Academic Year:
2022/23
8086 - Master in AsianPacific Studies in a Global Context
32406 - Asian Russia
Teaching Plan Information
Academic Course:
2022/23
Academic Center:
808 - Masters Centre of Humanities of the Deparment of Humanities
Study:
8086 - Master in AsianPacific Studies in a Global Context
Subject:
32406 - Asian Russia
Ambit:
---
Credits:
5.0
Course:
2
Teaching languages:
Teachers:
Gennadi Kneper
Teaching Period:
Third quarter
Schedule:
Presentation
The course deals with the exploration of Asian Russia as a space of encounter on the border between different cultural, economic and political areas. Thanks to an approach that combines various academic perspectives, students will have the opportunity to learn about various facets of life in Siberia and better appreciate the importance of geographical and climatic factors in the development of certain forms of civilization with their characteristic ways of cultural expression and socioeconomic organization. The first part of the course will focus on historical analysis, taking into account the political and anthropological aspects of the development of this enormous geographical area. In the second part of the course, the main focus will be on exploring the current dynamics of the Siberian macro-region and surrounding areas, formerly belonging to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Economic and cultural aspects, including the gender persepctive, will receive particular attention. The course is taught in Spanish, but it is possible to submit the papers in English or Catalan.
Associated skills
General skills
- Ability to integrate knowledge and methods from different disciplines, such as anthropology and history
- Basic training in the critical analysis of literary and visual sources
Specific skills
- Ability to analyze the history of cultural encounters from a comparative perspective
- Basic knowledge of area studies
Learning outcomes
- Ability to analyze the concepts of the empire, the periphery, the region and the frontier
- Ability to problematize the concepts of civilization and culture
- Ability to analyze the role of the Russian state and private initiative in the exploration of Siberia
- Insights into the interaction between Russian settlers and indigenous people in Siberia and other parts of Asia
- Ability to analyze the social and cultural impact of Russian colonization
- Ability to analyze economic development and the importance of efficient communication systems for the exploration and control of large territories
- Ability for the comparative analysis of Russian colonization with the Spanish, English and French models
- Insights into the interaction between Russia and China in the past and present
- Ability to analyze the relations between Russia and other Asian countries
Sustainable Development Goals
Quality education
Prerequisites
There are no specific prerequisites apart from those mentioned in "Associated skills" and being interested in learning more about Asian Russia.
Contents
1. First considerations: Asian Russia as a frontier and imperial space
- Space as a factor of historical development
- Internal colonization and its limits
- The Russian frontier
- Eurasia as an intercultural space
2. The beginnings: the legacy of Genghis Khan and the Russian expansion (13th – 17th centuries)
- "Mongolian Globalization"
- Russia as a Eurasian melting pot
- The Russian conquest
- Colonial exploration and administration
3. Imperial Siberia: colonization, exile and geopolitics (18th century – 19th century)
- Imagining the empire: Peter the Great and Siberia
- Prisoners, fugitives, schismatics: Siberian lifeworlds
- Regionalism, separatism and geopolitics
- State developmentalism
4. Soviet Siberia: revolution, Gulag and socioeconomic development (20th century)
- Admiral Kolchak and the defeat of "White Russia"
- Gulag and the human cost of Soviet modernization
- Successes and problems of peripheral development
- The twilight of Soviet Asia
5. Recomposing the concept: Asian Russia in the globalized world
- “Times of trouble”: Siberia in the 1990s
- Putin's recentralization
- “The usual suspects”: extraction economy and its limits
- The turn to the East
Teaching Methods
Each session lasts 2 hours 15 minutes and combines a lecture, a discussion of the assigned readings and a debate about the contents of the class. Active participation is essential to the discussion and students are expected to have read and reflected on the assigned readings.
Evaluation
- Attending 80% of the classes is a requirement to pass the course (unless the absence is duly justified)
- Participation in class and discussion of the required readings
- Oral presentation of one of the compulsory reading texts (25% of the grade)
- Paper (75% of the grade): it must have between 10 and 12 pages, TNR 12, spacing 1.5; as well as a bibliography, based on books and academic articles, duly cited (in footnotes or in parentheses) following the Chicago Manual of Style. A suitable structure would consist of a short introduction, a main part with 2 or 3 short chapters and a conclusion.
Bibliography and information resources
Mandatory readings
- Alexander Etkind, Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 1-10, https://avidreaders.ru/read-book/internal-colonization-russia-s-imperial-experience.html.
- W. Bruce Lincoln, The Conquest of a Continent: Siberia and the Russians (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 33-89.
- George Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System (New York, NY: The Century Co., 1891), I: 242-277, https://archive.org/details/siberiaexilesyst01kennuoft.
- Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1899), I: 179-258, https://archive.org/stream/memoirsofrevolut00krop#page/n9/mode/2up.
- M. I. Smirnov, “Admiral Kolchak”, The Slavonic and East European Review 11, no. 32 (1933): 373-387.
- Simon Ertz, “Building Norilsk”, en The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag, ed. Paul R. Gregory & V. V. Lazarev (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2003), 127-150.
- Dmitri Trenin, Post-Imperium (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011), 133-142; 183-193.
- Alexander Korolev, “Russia’s Reorientation to Asia: Causes and Strategic Implications”, Pacific Affairs 89, no. 1 (2016): 53-73.
Additional bibliography
- Helge Blakkisrud & Elana Wilson Rowe, eds., Russia’s Turn to the East: Domestic Policymaking and Regional Cooperation (Cham: Palgrave Pivot, 2018).
- Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Abby Schrader & Willard Sunderland, eds., Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History (London: Routledge, 2007).
- James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony 1581-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
- Steven G. Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1991).
- Victor L. Mote, Siberia: Worlds Apart (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).
- Igor V. Naumov, The History of Siberia, ed. David Collins (London: Routledge, 2009).
- John J. Stephen, The Russian Far East: A History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).
- Alan Wood, Russia’s Frozen Frontier: A History of Siberia and the Russian Far East 1581-1991 (London: Bloomsbury, 2011).