B2889 - (II)REGION-MAKING AND NATION-BUILDING IN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE: POLITICS, SOCIETY AND IDEAS

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

This module completes the introduction to East European and Eurasian studies, focussing on the different meanings of ‘modernity’ and ‘nation-building’ adopted by political actors and intellectual entrepreneurs across East-Central and South-East Europe. Students are expected to make comparisons and grasp a comprehensive picture of the impact of nationalism, self-determination, ‘social(ist) experiments,’ and the process of construction/deconstruction of State institutions from the crisis of the Great pre-modern Empires to the current challenges of the EU Enlargement Eastwards.

Contenuti

This section of the core course examines the controversial issues of modernity and development, since the industrial revolution has accelerated the international competition, in terms of innovation, capitals, production modes, labor organization, social systems, and equality.

As well known, its crucial impact on Central, Southeast Europe, and Russia challenged the existing predominant rural organization of their societies as well as raised the controversial questions of “backwardness”.

Both these questions will be analyzed under different aspects, focusing on debates about theories of development and the factors that contributed to rooting a sense of “distinctiveness”, with elements of frustration and exclusion, condensed in the category “Eastern Europe”.

The rejection of the notion of “East” and the fervor to achieve the same stage of development as Western Europe will be considered in their problematic approaches to the ideas of welfare and egalitarianism, in the tension between the desire for modernity and the economic, social, and cultural obstacles to it. Consequently, this section will particularly focus on (a) the aspirations of the narodničestvo in Russia and in the Balkans; (b) the peasant movement in East-Central Europe between the two World Wars and its competition with Bolshevism; (c) the debate about the industrialization of the Soviet Russia in the 20s and the outlets imposed by Stalin; (d) the reforms which stemmed from the process of destalinization and the debate on the socialist market in the 50s and 60s; (e) the growth without reforms and new waves of changes promoted by Gorbačëv.

Within this framework, the underlying reasons of the nexus between politics and economics will be investigated by considering either their far-reaching cultural implications in the spectrum of the political systems, or the desire for modernity in its relations towards the “West”, in terms of assimilation and/or distinctiveness, while the socialist experience will be approached as an attempt to overcome underdevelopment, with its scopes and limits, up to the collapse of 1989-1991.

To these ends, the course will look at several key methodological issues and how they are tackled in the social sciences; the approach will be interdisciplinary, and students will be invited to read original documents and basic literature in order to prepare themselves for presentations.

Testi/Bibliografia

Compulsory reading:

Stefano Bianchini, Eastern Europe and the Challenges of modernity1800-2000, Routledge, London-New York, 2015 (paperback and e-book available).

Together with:

All the documents selected and discussed during the lectures

In order to prepare their presentations students may consult the following references:

Piotr S. Wandycz, The Price of Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present, Routledge, New York, 1992, pp. 1-11;

George D. Jackson Jr., Comintern and Peasant in Eastern Europe 1919-1930, Columbia Univ. Press, New York and London, 1966, pp. 3-150;

David Mitrany, Marx against the peasant: a study in social dogmatism, Chapel Hill, 1951 (only the third chapter on the “Peasant Revolution”).

Ivan T. Berend, Central and Eastern Europe 1944-1993. Detour from the periphery to the periphery, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1998 pp. 127-181;

Barbara Falk, The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe, CEU Press, Budapest, 2003, pp. 313-364;

John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, Columbia U. Press, New York, 2000, pp. 67-89;

Additional suggested readings:

Björn Hettne, Development Theory and the Three Worlds, Longman, Harlow Essex, 1995, pp. 219-248.

Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: the Map of Civilization on the Mind of Enlightenment, Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford, 1994, pp. 1-16;

Andrzey Walicki, The Controversy over Capitalism, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1969;

Stephen Cohen and others, Was the Soviet System Reformable?, in «Slavic Review», n. 3, vol. 63, fall 2004, p. 459-554.

Metodi didattici

Each class will be opened by the professor and/or by students’ presentation based on introductory reading.

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

Oral exam. Students are expected to analyze and discuss in detail the topics that have been developed during classes with appropriate references to the sources offered by the readings. The ability of comparing theoretical approaches and policies implementation will be highly appreciated.

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

PowerPoint and overhead projector

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Francesco Privitera