Overview This graduate-level lecture/seminar examines the recent history and contemporary politics of the former Communist states of southeastern Europe: Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Yugoslav successor states. Special attention will be paid to Romania and the former Yugoslavia. The focus of the course will be the Communist period and the transition from one-party rule in each of these states, but we will also spend the first part of the course surveying the history of the Balkan peoples in the nineteenth century. We will also examine political developments in the wider Balkans, especially the role of Greece and Turkey. Topics include the Ottoman and Habsburg legacies, the establishment of national states, the nature of Balkan Communism, the break-up of Yugoslavia, and the role of the international community in the region. No regional languages are required, but students will complete a major research project (roughly 25 pages) and present their original work as part of the course. Requirements and Grading - Attendance and informed participation (roughly 20 percent of course grade).
- Two book review assignments (roughly 15 percent each), with rewrites if necessary.
- One research paper (roughly 50 percent). The largest proportion of this grade will be based on the final product, but a substantial portion will come from the initial draft of the paper and its presentation in class.
Nature of the writing assignments We will go over the details of the writing assignments in class, but here are some general guidelines: Book review: Choose any book on this syllabus that is NOT on the required list, and write a review of no more than 750 words (about 3 double-spaced pages). Consult any major history, area studies or political science journal that has a book review section (e.g., the American Historical Review, Perspectives on Politics, Slavic Review) in order to understand the format and style of short reviews. Also consult my essay on “How to Write a Book Review” in the Teaching and Learning resources section of this website. Research paper: The paper should be a substantial (around 25 pages, including notes) piece of research. You must use a significant number of primary sources (in any language) and engage with the recognized secondary literature on your chosen topic. The paper should be more than a "literature survey," that is, you should present and support an original thesis. I will work closely with you in choosing a topic and pointing you toward the relevant literatures and sources. Deadlines - Book review I: Tuesday, February 5
- Book review II: Tuesday, March 11
- Research paper (draft): Due on the Tuesday before you are scheduled to present to the class. The draft should be at least 15 pages, with a substantial bibliography. The draft itself will not be graded.
- Research paper (final): Tuesday, May 6. Please note that no extensions will be granted except in truly exceptional circumstances such as family bereavement or serious illness.
Format for papers The paper should be typed, double-spaced, on one side of plain white 8.5 x 11 paper. Pages should be numbered consecutively. Footnotes should be placed at the bottom of the page and should follow a recognized style for citations. The typescript should be secured with a staple or clip. Do not submit the paper in a loose-leaf binder, plastic report cover or other folder. Evaluation of papers Grades on research papers will be based on the following criteria: Overall argument: Is there a strong and clear argument running throughout the paper? Is the argument stated clearly at the beginning and then developed throughout the text? Does the paper address a clear and important question? Writing style: Do you write in an interesting yet formal style? Have you eliminated cliches? Have you reined in your metaphors? Thoroughness of research: Does the paper demonstrate a good knowledge of the literature on the topic at hand? Does the paper distill the major issues in a key debate? Originality of ideas: Is the paper more than a literature review? Have you engaged critically with the literature and arrived at your own interpretation of an important issue? Based on these criteria, papers will be assigned grades according to the standard university grading scale. Sources and Expectations This course requires reading in English but not in other regional languages. However, I expect students to use all their available linguistic skills, as well as their other research-oriented skillsets (qualitative, quantitative, journalistic, participant-observation), in their papers. I also expect that you will follow up with suggested readings on this syllabus (in addition to those that are “required”). I expect you to use primary sources in your research papers. The nature of a primary source in history, political science, and other fields differs depending on the topic. Memoirs might be appropriate if one is studying political leadership. Survey data or opinion polls are important in studying public opinion and civil society. Electoral data are critical if one is studying elected institutions. Interviews can be used to get at elite opinion or to flesh out the details of a contemporary case for which no documentary evidence exists. Be aware of an important point: You are attending a university in Washington, DC—the epicenter of international politics and diplomacy. Please be daring in your use of the many political, diplomatic, and nongovernmental resources this city has to offer. For your papers and for keeping abreast of recent developments, consult the following: In addition, each week I expect students to explore—on their own—several titles from the “recommended” list. I will not check up on your reading of these works, but doing so will make you a much better course participant and will ensure that you are fully prepared to undertake the major research project. Policy on Make-Ups, Extensions, Incompletes, and Academic Dishonesty In principle, deadlines cannot be changed. However, allowance will be made for cases in which genuine emergencies prevent students from completing work on time. Such emergencies might include medical treatment or bereavement. Having a heavy work load, impending deadlines for other courses or extracurricular commitments cannot normally be considered emergencies. Each instance will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Students should let the instructor know as far in advance as possible about any potential problems. Georgetown University is an honor-code school for undergraduates. Cases of suspected academic dishonesty will be handled according to the university’s honor code or, for graduate students, according to the normal procedures in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Texts The following texts have been ordered for this course and may be purchased at the GU Bookstore in the Leavey Center: - Mark Mazower, THE BALKANS: A SHORT HISTORY (Modern Library) 081296621X
