HISTORY OF EASTERN EUROPE MOD. 2

The course is foreseen for students at the 2nd year of the MA Degree Programme “Comparative International Relations” (curriculum "Eastern Europe", core educational activity). The historical nature of the course contributes to the multidisciplinary goals of the MA Degree Programme. Furthermore, its geographical focus on Eastern Europe constributes to the teaching programmes specifically conceived for MA students interested in deepening their knowledge about that area.

The main topic of this course is the history of the right to rest in the USSR in an international comparative perspective.
The learning goals are the following:
- to familiarize with and to be able to understand the historical development of the politics which normalized the duty to work and consequently the right to inactivity in its various forms, , as well as the transnational debates and the international legal framework which influenced those processes.
- to introduce the Soviet and East European case in a comparative international context
- to become acquainted with the most recent historiographical debate around notions like “non-work”, “laziness”, “leisure”, “unemployment”
- to be able to apply this knowledge to a critical understanding of the present time
- to refine your communication skills

A basic knowledge of modern and contemporary history, particularly of Eastern Europe.

The course will deal with the interrelation between work and leisure in the 20th-century Eastern Europe, with particular attention to the Soviet experience. The sub-topics which will be examined are the following:
- the right to work and the right to rest in the socialist tradition and in the Soviet reformulations
- definitions and semantic changes of notions like “idleness” and “free time”
- the genesis of the notion of “unemployment” in Europe
- leisure in USSR, in a comparative perspective

Compulsory readings:

Alain Corbin, L’invenzione del tempo libero (1850-1960), Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1996: Introduction + the chapters by A. Rauch (Le vacanze) and A. Corbin (La stanchezza).
Anne E. Gorsuch, "There's No Place like Home": Soviet Tourism in Late Stalinism, Slavic Review, 62 (2003), 4, 760-785.
Harold Karan Jacobson, “The USSR and ILO”, in International Organization, 14 (1960), 3, pp. 402-428, particularly pp. 402-407.
Jiri Kaspar, “Leisure, Recreation and Tourism in Socialist Countries”, International Journal of Tourism Management, 1981, Vol. 2, N. 4, 224-232.
Diane P. Koenker, “Travel to Work, Travel to Play: On Russian Tourism, Travel, and Leisure”, Slavic Review, 62 (2003), 4, 657-665.
Diane P. Koenker, “Whose Right to Rest? Contesting the Family Vacation in the Postwar Soviet Union”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51 (2009), 2, 401-425.
Paul Lafargue, Il diritto alla pigrizia (Le Droit à la paresse, 1883), introductiona and final essay by Maria Turchetto, Edizioni Spartaco, Santa Maria Capua Vetere, 2004, particularly the introduction (pp. 5-12), pp. 17, 19-24, 28, 31, 34 of Lafargue's text; pp. 67-84 of Turchetto's essay.
William Moskoff, Labour and Leisure in the Soviet Union: The Conflict between Public and Private Decision-Making in a Planned Economy, London-Basingstoke, Palgrave-MacMillan, 1984 (chapters 1, 5, and 6).
Stefano Petrungaro, “Hostels for Jobless Workers in Interwar Yugoslavia (1921-1941)”, in International Review of Social History, 59 (2014), 3, 443–471.
Stefano Petrungaro, “The Fluid Boundaries of ‘Work’. Some Considerations about Concepts, Approaches, and South-Eastern Europe”, in Südost-Forschungen, 72 (2013), 271-286.
J.L. Porket, Unenmployment in Capitalist, Communist and Post-Communist Economies, Houndmills, Macmillam Press, 1995, Introduction and chapters 4-5.
Giancarlo Ricci, Il diritto alla limitazione dell’orario di lavoro, ai riposi e alle ferie nella dimensione costituzionale integrata (fra Costituzione italiana e Carta dei diritti fondamentali dell’Unione europea), Working papers del Centro Studi di Diritto del Lavoro Europeo “Massimo d’Antona”, 79/2010, particularly pp. 1-10.
Marcel Van der Linden, “Studying Attitudes to Work, Worldwide, 1500-1650: Concepts, Sources, and Problems of Interpretation”, International Review of Social History, 56 (2011), special issue, 25- 43.
Jane Zavisca, "Contesting Capitalism at the Post-Soviet Dacha: The Meaning of Food Cultivation for Urban Russians", Slavic Review, 62 (2003), 4, 786–810.

For the main historical framework: Andrea Graziosi, L’Unione sovietica, 1914-1991, Bologna, il Mulino, 2011.

NB: Texts which are not available in the libraries of Ca’ Foscari will be put at disposal by the teacher.

1. Group presentations (30 minutes max.) on a text in the syllabus.
It is mandatory for students who attend classes. The aim is to evaluate the oral communication skills, as well as the ability to work synergically with other students (10% of the final grade); the students who do not attend classes will have to answer to an extra-question in the written test;

2. Written test (90% of the final grade)
The examination has three main goals:
1) to verifying the knowledge of the main historical facts and processes, as well as the most relevant personalities, with relation to the treated topics
2) to verify the analytical skills and the ability of the student to formulate critical reflections about the historiographical issues emerged during the lessons
3) to verify the knowledge of some elements of historical comparison in the framework of the East-Central and South-East European space.
The written examination (duration: 1½ hours) also aims at verifying the written communicative skills of the student. Due to the COVID-19 emergency, the test could take place on-line, through the Moodle platform. Please, check the communications about this regard on the Moodle-section dedicated to this course.

The course includes both lectures and short oral presentations by the students.

Italian

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development