Reaching Across Cultures to Engage the Millennium Generation

Re-thinking the teaching of Introductory Russian History

Title VI Grant

Enhancing International Education for a 21st Century Curriculum

• Include content related to the Islamic world within existing courses and programs at the college and

• Develop courses on Islamic world in areas that are underrepresented in the existing curriculum.

Title VI Grant1. Develop faculty knowledge and expertise about the

Islamic world through a directed seminar series: John Voll, Georgetown University, Nellie van-Doorn-Harder, Valparaiso University, Carla Klausner, University of Missouri Kansas City, Tom Wilhelm, Tim Thomas & Les Grau, Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth.

2. Augment content of current curriculum through the creation of fifteen modules and nine new courses that focus on Arabic language and on Islam and Islamic cultures: Russian History Course

3. Development of Learning Communities: Courses that marry language (Arabic, Chinese, and Russian) and culture: Russian Conversation & Russian language

4. The expansion of overseas opportunities and on-line courses: Morocco & Turkey

Title VI Grant: Islam & Teaching Russian History

• I wasn’t sure where to go with this grant project. • Muslim peoples within Tsarist and Soviet Russia given little

attention during my graduate education. • Most history texts do little with the ethnic peoples of Russia,

except Poles & Finns; experience of Muslim peoples omitted. • Because of Personal Experience: – I’ve always included the ethnic groups in my study of Russian

history– I’m aware of the Russian attitude toward “blacks.”– Sponsored International officers at Command and General

Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS.• This is a “new” area of study. • Grant reoriented my thinking as well as the courses I teach.

Re-thinking Teaching Russian HistoryAlways keep in mind the admonition of Bernard

Lewis....– History that is remembered….– History that is recovered…..– History that is invented…..

Important because…..– Some people had ancient states: Armenia, Georgia,

Bukhara Emirate or Khiva Khanate– Some people had no state: Dagastan, Chechnya, Belarus

or Ukraine…or did they???– All these peoples are establishing a state!

And we have “new” Russian History• At the Kremlin-organized June 2007 conference on

Timely Issues in Teaching Modern History and Social Science, then President Putin announced: – Many school books are written by people who work

to get foreign grants. They dance to the polka that others have paid for. You understand? These books, regrettably, get into schools and universities.

• Putin wants new history textbooks that make our citizens, especially the young, proud of their country and reiterated no one must be allowed to impose the feeling of guilt on us.

It all depends upon who writes the history!

Re-thinking Teaching Russian History

I’m trying to “recover” history

I was charged with introducing modules into an established course;

I decided to totally reorient the course. Two Goals: – Eurasian Focus– Inclusion of Muslim peoples in study of multi-ethnic

Russian empire

Re-thinking Teaching Russian History• Teaching of Russian history usually takes a Russo-centric

or Russo-European focus with little attention to ethnic groups.– Gregory Freeze– Lionel Kochan and John Keep– MacKenzie & Curran– Bernard Pares– Nicholas Riasanovsky– B. H. Sumner– Geoffrey Hosking (five and one-half pages on Muslims in

twenty-one pages on Russification.)

Germans have researched in this area:Andreas Kappeler: The Russian Empire, Longman 2001

Re-thinking Teaching Russian History:Why A Eurasian Focus

I. Recognize the historical setting in which early Russian history unfolds– Nomadic tribes lived on the broad steppe: Scythians,

Polovtsy/Qipchaks– Celebrated in Verse and Song: Song of Igor’s Campaign/ Aleksandr Borodin’s Prince

Igor/Polovtsian Dances (1890)Aleksandr Blok’s Scythians (1918) – You are millions. We are hordes and hordes and

hordes. Try and take us on! Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, we are Asians - With slanted and greedy eyes!

– For you, the ages, for us a single hour. We, like obedient slaves, Held up a shield between two enemy races - The Tatars and Europe!