- Charles King, THE BLACK SEA: A HISTORY (Oxford University Press) 019928394X
- Richard Clogg, A CONCISE HISTORY OF GREECE, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press)
0521004799 - V. P. Gagnon, THE MYTH OF ETHNIC WAR (Cornell University Press) 0801472911
- Vladimir Tismaneanu, STALINISM FOR ALL SEASONS (Cornell University Press) 0520237471
- Pettifer and Vickers, THE ALBANIAN QUESTION (I. B. Tauris) 1860649742
In addition, several recommended books are also available for purchase: - Misha Glenny, THE BALKANS: NATIONALISM, WAR, AND THE GREAT POWERS, 1804-1999
(Penguin) 0140233776 - Sabrina Ramet, BALKAN BABEL, 4th ed. (Westview) 0813339057
- Charles King, THE MOLDOVANS (Hoover Institution Press) 081799792X
- Rebecca West, BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON (Penguin) 014310490X
These texts will be supplemented by readings from journals, books, and other sources. Topics and Readings Note: The instructor reserves the right to make changes to required readings and lecture topics during the course of the semester. The first seven weeks of the course will be a combination of lecture and discussion. The remaining weeks will be devoted to student presentations of their research projects. We will determine dates for individual presentations at the first class session. Week 1 Introduction to the Course 1. Read this syllabus Week 2 Imperial Legacies 1. Mazower, begin 3. L. Carl Brown, ed., Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and Middle East, chaps. 1, 4, and 5. Lauinger reserve. Recommended: 1. Glenny (as above) 2. West (as above) 3. Misha Glenny, The Rebirth of History: Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy (London: Penguin, 1990). 4. Stephen R. Graubard, ed., Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991). 5. Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983). 6. Ismail Kadare, Broken April (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1998), novel. 7. Ismail Kadare, The File on H. (New York: Arcade, 1998), novel. 8. Ismail Kadare, The Three-Arched Bridge, trans. John Hodgson (New York: Arcade, 1997), novel. 9. Walter Kolarz, Myths and Realities in Eastern Europe (London: Lindsay Drummond, 1946). 10. John R. Lampe, Balkan Economic History, 1550-1950: From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982). 11. Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts 12. Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle (New York: Vintage, 1998), novel. 13. Joseph Rothschild and Nancy Wingfield, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II (New York: Oxford UP, 2007). 14. Jacques Rupnik, The Other Europe (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988). 15. Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977). 16. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 17. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization and the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). Week 3 Building Nations and Making States - King (Black Sea)
- Mazower, continue
- Robert M. Hayden, "Schindler's Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers," Slavic Review, Vol. 55, No. 4. (Winter 1996): 727-748.
Recommended: - Glenny (as above)
- Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984).
- Carnegie Endowment, The Other Balkan Wars (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1993).
- Richard Crampton, A Short History of Modern Bulgaria (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987).
- Paul C. Helmreich, From Paris to Sevres: The Partition of the Ottoman Empire at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-1920 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State UP, 1974).
- Keith Hitchens, Rumania 1866-1947 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
- Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 1806-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991).
- Charles Jelavich and Barbara Jelavich, The Establishment of Balkan National States, 1804-1920 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977).
- Ivo J. Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference: A Study in Frontier-Making (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963).
- Mary Neuburger, The Orient Within
- John Reed, The War in Eastern Europe: Travels through the Balkans in 1915 (London: Phoenix, 1994).
- Fred Singleton, A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985).
- Peter F. Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer, eds., Nationalism in Eastern Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994).
Week 4 The Communist Period and Transition - Tismaneanu
- Milica Bakic-Hayden and Robert M. Hayden, “Orientalist Variations on the Theme ‘Balkans’: Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics’, Slavic Review, 51:1 (1992), pp. 1-15.
- Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin. Read at least chapter 3 and the conclusion (but at some point you really should read the entire book, which is a classic in east European history). Lauinger reserve.
- Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans, vol. 2. Chaps. 7-9. Lauinger reserve.
Recommended: - Julian Amery, Sons of the Eagle: A Study in Guerilla War (London: Macmillan, 1948).
- Walker Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984).
- F. W. D. Deakin, The Embattled Mountain (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971).
- Aleksa Djilas, The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution, 1919-1953 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991).
- Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962).
- Timothy Garton Ash, History of the Present (New York: Random House, 2000).
- Ghita Ionescu, Communism in Rumania, 1944-1962 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964).
- Kenneth Jowitt, Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: The Case of Romania, 1944-1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).
- Fitzroy Maclean, Eastern Approaches (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949).
- Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars, 1918-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946).
- Hugh Seton-Watson, The East European Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1956).
- Peter Sugar, Native Fascism in the Successor States, 1918-1945 (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1971).
- Susan L. Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945-1990 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995).
- Ralf Dahrendorf, After 1989: Morals, Revolution, and Civil Society (New York: St. Martins, 1997).
- Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
- Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
Week 5 The Wars of the Yugoslav Succession - Gagnon
- Pettifer and Vickers
- Sabrina Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia, chaps. 1, 3, and 4. Lauinger reserve.
- John Mueller, "The Banality of 'Ethnic War'," International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2000): 42-70.
- Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin, "Travails of the European Raj," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2003): 60-74.
Recommended: - Ramet (as above)
- John Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia (London: Hurst, 2000).
- Sumantra Bose, Bosnia After Dayton
- Tone Bringa, Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995).
- Lenard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia’s Disintegration and Balkan Politics in Transition (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993).
- Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia (London: Penguin, 1992).
- John Lampe, Yugoslavia as History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996).
- Mueller, John. The Remnants of War. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2004.
- Sabrina Ramet and Vjeran Pavlakovic, eds., Serbia since 1989
- Sabrina Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias
- Mark Thompson, A Paper House: The Ending of Yugoslavia (London: Vintage, 1992).
- Warren Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 1996).
- Aleksa Djilas, “A Profile of Slobodan Milosevic,” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993), pp. 81-96.
- Slavenka Drakulic, Balkan Express (London: Hutchinson, 1993).
- Peter Maass, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War (New York: Knopf, 1996).
- David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (London: Victor Gollancz, 1995).
- David Rieff, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West (New York: Touchstone, 1995).
- Laura Silber and Allan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia (London: Penguin, 1995).
- Richard Ullman, ed., The World and Yugoslavia’s Wars (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996).
- Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (New York: NYU Press, 1998).
- Julie Mertus, Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
- Michael P. Scharf, Balkan Justice: The Story Behind the First International War Crimes Trial Since Nuremberg (New York: Carolina Academic Press, 1997).
- Robert Thomas, The Politics of Serbia in the 1990s (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
- Vickers, Miranda. Between Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo. London: Hurst, 1998.
Week 6 Romania’s Path - Tismaneanu, as above
- Tony Judt, "Romania: Bottom of the Heap," New York Review of Books, November 1, 2001.
- Constantin Iordachi and Balázs Trencsényi, "In Search of a Usable Past: The Question of National Identity in Romanian Studies, 1990-2000," East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 17, No. 3 (August 2003): 415-453.
- Charles King and Vladimir Tismaneanu exchange on the Romanian Presidential Commission on Communism, in Slavic Review (Winter 2007). Copy to be provided.
- John Gledhill and Charles King, “Living Beyond the Past: Romania Since 1989” in Wolchik and Curry, eds., Central and East European Politics. Copy to be provided.
- Ronald H. Linden, “Putting on Their Sunday Best: Romania, Hungary, and the Puzzle of Peace,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 1. (Mar., 2000): 121-145.
Recommended: - Charles King, The Moldovans
- Rogers Brubaker, et al., Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town
- Tom Gallagher, Romania after Ceausescu (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1995).
- Henry Carey, ed., Romania since 1989: Politics, Economics, and Society (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003).
- Anton, Ted. Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1996.
- Maria Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania
- Cioran, Emil. History and Utopia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
- Dennis Deletant, Ceausescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989
- Dennis Deletant, Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965
- Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania 1940-44
- Kligman, Gail. The Politics of Duplicity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
- Livezeanu, Irina. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
- Muller, Herta. The Land of Green Plums. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998.
- Verdery, Katherine. National Ideology Under Socialism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
- Stephen Fischer-Galati, Twentieth-Century Romania (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).
- Vlad Georgescu, The Romanians: A History (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991).
- Keith Hitchins, The Romanians, 1774-1866 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
- Frederick Kellogg, The Road to Romanian Independence (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996).
- Gail Kligman, The Wedding of the Dead (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
- Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu, In Search of Dracula (London: Robson Books, 1992).
- R. W. Seton-Watson, A History of the Roumanians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934).
- Peter Sianni-Davies, The Romanian Revolution
- Kenneth Jowitt, Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: The Case of Romania, 1944-1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).
- Robert R. King, History of the Romanian Communist Party (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1967).
Week 7 Turkey, Greece, and the Wider Europe - Clogg
- Ivan Krastev, “The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus,” Journal of Democracy, Journal of Democracy 18, no. 4 (2007): 56-63.
- Andrew Mango, The Turks Today, chaps. 1-4. Lauinger reserve.
- Gerald Knaus and Marcus Cox, “The ‘Helsinki Moment’ in Southeastern Europe,” Journal of Democracy 16, no. 1 (2005): 39-53.
- Ronald Asmus, “Europe’s Eastern Promise,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2008). Copy to be provided.
Recommended: - Graham T. Alison and Kalypso Nicolaidis, eds., The Greek Paradox (Boston: MIT Press, 1997).
- Dimitris Keridis, et al., eds., Greek-Turkish Relations in the Era of Globalization (London: Brassey's, 2001).
- Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
- Andrew Mango, Ataturk (New York: Overlook Press, 2000).
- Philip Robins, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy since the Cold War (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003).
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