Nineteenth-century Russian writers were locked in a desperate struggle for freedom under an extraordinarily repressive regime. Through intensive analysis of the great ideological novels at the center of Russia's historic social debates from the 1840s to the end of the century, we will unearth the roots of Dostoevsky's fervent anti-radicalism and Lenin's vision for translating nineteenth-century Russia's utopian dreams into real revolutionary change. The tension between literary realism and political exigency will be explored in the fictional and critical works of Chaadaev, Herzen, Belinsky, Turgenev, Chernyshevsky, Dobroliubov, Pisarev, Dostoevsky, and Lenin. Isaiah Berlin's famous essays on the Russian intelligentsia, as well as Pudovkin's cinematic adaptation of Gorky's Mother Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia, will supplement our reading and discussion.

Conversation, composition, reading, popular music, continuation of grammar review; special emphasis on speaking and writing idiomatic Russian. Students read unadapted short stories by Pushkin and Zamiatin and view classic films such as Brilliantovaia ruka. Four periods.

A Russian-language course designed to supplement RUSS 276 above, though RUSS 376 may be taken independently. Students will read and discuss, in Russian, major short works by Dostoevsky.