HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN CULTURE

The course is part of the EAPLL Master's Degree Programme and it aims to provide a framework of the main questions on Russian historical and cultural identity from the postwar period (1945) up to Putin's Russia. As an integrative activity of the CIR Master's Degree Programme, the course contributes to the achievement of formative objectives of historical education in the section "Eastern Europe".

1. Knowledge and understanding
● Acquisition of the terminology (in Russian and Italian) to express the concepts regarding late-Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture.
● The learning of the main events of Soviet and post-Soviet history and culture from 1945 to 2020.

2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
● Proper use of linguistic terminology in all processes of analysis and communication of acquired knowledge.
● Knowledge of how to relate ideas found in argumentative texts from different eras based on the principle of similarity or opposition.

3. Judgment capacity
● Knowledge of how to assess the logic of some inner policies in Russia over the last twenty years.

4. Communication skills
● Knowledge of how to explain the specificities of different types of cultural texts, using an appropriate terminology.
● Knowledge of how to interact with peers and with the teacher in a critical and respectful way.

5. Learning skills
● Knowledge of how to consult critically the reference texts and the bibliography contained in them by applying the concepts and concepts to the individual research work.

Basic knowledge of the development of Russian culture from Peter the Great to the end of the IIWW. It is necessary to have a comprehension of Russian language at least at the level B1. The students of the EAPLL Master's Degree Programme who study other languages (Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Modern Greek...) and do not speak Russian or hold a lower level than the required one are asked to contact the lecturer in time in order to understand if they can attend the exam or to fix an alternative programme.

There will be an analysis of various texts (written, oral, multimedia) that will help to reflect on fundamental aspects of the identity formation in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia according to a historic and cultural perspective.
The following topics will be tackled: the cultural values in Soviet Russia, the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties, the cultural shock in the Nineties and the recovery of traditional values. Pop culture (jokes, music, entertainment literature, television); the relationship State-religion in Modern Russia.

For all students ( * : materials uploaded on Moodle):
- G.P. Piretto, "Quando c'era l'URSS. 70 anni di storia culturale sovietica", Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano, 2018 (only pp. 323-576);
- G. Aragona (a cura di), "La Russia post-sovietica. Dalla caduta del comunismo a Putin: storia della grande transizione", Mondadori, Milano 2018;
- E. Carrère, "Limonov", Adelphi, Milano, 2012;
- * N. Ries, "Potato Ontology: Surviving Postsocialism in Russia", "Cultural Anthropology", Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 2009), pp. 181-212;
- * A. Farsetti, "Lo stalinismo nei manuali scolastici russi contemporanei: tre narrazioni a confronto tra politiche educative e modelli interpretativi", "ESamizdat", vol. XII, pp. 153-175;
- Backup material uploaded on the Moodle page of the course.

Non-attending students will have to add:
- E. Borenstein, "Plots against Russia: conspiracy and fantasy after socialism", Cornell University Press, Ithaca - New York, 2019.

The oral exam will last approximately half an hour for each student.
Students will have to demonstrate, using an appropriate language, that: they know how to contextualize and properly comment on the texts analysed in class and available on moodle (35 %); they know the historic-cultural evolution of the USSR and Russia from 1945 to nowadays, as it is presented in the book by Piretto and in the slides (45 %); they know how to illustrate in detail the other reference texts (20 %).

Lectures in Italian with multimedia backup material.

Students will be invited to contribute to the lessons actively, also through periodic exercises, individual and in pairs, proposed by the teacher.

Italian

the course of "History of the Russian Culture 2" is borrowed by "History of the Russian Culture", so we suggest to attend the two exams in two different years. Students who, for some valid reason, have to attend both the exams in the first year should explain their situation to the lecturer: they will attend "History of the Russian Culture 2" with the programme of "History of the Russian Culture" of the previous year.

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