RUSN 333 Codes, Cultures, and Killing

(Note: this course is identical to CSLC 233 with additional class period for Russian-language materials). Winston Churchill famously described Russia as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Enigmas were very much on Churchill's mind that Fall of 1939 when the Soviet Union was busily partitioning Poland by secret agreement with Nazi Germany. This course examines the cultural history of Russia and the Soviet Union in specific regard to its evolving theories of language literature and cultural phenomena during the early 20th Century. Particular attention is paid to Russian formalism poetics and semiotics as early radical experimentation in the substrates of verbal and non-verbal languages gave way to spasms of violence mutual East-West suspicion social repression and exertions of state power through propaganda and censorship.