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The Everyday History of Soviet Ukraine: Course Syllabus

Publication date 31.10.2024

The course invites to look at the history of Soviet Ukraine from the perspective of its everyday practices. Using many visual sources from 1922 to 1991, students will explore daily routines, housing, clothing, transportation, leisure, and music consumption in urban and rural settings. Periods of peace, war, and crisis will receive equal attention so that one can see how global developments were experienced on a microlevel. Students will explore how maintaining everyday objects and personal habits was essential for building personal safety in different historical contexts. The everyday histories of Soviet Ukraine will also provide a deeper insight into the standard historical narratives about East-European societies, particularly their dialogue with the global society across the Iron Curtain, its socialist path to modernity, and ownership rights within the communist economies. 

Course languages: English and German.

Course requirements:  

  • Complete all required readings and actively participate in text discussions.
  • Attend all seminar sessions. You are allowed up to two excused absences, but please notify the lecturer in advance via email. For each absence beyond the second, you will need to submit a reading response (approximately 500 words) to the assigned texts to make up for the missed session.
  • Occasionally, you will be required to complete small written assignments or group tasks to help prepare for the sessions, such as formulating theses or questions based on the readings. These assignments will be communicated in the week leading up to each session.

Introduction to the Course

1. Getting to know each other
2. Everyday History of Soviet Ukraine: Approaches and Course overview
3. Presentation: “Ukraine’s Changing Borders in 1917-1922”
4. Exercise: “Social Changes Reflected in the Windows of Khreshchatyk Street”

The 1919 Return of Bolsheviks from a Perspective or Rural Inhabitants

Building the New Soviet Society in 1920s

Work During the Industrialization of 1930s

Survival during the Holodomor (1932-1933)

Nazi Occupation Regime in Ukrainian Cities and the Countryside

Women's Experiences in GULAG

Elections and Other Political Rituals in Post-War Soviet Society

Global Trends and Local Themes in Mass Culture of the 1960s-1970s

Food and Material Goods in the Late Soviet Economy

Transport Mobility and Urbanization during 1960-1980s

Perestroika, Environmental Panic and Nationalism

Crimean Tatars and their Homeland

Conclusions and Reflections

Additional Literature: 

 

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Applebaum, Anne: Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, London 2017.

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Belge, Boris; Deuerlein, Martin (Hg.): Goldenes Zeitalter der Stagnation? Perspektiven auf die sowjetische Ordnung der Brežnev-Ära, Tübingen 2014.

Bellezza, Simone Attilio: The Shore of Expectations: A Cultural Study of the Ukrainian Shistdesiatnyky, Edmonton 2017.

Berkhoff, Karel C.: Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule, Cambridge, MA 2004.

Braichenko, Olena, Maryna Hrymych, Ihor Lylo, and Vitaly Reznichenko. Ukraine. Food and History. First Edition. Kyiv: їzhak, 2021.

Brown, Kate. A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Crawford, Christina: Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union, Ithaca, NY 2022, S. 217–284.

Cybriwsky, Roman Adrian. Along Ukraine’s River: A Social and Environmental History of the Dnipro. Illustrated edition. Budapest; New York: Central European University Press, 2018.

David-Fox, Michael, Kenyon Zimmer, Vladislav Martinovič Zubok, Patryk Babiracki, and Patryk Babiracki. ‘Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange across the Soviet Bloc, 1940s-1960s’. The Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures 45. College Station: published for the University of Texas at Arlington by Texas A&M University Press, 2014.

Davies, Franziska; Makhotina, Katja: Offene Wunden Osteuropas: Reisen zu Erinnerungsorten des Zweiten Weltkriegs., Darmstadt 2022.

Fürst, Juliane: Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland, Oxford 2021.

Gestwa, Klaus. ‘Die Stalinschen Grossbauten des Kommunismus: sowjetische Technik- und Umweltgeschichte, 1948-1967’. Ordnungssysteme Bd. 30. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010.

Gilburd, Eleonory: To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture, Cambridge, MA 2018.

Golubev, Alexey. The Things of Life:: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia. Cornell Scholarship Online. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501752902.

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Martynyuk, Olha. «Threatening Mobility: Cycling during World War II from a Ukrainian Perspective». The Journal of Transport History, 23, Лютий 2023, 00225266231156113. https://doi.org/10.1177/00225266231156113. 

Mattingly, Daria: Stalinism and the Holodomor, in Palko, Olena; Férez Gil, Manuel: Ukraine’s Many Faces: Land, People, and Culture Revisited, Bielefeld 2023, S. 221–231.

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