HISTORY OF EASTERN EUROPE

The course is foreseen for students at the 1st year of the MA Degree Programmes “Comparative International Relations” (curriculum "Eastern Europe"; type of educational activity: core educational activity) and “European, American and Postcolonial Language and Literature” (curriculum "literature and culture" - Slavic and Balkan Studies; type of educational activity: core educational activity). The course will deal with the issue of labour in Eastern Europe during the 20th century, with particular attention to the ideological meanings attached to it, and to their concrete implications in the everyday-life of the workers. The historical nature of the course contributes to the multidisciplinary goals of the two MA Degree Programmes. 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 course deals with the issue of labor in the European socialist countries. The expected learning results are the following:

- to familiarize with and to be able to understand the main historical events and issues linked with the historical period under examination: which were the different labour policies which can be identified in 20th-century Eastern Europe; which were their cultural-political contexts; and which were their concrete implications for the everyday-life of the citizens
- to be able to apply this knowledge to a critical understanding of the present time in terms of continuities/changes and public use of history
- to become acquainted with the most recent historiographical debate around notions like "ideologies of labour", "work discipline", and "free/unfree labour"
- to refine your communication skills, both oral and written

A basic knowledge of modern and contemporary history (at least the whole high school history programm; furthermore, at least 6 ECTS in the political, social or historical field, acquired in the framework of the first degree), with a particular attention to Eastern Europe.

The course deals with the issue of labor in the European socialist countries. The sub-topics are the following:

- the celebration of labour as emancipatory factor
- Stakhanovism
- the free labor during the Stalin time
- gender dimension
- Yugoslav workers' self-management
- the (post-)socialist work discipline

Compulsory readings:

Izabella Agárdi, Socialist Work on Display. Visualizing the Political at the 1948 Budapest International Fair, in Rhetorics of Work, ed. Yannis Yannitsiotis et. al., Pisa: Edizioni Plus, Pisa University Press, 2008, pp. 1-26.
Rory Archer, Goran Musić, Approaching the socialist factory and its workforce: considerations from fieldwork in (former) Yugoslavia, in “Labor History”, 58 (2017), 1, pp. 44-66.
Chiara Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector, London: I.B. Tauris, 2019, chapter. 2.
Victoria E. Bonnell, The Iconography of the Worker in Soviet Political Art, in Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class, and Identity, edited by Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Ronald Grigor Suny, Ithaca and London, Cornell U.P., 1994.
Christopher R. Browning e Lewis Siegelbaum, Frameworks for social engineering: Stalinist schema of identification and the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft, in Michael Geyer, Sheila Fitzpatrick (eds.), Beyond totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism compared, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 231-249.
R.W. Davies, Oleg Khlevnjuk, Stakhanovism and the Soviet Economy, in “Europe-Asia Studies”, 54 (2002), 6, pp. 867-903.
Barbara Evans Clements, The Utopianism of the Zhenotdel, in “Slavic Review”, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 485-496.
Donald A. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928-1941, Armonk, NY, M.E. Sharpe, 1986, pp. 233-53.
Jack R. Friedman, Furtive Selves: Proletarian Contradictions, Self-Presentation, and the Party in 1950s Romania, in “International Labor and Working-Class History”, 68 (2005), pp. 9-23.
Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountains, in Stalinism: the Essential Readings, edited by Hoffmann, David L., Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
Vladimir S. Magun, Labor Culture: Labor Morality under Socialism, in Dmitri N Shalin (ed.), Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness, London, Routledge 2018 (first ed. Westview Press, 1996), available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/russian_culture/12
Goran Musić, Yugoslavia: Workers’ Self-Management as State Paradigm, in Immanuel Ness, Dario Azzellini (eds.), Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present, Chicago, 2011, 172-190.
Stefano Petrungaro, Ethics of Work and Discipline in Transition: Uljanik in the Late- and Post-Socialism, in “Review of Croatian History”, vol. 15 (2019), pp. 191-213.
Mark Pittaway, Introduction: Workers and Socialist States in Postwar Central and Eastern Europe, in “International Labor and Working-Class History”, 68 (2005), pp. 1–8.
Benedetto Zaccaria, L’immagine esterna dell’autogestione jugoslava in Europa occidentale: origini, sviluppo e tramonto di un mito tra gli anni Settanta e Ottanta, in Mariele Merlati e Daniela Vignati (a cura di), Una storia, tante storie. Studi di Storia Internazionale, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2019, pp. 175-191.


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

For those who attend classes:

1. Group presentations (30 minutes max.) on a text in the syllabus.
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);

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.

For those who do not attend classes:
only the written examination (see above, point 2). The students who do not attend classes will have to answer to an extra-question in the written test.

The course includes both lectures and short oral presentations by the students.
Due to the COVID-19 emergency, lectures could be took place partly or entirely on-line, through the Moodle platform.

The teacher is easily available for questions concerning the course at his office hours and by email at stefano.petrungaro@unive.it. Emails have to be written in a formal style (not "Hi prof." or "Salve prof.", but "Good morning", "Buongiorno", and the likes) and should not ask questions whose answer can be found in the information contained in this syllabus. The teacher is also available for discussing final thesis' projects.

written

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Circular economy, innovation, work" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development