HIST 6501 001 Dr. Günter Bischof
T Th 6 – 9 pm, History Seminar Room
Office: CenterAustria (LA 196)
e-mail: gjbhi@mobiletel.com or gjbischo@uno.edu


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 sea of historical (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

Kiron Skinner, ed. Turning Points in Ending the Cold War. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press 2008 Pb ISBN 13-: 978-0-8179-4632-6

Robert English. Russia and the Idea of the West. New York: Columbia University Press 2001 Pb ISBN-10: 0231110596

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 Pb ISBN-13: 978-0812974898

Charles S. Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. Princeton: Princeton UP 1997 Pb ISBN-13: 978-0691007465
Andrei Grachev. Gorbachev's Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War. Polity Press 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0807859582


Grading Policy

Papers 1/2
Class discussion 1/2


Student Responsibilities

• Students will come to class prepared, eg. being able to discuss in detail the week’s assigned class readings
• 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)
• 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 4 Introduction &
Détente and the End of Détente: Repercussions in the Soviet Sphere, especially Poland

READ:
Odd Arne Westad, “The Fall of Détente and the Turning Tides of History, in: Odd Arne Westad, ed., The Fall of Détente: Soviet-American Relations during the Carter Years (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997), pp. 3-33
Dan Caldwell, “The Demise of Détente and US Domestic Politics,” in: Westad, ed., Fall of Détente, pp. 95-117.
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 9 Cold War in the Third World: Iran, Afghanistan, Nicaragua

READ:
Skinner, ed., Turning Points, ch. 4, pp. 149-90
Odd Arne Westad, “The Road to Kabul: Soviet Policy on Afghanistan, 1978-1979, in: Westad, ed., Fall of Detente, pp. 118-48
Borovik, The Hidden War (entire)

June 11 Reagan and the “Second Cold War”

READ:
Skinner, Turning Points, ch. 1, 11-62
Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev (entire)


WEEK III

June 16 Crisis in the Kremlin: The Emergence of Gorbachev

READ:
Skinner, ed., Turning Points, chs 3 and 4, pp. 63-48
English, Russia and the Idea of the West (entire)

June 18 Crisis in the Soviet Economy

READ:
Kotkin, Armageddon Averted (entire)


June 23

1st 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 2)

CHOOSE FROM

Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York 1990)
Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York 1993)
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)


June 29 No CLASS!


WEEK V

June 30 The U.S. and Afghanistan

VIEW MOVIE: Charlie Wilson’s War

READ:
Skinner, ch. 4, pp. 149-90
Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (New York: Doubleday, 2002), pp. 109-19.

July 2 The Personal Factor in History: Reagan, Bush and Gorbachev

READ:
Grachev, Gorbachev’s Gamble

Presentation of papers on Memoirs (1st paper due)


READ: CHOOSE ONE OF THESE BOOKS AND REPORT (due July 16) (3-page paper)

Mathew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold
War (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1999)
Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989 (Princeton: Princeton
UP, 2002)
Jacques Levesque, The Enigma of 1989 (Berkeley: University of California UP, 1997)
Ivo Banac, ed., Eastern Europe in Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992)
Scott Shane, Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union (Chicago:
Ivan R. Dee, 1994)
Timothy Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Centeral Europe
(New York: Random House, 1989)


WEEK VI

July 7 Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament

READ:
Evangelista in Njolstad,ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War (London 2004), pp. 118-34

July 9 The Fall of the Berlin Wall and German Unification

READ:
Skinner, ed., Turning Points, ch. 6, pp. 229-72
Maier, Dissolution (entire)


WEEK VII

July 14 Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe & the Corruption of the Communist System

VIEW MOVIE: The Lives of Others

July 16 Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
Report on Eastern Europe books (2nd paper due)

READ:
Skinner, ed., Turning Points, chs. 5 & 7 (the Yeltsin Factor), pp. 191-228, 273-26


WEEK VIII

July 21 American Triumphalism & the Post-Cold War Order: & the Advent of American Empire

READ:
Francis Fukuyama , “The End of History?” The National Interest (Summer 1989)
Schweitzer, Reagan’s War, pp. 1-28, 200-85
Günter Bischof essay, „American Empire and Its Discontents“


July 23 The Critics of Cold War Triumphalism

READ:
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 Triumphalism: The Misuse of History After the Fall of Communism (New York: The New Press, 2004), pp. 1-27, 71-99, 237-61, 274-97

3rd Paper Due (10 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 the end of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union a peaceful revolution?