breve storia della Russia. dalle origini a Putin, Torino, Einaudi