Recognize rupture in Russian historical development caused by the Mongol Invasion (1237-1242):

Very different socio-economic and political system found among Eastern Slavic state after Mongol rule (1480)

1242-1480

Re-thinking Russian History: Eurasian Focus

2: Recognize Russian’s view of their own history– In the 1920s, an Eurasian School of Russian History grew up

among Russian émigrés (Prince N. S. Trubestkoi) who had fled the 1917 Revolution. They argued that the Russian historical experience should be understood neither in a European nor Asian context. Rather it reflects a third path, a “single state unity” that fuses the geopolitical goals of Chingis Khan with the spiritual world view of the Orthodox Christianity.

– Soviet and post-Soviet Eurasianists, such as the ethnographer, Lev Gumilov, the former underground figure, Alexander Dugan, and even the Soviet/Russian actor and director, Nikita Mikhailkov, have picked up this theme, rejecting the urbanization, internationalism, rampant individualism, secularism of both Europe and Asia.

Re-Thinking the Teaching of Russian History: Eurasian Focus

• Today, the leader of the “Eurasian Movement,” Alexander Dugan is prominent in Russian politics.

• Risen from a marginal figure in Russian politics as a critic of Yeltsin, to a major supporter of Vladimir Putin

• Supports Putin’s Eurasian Capitalism, a statist model of economic development

• Commands a virtual society through his internet network.

• Ignored by Western media who can’t piece together his mystical, ultra-nationalist, religious, anti-western rhetoric or appeal.

Re-Thinking the Teaching of Russian History: Eurasian Focus

3. Recognize Reality Shanghai Cooperation

Organization: Six oil, gas, uranium rich countries bound together to guarantee Central Asian Security:– Russia – China– Kazakhstan– Kyrgyzstan– Tadjikistan– Uzbekistan

• Sino-Russian response to US Global Hegemony

Putin’s Comments in September 2005

• Energy is the Key to Russia’s domestic welfare and International Influence

• 85% excess profits tax on oil over $25/barrel – funding state programs [Currently problems!]

• Key point: build special relations between state supplier and consumers

• Natural Gas is Different from Oil as Commodity: PIPELINES

Eurasian Energy Routes & Pipelines “The Energy Game”

November 2005http://www.heartland.it/dispatch/2005/november/energy_game.html

Putin’s Comments in September 2005• Natural Gas is Different from Oil as Commodity:

PIPELINES– Russia has existing pipelines and reserves– Seeks new partners in Eurasia : building new

relations– Serves as an effective lever over former Soviet

periphery: Baltic, Ukraine, Belorus, etc.• North Stream linking Russia & Germany• Rebuilding Druzhba -- $5BLN Price and Ukraine’s

“cooperation”• Blue Stream to Turkey across the Black Sea• South Stream through Turkey from Iran and Azerbaijan

with Serbia as the hub. • Daqing and Nakhodka Pipelines in Far East to China &

Japan• Gazprom LPG first delivery to US market at Cove Point,

Maryland, in September 2005

Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF).

• In Moscow, December 2008, fourteen natural gas-producing countries established the GECF, as a "Gas OPEC“.

• The 14 countries (Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela) signed an intergovernmental memorandum and a charter to form GECE with permanent headquarters at Doha in Qatar.

Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF).

• Forum Activities: Coordination in four spheres:--relations with natural gas-consuming countries;--information exchange with regard to investment

programs;--introduction of new technologies, and--joint efforts with regard to LNG.

• Goal: Induce a contest among consumer countries over imports of GECF natural gas, now a commodity in short supply. when measured against Russia’s current internal development program and her export commitments.

Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF).

• Shortfall in natural gas supplies expected by 2010-2011 or earlier.

• Why? – Chronic underinvestment in new Russian gas fields. – Credit crisis and falling oil and gas prices derailing

Gazprom's investment plans in new fields and pipelines.

• This process will prolong the period of production shortfalls and stagnant exports of Russian gas, widening the gap caused by rising European and world demand.

Caspian & Central Asian NG Pipelines

Black Sea Pipelines

European NG System

Re-thinking Teaching Russian History: Muslim Peoples

4. Ignores ethnic group and social groupings living within both the former and current Russian Empires, e.g., Tatars , Cossacks, Udmurts.

