MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Graduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

EUM5090

Interpreting East and Central Europe

Marko Pavlyshyn

Synopsis This team-taught subject offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the changes that have occurred in the USSR and its successor states after 1985, as well as in East and Central Europe, especially the reform experiment of Mikhail Gorbachev, the fall of most of Europe's socialist regimes in 1989 and the disintegration of the USSR in 1991-92. There are three main themes: (1) contemporary political issues in Eastern and Central Europe and the states of the former USSR; (2) the move to economic pluralism; and (3) the cultural consequences of the collapse of centralised Soviet power. Substantial reading will be required, and a full reading list will be available at the start of the semester.

Assessment (8 points) Major essay (3000 words): 50% + Two class papers (1500 words each): 25% each

Assessment (12 points) Major essay (6000 words): 60% + Two class papers (1500 words each ): 20% each

Preliminary reading

• Goldfail J Beyond glasnost: The post-totalitarian mind 1991
• Hughes H Sophisticated rebels: The political culture of European dissent, 1968-87 1988
• Simons T Eastern Europe in the postwar world 1991

Recommended texts

• Burbank J and Rosenberg W (eds) Perestroika and Soviet culture (Michigan Quarterly Review 28: 4, 1989)
• Gorbachev M Perestroika 1987
• Havel V Living in truth 1986
• Holmes L Politics in the communist world 1986
• Konrad G and Szeleny I Intellectuals on the road to class power Harvester, 1979
• Marangos J Europe in transition Monash U, 1992
• Pavlyshyn M (ed.) Glasnost in context 1990
• Tertz A `The trial begins' and `On socialist realism' 1982
• Ward I The Soviet struggle for socialism 1992
• White S After Gorbachev 4th edn, CUP, 1993