The MA Major-Field Comprehensive and PhD Major-Field Preliminary Examination in Russian History both typically consist of four questions: two on Imperial history (1700-1917), one on Soviet history (1917-1991), and one covering both periods. Examinees have four hours to write their answers. (See descriptions below).

        The major social issues of Russia since 1700 concern serfdom and unfree labor in general, the transition from estates to classes, the changing position of ruling elites (the nobility, officialdom, the clergy, and Party members), and the emergence of civil society. Politically, questions will likely concern the hypertrophied state, the persecution of intellectual dissidents, the repeated political impact of defeat in major wars, the development of constitutionalism, reform from above, the role of patronage networks and the nomenklatura, imperial pretensions and burdens, and Europeanization. The most important economic problems have centered on rapid industrialization and laggardly agricultural development. Culturally, Russia has been distinguished by the subordination of the church to the state, the prominence of ideas and ideology (and their carrier, the intelligentsia), impressive achievements in high culture, and multiethnicity.

        Revolutionary change has punctuated the whole of Russian history. The Imperial period began with a cultural revolution (what James Cracraft calls the “Petrine revolution in culture”), the last four emperors were obsessed with specters of social and political revolution, and human history’s greatest revolutionary upheava, in 1917, put an end to the ancient Romanov dynasty and gave birth to the Bolshevik-Soviet dictatorship, which itself collapsed during the “revolution” of 1991. Key questions of Russian history, therefore, concern the causes of these revolutions, the sources of social and political stability and instability in Russia, and the debates between “pessimists” and “optimists.”

        The field of Soviet history may be the simplest to conceptualize of all major historical fields. It certainly is the briefest and most clearly delimited. It began and ended in revolution and was dominated by the Communist Party. The major themes of Soviet history, chronologically speaking, are the causes, course, and impact of the Civil War; the “retreat” from communist principles under the New Economic Policy (1921-29); the rise and dominance of Stalin; his “revolution from above”; the Great Terror; Russia in the World War and the Cold War; the decline of Stalinism but maintenance of the Communist dictatorship, how with “superpower” status; and the collapse of the latter under Gorbachev.

        The only significant historiographical debates, which are worth reflecting on, are, on the one hand, between those who have applied the term “totalitarian” to Soviet Russia and those who do not (commonly called “the revisionists”) and, on the other hand, between those who ascribe to ideology a paramount role in the unfolding of Soviet history and those who instead emphasize Russian political culture and social backwardness. (For a brief bibliography on Soviet history, see the end of this document.)

        In addition to the MA and PhD major-field exams, discussed above, we offer four additional minor-field exams, as indicated below:

        Each student preparing to take graduate exams should draw up a list of books and articles to read and submit the list to the chair of the examination committee as early as possible. As a general rule of thumb, the list for the PhD Major Field should include roughly fifty books (or their equivalent in articles); books for the MA Major Field should number approximately thirty. For each PhD Minor Field, figure on reading twenty books; for each MA Minor Field, ten books. For the Soviet period, most of the books should have been published since 1992.

        Three important points about Soviet historiography: (i) the opening of the Soviet archives beginning in 1989 has diminished the value of much previous work; (ii) political controversy is prominent in the field; (iii) ideology played an immense role in Soviet history.

        Regarding point one: In any scholarly field, books “grow old” and become dated. This is especially true for Soviet history, as until recently scholars lacked access to a large portion of Soviet archives. Books and articles published since roughly 1992, therefore, are likely to be more accurate and valuable than earlier works. An example: from Vladimir Brovkin’s study of the Civil War (Behind the Front Lines, 1994) or Thurston’s (Life and Terror, 1996) and Davies’s (Popular Opinion, 1997) work on Stalinist terror we learn much, much more than previously had been known on these subjects.

        On point two: given the unprecedented transformation of Russia by the Soviet leadership it has often proven difficult to resist “choosing sides” or at the very least passing judgment on the “Soviet experiment” (to take a recent title by Ronald Suny). Either, it might be argued, that experiment was a heroic striving for human liberation, or it was a series of monstrous crimes against humanity. The works by Alexander Rabinovich, E. H. Carr, Suny, Stites, Kenez, Sheila Fitapatrick (early vintage), Isaac Deutscher, Rex Wade, David Mandel, Nina Tumarkin, Lynne Viola (early vintage), Moshe Lewin, Siegelbaum, and Roberta Manning mostly presuppose the former interpretation. The majority of these historians have been called “revisionists.” The grimmer interpretation underlies a far smaller body of (mostly earlier) scholarship, by Conquest, Pipes, Brovkin, Fainsod, Schapiro, and Ulam. Most of the recent scholarship is more value-neutral, though the stories it tells is mostly grim. These historians have been said to form a “totalitarian school.” (The last major study with a “heroic” interpretation of Stalinism, Kotkin’s Magnetic Mountain [1995], does not shy away from the period’s horrors and, to boot, is not based on archival documentation; had Kotkin read police reports, his story would probably have had a darker cast.) Witness the appearance of two major books on revolutionary and Soviet Russia with the word “tragedy” in their titles: Malia, The Soviet Tragedy and Figes, A People’s Tragedy. Interestingly, Figes sympathizes with the Bolsheviks’ dreams and intentions; Malia does not.

        The final point concerns the role of ideology in the Soviet experiment. Malia’s book, just mentioned, interprets the nature of the Soviet experiment as stemming largely from the Bolsheviks’ allegiance to Marxist ideology. Had that commitment ceased at any point, the Soviet Union would have changed radically. By contrast, Pipes and Brovkin try to show that political culture and social backwardness best account for the nature of the Soviet Union; they add that the Bolsheviks were more driven by lust for power than a belief in ideas. Most of the revisionists would agree with Malia that the Bolsheviks believed deeply in Marxist ideology, yet they would account for the horrors of the system by pointing to political culture and backwardness. It is my view that Marxist ideology was paramount in shaping the Soviet experiment. I consider it imperative, therefore, to read Malia’s book, as well as Walicki’s Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom, which is the most thoroughgoing study on the subject (read Malia first).