Our textbooks focus on “Russianess.” • Why?– Russian historians neglected these peoples– Russification policy of Tsarist government– Homo-Soveticus mindset of the USSR (Aleksandr

Zinoviev)

Focus on European Russia

Reoriented to include Asia

http://flagspot.net/flags/ru(w.html

A Eurasian View of the World

The NEW Great Game

Islam Title VI Grant

• Personal experience: Always included the ethnic groups in my classes on Russian history

• Islam grant encouraged me to examine the previously neglected history of the Russian conquest and subjugation (absorption, annexation) of Muslim peoples in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

• And it hasn’t been easy!

Re-thinking Russian History

• David G. Rowley, Exploring Russia’s Past, Narrative, Sources, Images, Volume 1 & 2, to 1856, Prentice Hall, 2006.

• A Eurasian Focus

Re-thinking Teaching Russian History

• David G. Rowley, Exploring Russia’s Past, Narrative, Sources, Images, Prentice Hall, 2006.– Every chapter begins with a discussion of the

Eurasian context of the historical period under discussion.

– All readings/images sections include either excepts or images relating to non-Slavic peoples.

– All readings/images include discussion questions.

Re-thinking Teaching Russian History

David G. Rowley, Exploring Russia’s Past, Narrative, Sources, Images, Prentice Hall, 2006.

• However, two major omissions:– Discussion of the significance of intelligentsia and

high culture in shaping of Russian history– Discussion of impact of empire on ethnic groups

(except in primary documents and images)

Re-thinking Teaching Russian History• Katherine Evtuhov,

et. al. A History of Russia, Peoples, Events, Legends, & Forces, Houghton- Mifflin, 2004.

• Extended discussion of the ethnic peoples, arts, & intelligentsia; no primary documents.

Evtuhov & Stites, A History of RUSSIA Since 1800Two complete chapters devoted to peoples of the

Empire:Chapter 5 Around the Russian Empire 1801-

1861, examines European borderlands, Caucasus, Central Asia and Siberia, including Caucasus as source of creative inspiration.– Pushkin’s Captive of the Caucasus– Lermontov’s Hero of Our Time– Tolstoy’s Prisoner of the Caucasus, – (Prisoner of the Mountains, 1996 Russian war film directed by Sergei

Bodrov.)

Chapter 18 Revolution In the Life of Peoples, 1921-1928, examines early Soviet policy toward the non-Russian nationals in the former Imperial Empire.

Evtuhov & Stites, A History of RUSSIA Since 1800Chapter 8 Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality:

Administering Empire: Russification in the borderlands. Chapter 10 Society, Culture, Politics, 1881-1905:

Movements of National LiberationChapter 16 Civil War: 1917-1921

Retaking the EmpireChapter 20 Stalinism: Life Inside the System, 1928-1939

Nations of the UnionChapter 22 At the Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953

The Cultural PogromChapter 40 The Brezhnev Years: Change & Ferment, 1964-1982

The Other Half: Soviet RepublicsChapter 41 The Gorbachev Revolution, 1985-1991

“And Nations Waken in the Night”Chapter 42 The Parting of the Ways, After 1991

Memories of Empire

Re-thinking Teaching Russian History

.

Used one volume of each!

How to stuff all this into one semester?

• And make it more than just another event and date students forget?

• And give the many different peoples of the Empire a voice in Russian history?

• How to do this in a way our students, generation X, notice…..

• And do this teaching ONLINE……………..

Primary Sources & Gen X: Weekly Discussion Posting

David G. Rowley, Exploring Russia’s Past, Narrative, Sources, Images, Volume 1, to 1856, Prentice Hall, 2006.

• Use excerpts from the writings of Herodotus (484-425 BCE) on the Scythians to capture students attention in Discussion assignments:

• Identify the most striking image of the Scythians in Herodotus' account of the Scythians, post it to the discussion Board, and tell us why you found this image compelling. Do not duplicate any image or quotation posted by a fellow classmate. Identify the text, page(s), and line(s) you are working from.

