NOTE: Please, as a courtesy to your fellow classmates send your assignment to me and to everyone in your Politburo panel no later than 24 hours prior to our Tuesday class. Late submissions will not be accepted and will affect your grade.
Source: The Red Web: the struggle between Russia’s digital dictators and the new online revolutionaries (NY, 2015) by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
Case study 3: Power and Money (Putin's Oil and Oligarchs)
The Politburo panel - download your secret files here (Note: For today all four groups will be studying different books although on the similar topics) “Kremlin” - From S. Pirani's book Change in Putin’s Russia: Power, Money and People. Read: Intro, pp. 1-15; Chapter 2. "From Yeltsin to Putin" (pp. 32-46); Chapter 4. "Power and Money: The State, Oligarchs and Oil" (pp. 62-86).
“Sputnik” - From D. Hoffman's book The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia. Read: Prologue: "The Oligarchs" (pp. 11-18); Chapter 6. "Boris Berezovsky" (pp. 138-159); from Chapter 16, "Hardball and Silver Bullets" (pp. 445-450; 480-489); Epilogue (pp. 490-499).
“Balalaika” - From M. Goldman's book Petrostate: Putin, power, and the new Russia. Read: "Introduction Russia — Once Again an Energy Superpower" (pp. 1-16); Chapter 5. "Putin Takes Over. The Return of the Czar" (pp. 93-135).
Additional readings for 3 Octoberfor everyone: Beumers's chapter “Consumer Culture and Food” (read about the Russian food: pp. 300-337; the rest is optional)
Recommended: two profile articles about the Russian opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, in The New Yorker, here and here.
The Politburo panel - download your secret files here “Kremlin” - From Karen Dawisha's book Putin's Kleptocracy. Who Owns Russia? (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2014). Read: Chapter 7, "Russia, Putin, and the Future of Kleptocratic Authoritarianism" (pp. 269-300).
The three other groups are assigned chapters from Sex, politics, and Putin: Political legitimacy in Russia (Oxford UP, 2015) by Valerie Sperling:
“Sputnik” - Chapter 1, pp. 1-28. “Balalaika” - Chapter 2, pp. 29-62 (note - this is not a full chapter). “Cheburashka” - Chapter 5, pp. 169-200 (note - this is not a full chapter).
I decided to postpone this Case Study to allow you more time for preparation for the Midterm and for completing the Creative Assignment (see below). We would spend some time on the Olympic games in Sochi next class. Make sure that you read all the Case Studies abstracts prior to your exam (if you don't see your contribution online -- Questions, Key concepts, etc -- please resend it to me and I will upload it. Do your assigned readings and read Sorokin's novel (roughly 30% of this short novel by now).
Creative Assignment
This is the list of your names and numbers corresponding to TWO photographs for your two short stories (each can be max. half a page, in total no more than one page), which you will download here from a DropBox - choose your own picture.
To make it even more entertaining, I decided to assign the same photos to more than one person, so we will compare various imaginative scenarios based on similar visual premises.
I'll be projecting each image and request you to read your stories for the receptive audience.
Note: By a story I do not necessarily mean a plot with an intro, climax and denouement; it can be a description, a stylized narrative, a 'Wanted' ad, a memoir, -- you name it... You can treat both photos separately or attempt to make a sequence out of them and find a common thread in between.
Thomas, Rose - 1, 1a Nicolas, Hailey - 2, 2a Ian, Danielle - 3, 3a Takdeer, Heather - 5, 5a Emily, Ashley - 6, 6a Cashmere, Carson - 8, 8a Petra, John - 9, 9a Justin, Rebecca - 10, 10a Miriam, Victoria - 13, 13a Maxim, Jack - 14, 14a Christoper W., Sara - 15, 15a Chris F., Julia - 19, 19a
NOTE added on 17 October, 2017, after your creative presentations: since I didn't want to give away any spoilers, I am adding these materials only now: Preface to Anna Skladmann's photographic album Little Adults [download PDF] as well as an article in the NY Times about this artistic project; another one published in The Calvert Journal, plus an interview with Anna printed in the Vice magazine.
Case study 7: Russia's Foreign Policy
If you are not sure who is doing what, please email to other members of your panel. Basically this should be the same people who were chosen for the cancelled Case 6.
Today each panel will explore a different region of the world. Because the topics vary, I'll ask after regular discussions to briefly recount each panel's thesis to other members of the Politburo (i.e. to our entire class). Download your secret files here: