WEEK NINE: Better Living through Revolution

All students should prepare answers to these questions. Students whose last names begin with A-H must submit written answers to these questions at the beginning of their discussion class on 11-12 March. (Other students may submit written answers for extra credit.) Written answers should be 1.5-2 pages single spaced (3-4 pages, double spaced) in an 11- or 12-point font, with standard sized margins. Written answers will be returned in the following week's discussion class. No written work will be accepted after a student's discussion class (no exceptions will be made to this rule).

ABOUT the AUTHORS:
Sheila Fitzpatrick was born in Australia and studied in Great Britain. She is one of the most prominent historians of modern Russia working in the English language today.
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was one of the leading Russian poets and playwrights of his era. Author of the script for the revolutionary spectacle, Mystery Bouffe, he also designed Agitprop posters and came to define his work as "Communist futurism" (as opposed to Italian futurism, which ended up in the service of fascism). In the late 1920s, he began to write satires of the Soviet bureaucracy, but his 1930 suicide had as much to do with his personal life as with politics.

1. During the Cold War (1946-1989), it was often asserted that the Soviet Union represented the opposite of the "American way of life." Based on your reading of Fitzpatrick, can you see ways in which the Soviet Union in the 1930s was like the United States of America in that era? In comparing Soviet and American ideals, make sure to use specific examples.

2. Fitzpatrick writes of the Soviet idea that people could be "re-made" or "born anew" (pp. 75-79). Based on the materials you have read for this course, how revolutionary an idea do you think that was? At what other times, and with which other political ideologies, was it possible to think of "re-making" people in such a dramatic fashion? Which writers or political groupings would have rejected such an idea?

3. In "My Soviet Passport," Mayakovsky evokes French transport authorities checking his passport and that of other international travelers. Why do the police officials (the gendarmes) respond as they do to the American, Norwegian, and Soviet passports?

4. Based on this week's readings (including Merriman) and lectures, what made the five-year plans attractive to Soviet leaders? What was the plan's greatest strength? What were its weaknesses?