Primary Sources & Gen X : Discussion Role Playing

David G. Rowley, Exploring Russia’s Past, Narrative, Sources, Images, Volume 1, to 1856, Prentice Hall, 2006.

• Excerpts from Letter of Ambassador of Pope Innocent IV (1245), Novgorod Chronicle (1238) , and Tver Chronicle (1237) describing the Mongols to personally involved students in the Discussion assignment:

• Put yourself in the shoes of a man or women of Kiev Rus and describe what the Mongol invasion means to you. Do not duplicate any description posted by a fellow classmate. Identify the text, page(s), and line(s) you are working from.

Primary Sources: Weekly Discussion PostingDavid G. Rowley, Exploring Russia’s Past, Narrative,

Sources, Images, Volume 1, to 1856, Prentice Hall, 2006.• Excerpts from the Petitions of Tatar Nobles in Kazan

Province (1767) and Belarussian Jews (1784) to Catherine the Great serve as basis of Discussion assignment:

• Identify the most compelling complaint that either the Muslim Tatars or the Jews have against the social or religious policies of the Tsarist government under Catherine the Great. Explain the significance of this complaint to the ethnic population. Do not duplicate any complaint or quotation posted by a fellow classmate. Identify the text, page, and line you are working from.

Exam Discussion: Mentality of Empire• David G. Rowley, Exploring Russia’s Past, Narrative, Sources, Images, Volume

1, to 1856, Prentice Hall, 2006.

• Excerpts from the Memorandum of Count Nikolai Muraviev (1847) on Russian interests in the Far East that were at risk due to the competition between Russia and Great Britain for control of the territory, resources, and markets in Asia are the basis for a discussion assignment on the "Mentality of Empire"

• Climb into the mind of Count Muraviev, and post to the Discussion your understanding of the attitudes, motivations, assumptions, and goals that prompt and guide Muraviev’s thinking. Get into Muraviev’s mentality of empire, a mentality that fed the expansion of the Imperial Russian Empire (by the way, things are little different today). Support your analysis with citations from the Memorandum.

• Include the quotation (s), page number (s), and the paragraph (s) from the text that are the basis for your posting.

Primary Sources & Gen X : Discussion Role Playing

• David G. Rowley, Exploring Russia’s Past, Narrative, Sources, Images, Volume 1, to 1856, Prentice Hall, 2006.

• Use excerpts from Russian Policy in Regard to Indigenous Peoples (1822) to understand how the Imperial government treated the various categories of people of the empire in an attempt to maintain order and peaceful co-existence among hundreds of ethnic groups with different religious and cultural traditions.

• Carefully read and review Russian Policy in Regard to Indigenous Peoples, pp. 238-239.

• Select one “life” from the options below and describe how the Russian imperial policies affect you and your family: – Settled natives of different faith: paganism or Islam OR – Nomadic natives.

Primary Sources & Gen X : Discussion Role Playing

Visit the Kansas City World War I Museum. Spend an afternoon with the exhibits.I want you to place yourself in the position of a very patriotic soldier or low ranking officer

assigned from the front who comes from one of the following groupings:– Intelligentsia, – Professional/middle classes, – Old Believers, Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Central Asians or – Russian peasants.

After viewing the exhibits, write a letter from the front to your mother in which you

1. Briefly describe what you've seen and experienced on Russia's Western front. Refer to your Evtuhov textbook for this information, and cite the appropriate pages.

2. In the rest of your letter, describe to her the abuses members of your class, ethnic or religious group have suffered under the tsarist system, and explain to her why you support revolution. Include citations from your two textbooks to support your argument....your mom won't understand them, but I will.

3. Turn in your admission ticket to the Museum with your exam assignment!

If online isn’t your cup of tea!!

There are other ways:• Work with Literature: – Lev Tolstoy: Hadji Murat or Prisoner of the

Caucasus– Tie it to director Sergie Bodrov’s Prisoner of the

Caucasus, 1996.

