HIST 6501 001      Dr. Günter Bischof
T Th 3 – 5 pm, ED 224
Office: CenterAustria (ED 128)
e-mail: gjbhi@mobiletel.com

Graduate Proseminar in American History:

The End of the Cold War and the Peaceful Revolutions of 1989

UNO History Department Graduate Proseminars introduce and familiarize graduate students with the large issues in world history and their respective historiographies. Students must learn the basic facts (if they don’t know them), but even more, fathom the subtleties historians come up with in interpreting these facts. In the process, the seamless web of historiographical progress on any given event or era are studied. Students will learn to make sense and take positions in this welter of historiographical (re)interpretations. Every major power has its own traditions – political and historiographical.

Historians act within or react to these traditions. At times they even become servants of the state. Some historians achieve “greatness” with their interpretations and found schools or unleash major controversy. The historian as gadfly—arguing against received traditions—are crucial elements in historical discourse. This Proseminar takes a more biographical approach to end of the Cold War diplomacy,  but structural factors will not be ignored (paradigm shifts in the international system and the respective roles of state actors; the influence of regional conflicts on superpower relations; the role of diplomatic traditions and shifts in diplomatic practice; major issues such as arms races and arms control; the roles of public opinion and intelligence).

BOOKS

Saki Dockrill, The End of the Cold War Era. London: Hodder 2005, distributed in US by Oxford UP Pbk [ISBN-13: 978-0-340-74032-3]

Richard K. Herrmann and Richard Ned Lebow, eds., Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2004 Pbk. [ISBN 1-4039-6384-3]

Lee Edwards, ed., The Collapse of Communism. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press 1999 [ISBN 0-8179-9812-8]

Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse of 1970-2000. New York: Oxford UP Pbk [ISBN 0-19-516894-1]

Artyom Borovik, The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist’s Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan. New York: Grove Press 1990 Pbk [ISBN 0-8021-3775-X]

Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended. New York: Random House 2004 [ISBN 0-679-46323-2]

Charles S. Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. Princeton: Princeton UP 1997 Pbk. [ISBN 0-691-00746-2]

Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War. rev. ed. New York: Penguin 1993.

Grading Policy

Papers   2/3
Class discussion 1/3

Student Responsibilities

o Students will come to class prepared, eg. being able to discuss in detail the week’s assigned class readings

o Students will direct the discussion in one Proseminar session (they will prepare a one page list of questions on the major issues of the week’s readings and hand it out as a discussion guideline to the rest of the students)

o The premier powers in interwar European diplomacy were: Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Soviet Union, and the United States; students will pick one of these great powers of interwar diplomacy and follow its principal diplomatic actions, positions and options throughout the semester; at the end of the semester they will write an analytical paper analyzing the status of this nation in the interwar international arena and the role this power played in interwar diplomacy; was it a status quo or a revolutionary power? did it help foster stability in the international system or upset it? what was its respective responsibility in the outbreak of World War II? in the final session of the Proseminar (Dec. 2), students will represent their respective powers in a “round table” discussion and assess its responsibility in the outbreak of the war; students should also demonstrate some basic insights into “their” nation’s historiographical traditions and paradigm shifts

Attendance Policy

Students have to attend ALL classes; unexcused absences will result in one grade drop per unexcused absence; a class can only be excused by contacting the instructor in advance (phone or e-mail)
Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is fundamental to the process of learning and evaluating academic performance. Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, the following: cheating, plagiarism (including copying work from the Internet!), tempering with academic records and examinations, falsifying identity, and being accessory to acts of academic dishonesty. Refer to the UNO Judicial Code for further information. The Code is available online at http://www.uno.edu/~stlf/policy%20Manual/judicial_code_pts.htm.

Students with Disabilities
Students who qualify for services will receive the academic modifications for which they are legally entitled. It is the responsibility of the student to register with the Office of Disability Services (UC 260) each semester and follow their procedures for obtaining assistance.

Student Learning Objective
Upon completing this course, students are expected to

Know the basic outline and chronology of the international history of the 1980s, including a firm knowledge of the major political and diplomatic actors

Demonstrate a sound comprehension of Cold War historical geography

Understand the basic diplomatic process—the work of the principal statesmen and their diplomats, their national traditions and their interactions

Grasp major historiographical controversies contributing to the end of the Cold War, leading to revolution of 1989-1991

Grasp the role of the interaction between the superpowers and their respective empires in the international arena of the 1980s, as well as the subtle trajectories of their shifting power status in the world

WEEKLY READING AND DISCUSSION SCHEDULE

WEEK I

June 8    
Introduction & Détente and the End of Détente: Repercussions in the  Soviet Sphere, especially Poland
    

