Syllabus

Required Textbooks

Melvyn P. Leffler

For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, The Soviet Union, and the Cold War

Hill and Wang, 2007

Vladislav M. Zubok

A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold war from Stalin to Gorbachev

University of North caralina Press, 2007

Dmitri Volkogonov

Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders who Built the Soviet Regime

Free Press, 1998

Course Objectives

Cognitive Objectives:

  1. Describe the social and economic differences between the US and the USSR in the decade after World War II.
  2. Compare and contrast the US view with the Soviet view on how and why the Cold War started.
  3. Deconstruct the role of personality in the struggle between Stalin and Truman.
  4. Separate the different perceptions of the US and USSR on the cuses of the Berlin Blockade.
  5. Compare and contrast Eisenhower?s and Khrushchev?s perception of the arms race at the time of the U-2 incident.
  6. Compare and contrast Khrushchev?s reasons for placing missiles in Cuba with Kennedy?s reasons for demanding their removal.
  7. Categorize the changing nature of Cold War films across the five decades of the Cold War.
  8. Assess the role of ideology and contrast the role of ideology in the Soviet Union to the of ideology in the US.
  9. Comedy was a powerful tool to cope with the tensions of the Cold War. Compare and contrast the Soviet peoples use of it to that of the American people.
  10. Compare and contrast the role of personality in assessing Nixon?s action re the Cold War to that of Harry Truman.
  11. Compare and contrast the impact of the arms race during the five decades of the Cold War on the economy of both the USSR and the US.
  12. Critique the closing decade of the Cold War detailing which nation was most successful in establishing policy during those years.
  13. Appraise the closing of the Cold War and explain why it ended as it did and when it did.
  14. Assess the most positive event the Soviets experienced during the Cold War.
  15. Assess the most positive event the US experienced during the Cold War.
  16. Predict what the next five decades will bring in the relationship between the US and Russia.

Effective Objectives:

  1. Listen to and remember the names of our partner students.
  2. Assist students of the other class understand the patterns of American history
  3. Differentiate the cultural factors that explain US perception of the Cold War.
  4. Differentiate the cultural factors that explain Soviet perception of the Cold War
  5. Combine Russian questions about US policy during the Cold War with our own American perceptions.
  6. Integrate critiques of both nations? practices into a more complete, sophisticated interpretation.
  7. Revise their own assessment of other nation from the semester long examination and discussion.
  8. Question their prior view of American history from the readings, viewings and discussions of this semesters work.