New York Public Library, (digital collection), Portrait of Hadji Murad

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

Literature, Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat: Discussion Posting

In this discussion we’ll attempt to understand the values of the Mountain People of the Northern Caucasus. – Identify and describe in your own words what motivates Hadji Murat's actions. – Identify the text that informs your description citing both page and paragraph

numbers.IF YOU AGREE with another student's description of Hadji Murat's motivations (which means you would "duplicate" a fellow student's work), do the following:

a. Respond to that student with I AGREE, and augment your colleague's work with your commentary AND

b. Include an ADDITIONAL quotation as well as page & paragraph numbers that support your mutual position.

• THEN, share with us what you consider to be Tolstoy's most striking, vivid or telling description of Hadji Murat. Again, reference the page and paragraph numbers from which you took your description.

• DO NOT DUPLICATE ANOTHER STUDENT'S WORK.

Tie into Web 2: Youtube.com and what’s happening today…..

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qy-GlBt3s0&feature=related Imam Shamil (Dagestan) Seyh Samil: animation of Caucasian War

Tie into Web 2: Youtube.com and what’s happening today…..

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAOOl9jsDj4&feature=relatedam%20Shamil İMAM ŞAMİL BELGESELİ 3.Bölüm: history of Shamil

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0o4lo0aj0U&feature=related Şeyh Şamil'in Tarihe qecen Rus Çarına Cevabı: Ties Imam Shamil to the current conflict with Russia

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoY-Z3Fy9Qc&feature=search_on_watch&search=Avaristan

• Avaristan (Dagetstan): Pop singer & Avaristan

Broaden your (teaching) perspective…..

Drop information and images into new lectures written from a comparative perspective AND include Islam …..

Byzantine Conversion Advantages of Orthodoxy over other monotheistic

religions• Roman Church in continually power struggle with

local rulers.• Islam and Judaism: centered on learned

teachers (Imam/Rabbi) who wield significant power over the faithful.

• Islam, Roman Christianity, and Judaism required adoption of a new “religious” language (Arabic, Latin, Hebrew); disruptive to traditional social patterns and cultural life.

Empire of the Tsars

Let’s review this subject, the Land Empire

Insert a comparative perspective AND include Islam…. For example…

Empire

• Throughout history, empires have been the most frequent form of political organization– Persian Empire – Macedonia Empire of Aleksandr the Great– Roman Empire– Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire– Mongol Empire– Ottoman Empire

Empire

• Most empires were land empires….they spread out over a land mass

• This is in contrast to the oceanic empires of colonial Europe

Recall the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, 330-1453

Source: http://www.crystalinks.com/byzantine.html

Empire

• Most had their origins in one warrior and his family: Aleksandr the Great, Chingis Khan (Is the Primary Chronicle telling us the whole story?)

• They follow a pattern: expansion with warriors/army/ conquer land/ collect tribute/ build an even larger army/ expand further/ conquer land/ collect more tribute.

Remember Mongol Empire 1300-1405

Source: Wikipedia, Mongol Empire

Empire: defined• Definition of an empire: two or more ethnic groups

governed by a ruler• Status distinction between conquerors and subjects

(goal is not a melting pot/assimilation)• Ruler/conquerors provide subjects with protection

from “outsiders”• Ruler/conquerors ruled indirectly (Mongols Yoke in

Russia, Ottoman Empire in Middle East and Europe)• Minimal interaction between conquerors and

subjects. Conquerors collect taxes!In the case of the Vikings/Verangians/Rus, they quickly

assimilated into the Slavic peoples.

Imperial Russia and the Ottoman Empire Collide

Source: Wikipedia, Ottoman Empire

Geography & Environment of the Russian Lands

“Scotty, where are we?”

For example…….

Europe & European Russia

Asia & Russia in Asia

Russian Federation + former Soviet Republics; All of this was the Union of Soviet Socialist

Republics

The Caucasian Wars, 1753-1864

Russia v the Mountain Peoples

(History that is recovered…..)

For example…….

What’s Islam got to do with it?

• Islam is the common religion of Caucasian Mountain Peoples.

• Islam was the banner under which the Mountain Peoples united against the Russian invaders.

• Chechens are one Islamic Mountain people for whom all others have the greatest respect, fear and loathing.