Read:

Dockrill, End of the Cold War, pp. 1-16
Herrmann/Lebow in Ending the Cold War 1-27
Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The
Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (Oxford UP 1993), pp. 12-45,-78-101
Carl Bernstein/Marco Politi, His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time (New York: Penguin, 1996), pp. 235-90
Vojtech Mastny, “The Soviet Non-Invasion of Poland in 1980-1981 and the End of the Cold War,”
EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES 51/2 (1999): 189-211

WEEK II

June 13   
Cold War in the Third World: Iran, Afghanistan, Nicaragua
    
Read:

Dockrill, End of the Cold War, pp. 141-202
Herrmann in Ending the Cold War, pp. 59-82
Borovik, The Hidden War (entire)

June 14   
Reagan and the “Second Cold War”

Read:
Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev (entire)

WEEK III

June 20   
Crisis in the Kremlin: The Emergence of Gorbachev
    

Read:
Dockrill, End of the Cold War, pp. 17-48
Archie Brown in Ending the Cold War, pp. 31-57
Kotkin, Armageddon Averted (entire)

June 22,    
The Violent Collapse of Hitler Third Reich – Could it have happened in the Soviet Union?

Film: Oliver Hirschbiegel Downfall

1st paper (3 pp): Why did the Soviet Union
not implode in a violence like Nazi Germany?
(Due July 6)

June 27, June 29 NO CLASSES

    2nd Paper: Book Report (5 pp): Choose a memoir and  write an analysis on “What did this statesman contribute to ending the Cold War peacefully”? (Due July 6)

Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York 1990)
George Bush/Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed
(New York, 1998)
George Schultz, Turmoil and Triumph  (New York, 1993)
James Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy (New York 1995)
Jack F. Matlock, Jr. Autopsy of an Empire: The American
Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet  Union (New York 1995)
Michail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York 1995)
Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador  to America’s Six Cold Ware Presidents (1962-1986) New York 1995)

WEEK V

July 4    No Class: 4th of July Holiday

July 6    
The Personal Factor in History: Reagan, Bush and  Gorbachev

Read:
Beslauer/Lebow in Ending the Cold War, pp. 161-88
Richard Gid Powres, The History of American Anti- Communism (New Haven: Yale UP, 1998), 391-429
Valdislav M. Zubok, “New Evidence on the ‘Soviet  Factor’ in the Peaceful Revolutions of 1989,” Cold
War International History Project Bulletin 12/13  (Fall/Winter 2001): 5-23
Presentation of papers on Memoirs
Papers 1 and 2 Due

WEEK VI

July 11    
Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament
    

Read:
Dockrill, End of the Cold War, 99-140
Evangelista in Ending the Cold War, pp. 83-105

July 13    
The Fall of the Berlin Wall and German Unification
    

Read:
Davis/Wolforth in Ending the Cold War, pp. 131-57
 Maier, Dissolution (entire)

WEEK VII

July 18    
Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
    

Read:
Dockrill, End of Communism, pp. 49-98
Lévesque in Ending the Cold War, pp. 107-29
Edwards, ed., The Collapse of Communism (eacH student chooses one chapter)
Stokes, Walls Came Tumbling Down, pp. 131-217
Each students reads a chapter from New Evidence on the  End of the Cold War in CWIHPB and makes brief class  presentation

July 20    
The Implosion of Yugoslavia
    

Read:
Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia (entire)

WEEK VIII

July 25   
 American Triumphalism & the Post-Cold War Order:  & the Advent of American Empire

Read:
Francis Fukuyama , “The End of History?” The National Interest (Summer 1989) Special Reprint
 John Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in  Europe after the Cold War,” International Security  15 (Summer 1990), 5-56
 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations. Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone,
1996), pp. 19-78, 301-21

July 27    
The Critics of Cold War Triumphalism
    

Read:
Dockrill, End of the Cold War, pp. 203-228
Lebow/Stein and Herrmann in Ending the Cold War, pp. 189-238
Stephen E. Cohen, “Did the Cold War Really End?” http://www.hnet.org/~diplo/essays/PDF/Cohen_commentary.pdf
Cummings, Johnson and Robin essays in Ellen  Schrecker, ed., Cold War Trimphalism: The Misuse  of History After the Fall of Communism (New York:  The New Press, 2004), pp. 1-27, 71-99, 237-61, 27 97

    Third Paper Due (12-15 pp):
    Which persons and/or factors contributed most to ending the Cold War and did any system/anybody  “win” it?   
    Who/which factors contributed most to making it a peaceful revolution?