HIST 323 | Politics and Societies in Post-Soviet Eurasia

This course examines the political development of the fifteen states that emerged from the Soviet Union after its collapse in 1991. It focuses on different Soviet Republics in the last decades of Soviet rule and then charts how they emerged from the communist system and created new political institutions and ideologies to bolster their independence. In order to grasp the cultural, national and religious diversity of the Soviet empire and the post-Soviet space, the course examines European areas, the Caucasus region, and Central Asia. Major themes include the attempts of post-Soviet peoples to overcome and reform the institutions, political habits, and economic structures inherited from the Soviet system, ethnic conflict in the post-imperial landscape, and the renewed role of Russia in post-Soviet territory and the geopolitics of the region.