Restriction: Must be in Government & Politics or International Relations program.

The course will focus on continuities and discontinuities in Russian politics since the Bolshevik Revolution, the Stalinist period, Khrushchev's reforms, Gorbachev's revolutionary changes, Yeltsin's short-lived democratization, the rise of Putinism as a new imperialist project. As events unfold, we will discuss contemporary Russian political developments. The course emphasizes concepts such as political culture, oligarchic corruption, kleptocracy, authoritarian controls, violence and legitimation crisis, intellectual dissent, human rights and democratic opposition.