Russian 100 Course Outline
Lesson 1: Introduction to Russia
Geography and demographics
Lesson 2: Beginnings of the Russian State
History of Russia from the 10th century
Lesson 3: Russian Language and Folklore
Development of culture
Lesson 4: Rise of Moscow
Russia reasserts itself after Tatar dominance
Lesson 5: Ivan IV (The Terrible)
Powerful leaders change the face of Russia
Lesson 6: Westernization of Old Russia
Peter the Great and his reforms
Lesson 7: Russia Ruled by Women
Russian Empresses from Anna to Catherine II
Lesson 8: Alexander Pushkin and His Time
The influence of Russia's greatest poet
Lesson 9: Arts of the Second Half of the 19th Century
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and their contemporaries
Lesson 10: Silver Age of the Russian Arts
Russia embraces Modernism
Lesson 11: The Avant-Garde
Futurism, abstract art, and cinema
Lesson 12: Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism
The influence of Communism on 20th-century Russia
Lesson 13: Krushchev and Agriculture
Changes in agricultural systems and practices under Krushchev and the state of agriculture in Russia today
Lesson 14: From Krushchev to the End of the Soviet Union
De-Stalinization, Re-Stalinization, Stagnation, Perestroika
Lesson 15: Contemporary Russian Life
A picture tour of Russian life in the 1990's
Why Study Russia?
"The melody is eternal, and therefore Pyotr Tchaikovsky will live for ever. Not only in Russian, but also in foreign music, it is hard to find a composer like Tchaikovsky, who is so strong, so bright and so original in all musical genres: instrumentals, piano works, symphonies, operas or romances.”
Alexander K. Glazunov
“Sometimes technological barbarity can turn to an advantage… God himself and the boredom of life has compelled our citizens to read books… Russia, notwithstanding the horrors of the transition period, did not decline as a nation… Possibly because Russians have not lost the capability to avidly read books.”
Izvestia on 13th International Moscow Book Fair.
‘We seemed doomed to bear some cross… May be, it is the other side of the much-vaunted ‘mysterious’ Russian soul: we despise the low–material–culture, the culture of consumption, and we tend to aspire to the World, the Thought, the Poetry… There is also our exaggerated national exclusivity–that special form of national pride, which we are perhaps being punished for…
Argumenty i Fakty weekly, trying to explain the causes of the series of fatal disasters in July and August 2001