• Chechens are universally condemned for their traditional customs of banditry, hostage taking for ransom, and honor code of blood revenge. These customs have nothing to do with Islam.

• Chechnya is currently pacified, but not molified…..

The Caucasian Wars

Russians have difficulties in understanding people, for whom concepts like liberty and honor are more important than your own life.

Deutsche Welle, January 1995

Where Are We?

Caucasus: Historical Collision of Great Powers

The Great Game……• The strategic rivalry and conflict between two

empires: British and Russian • Their interests collided in the Caucasus• Britain viewed Russia as threat to India• Great Britain worked with Persia and

Ottomans to thwart Russia in the colonial powers’ Great Game!

• Great Game continues today……over energy!

Broadening your perspective…..

Drop information and images into new lectures, include Islam, and recover history….

Browse the New York Public Library web site:

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/slv/slav.balt.html

New York Public Library: Digital Collection: Account of the travels of Prince Gregorii Gagarin in the Caucasus, by Count Ernest Stackelberg,

published 1847 “embedded artist”

Daghestan, Mountains & Valleys

Dagestan, Gherghebil

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

Cherkess/Circassian party (Murids)

Chechnya: Destruction on the Plain

The 19th century version of the embedded journalist

Broadening your perspective…..

• Have students work from the paintings of Vasily Vereshchagin, a “photo journalist” of the late nineteenth century Russia, to get a better grasp of the meaning of empire…..

• http://www.abcgallery.com/V/vereshchagin/vereshchagin.html

Vasily Vereshchagin: At the Fortress Walls, 1871

Vereshchagin: Chuguchak

Chuguchak was once a flourishing city in Turkestan with beautiful historical buildings. It was destroyed before the Russian invasion of Central Asia, in one of a series of internal conflicts. Vereshchagin made a series of paintings of Chuguchak’s ruins.

Vereshchagin: The Apotheosis of War, 1871

Broadening your perspective…..• Have students work with history that is remembered …

online primary sources from• The Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System

(HPSSS). • http://hcl.harvard.edu/collections/hpsss/index.html • The digital collection of summary transcripts of 705

interviews conducted with refugees from the USSR during the early years of the Cold War.

• Interviews coverer period between 1917 and the mid-1940s.

Harvard Project

• Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. Schedule B, Vol. 6, Case 488 (interviewer S.H.). Widener Library, Harvard University. 6 don't fight back. In 1932 there was a revolt in Central Asia in which about 100,000 persons took part. There was no word of the revolt in Moscow but I learned about it when I went to CentralAsia in... left Central Asia I was told not to discuss what I had heard and seen and was forced to sign

Harvard Project

• Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. Schedule B, Vol. 8, Case 252 (interviewer J.R.). Widener Library, Harvard University. 9 in the 10ththe history of the VKP(b).The history of Central Asia could be studied as a special...neglected. In Shestakov's text Tamurlane is regarded as a bandit and all Central Asian history is

Northern Caucasus

• Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. Schedule B, Vol. 7, Case 89 (interviewer M.L.). Widener Library, Harvard University. 8 89 3#89 ML HARVARD UNIVERSITY REFUGEE INTERVIEW PROJECT -8-Nationalities B Schedule Revolts in the North Caucasus took place in different areas and at different times. This was caused by the lack of a unified command. The newspapers never published information about revolts so that if one arose

Resources: Transitions Online

• Transitions Online http://www.tol.org• Pay to subscribe subscribtions@tol.cz

• Last Defender of Belarusian Statehoodby Grigory Ioffe31 October 2008 TOL SPECIAL BOOK EXCERPT: Detractors fail to understand the reasons for the Belarusian leader’s popularity and success.

• The Silk Road: Solomon's Cityby Hamid Toursunof5 November 2003 Efforts to ease Kyrgyzstan’s regional and ethnic divides face their greatest challenge in Osh. So far, the efforts seem to be working.

Central Europe & BalticsEastern Europe & RussiaSoutheastern EuropeCaucasusCentral Asia & Mongolia

http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/article.cfm?articleid=20://