Fantastic lecture, one of several that I wish could have been divided into 8-10 lectures because the material you cover is just too complex for one. Another is the lecture on the Habsburg Empire.
yes, he covers a lot of ground. But there is nothing that prevents us from viewing it multiple times. That's what I like best about MOOCs - the ability to replay at will.
Hi Stephen! I am an autodidact historian. When you're self-taught, that means you don't have access to someone who knows more about the subject than you do. Even if I read everything that is assigned (or books that have nothing to do with this course), I still have questions. Sometimes I think that if I can have just one little question answered, everything will fall into place (The questions I have usually can't be answered by googling them). Such questions are often answered eventually, after I've read thousands of pages on the subject.
When I say that "the material you cover is just too complex for one [lecture]" and it would be helpful to have the subjects covered in this one divided into 8-10 lectures, I mean that I know this is a survey course and for that reason he can't get into too much detail. What I want is more detail, because that is the way I can get some of my questions answered. Sometimes when I'm listening to one of his lectures, the light bulb appears over my head, even about material covered in books I've read that have nothing to do with this course, and I say, "Oh, now I understand! Finally!" When bits of fog are cleared away here and there, it means that when I read about that subject in the future, I'll better understand what the author is trying to get across. If you're an autodidact, that means you have to wait, sometimes for a long time, before you can get your questions answered.
Easy one first: Open your browser, an on the input line, type "MOOC".
For more information than contained in the lecture, try the suggested readings. I found Plokhy's The Gates of Europe and Shore's The Ukrainian Night to be especially useful; heven't gotten around to Snider's books yet.
Which brings me to the topic of being an autodidact. I am one too, in my view: though trained as a physicist I work mostly in engineering and art, though I have taken only one "real" engineering course (Robotics at UC Berkley). But I have read piles of books on engineering topics and spend weeks each year in art museums and Kunsthälle. I think of myself as having access to Norbert Wiener and Pablo Picasso even though I have never had the opportunity to ask them a question, because I have access to their works. I see reading and looking as advantageous over talking because they allow me to contemplate, to enter the slow thinking mode, as Kahneman might put it.
BTW, are you ever going to teach your Eastern Europe to 1914 class again? I'm dying to know the assigned reading, which is no longer up on the Yale course schedule page. That is a class I'd love to have on video.
Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to help Trump win the 2016 election, a Republican-led Senate committee said in its final review of the matter. #PardonMe 😎
Several themes through the topics on Ukraine can be discussed -- as per the assignment that Prof Snyder set to his class.
First, the concept of Wilsonian self-determination and Ukraine. The country has evolved from Ruthenian or Rus backgrounds, to a mixed Slav and Rus, to the Cossack identity, and finally to the Ukrainian identity via Shevchenko and Hrushevsky. Is this identity persist in Crimea or the Donbas? How does one resolve the issue of identity in these parts? Russia claims that these are with Russian identity. Does going back to Wilsonian self-determination help? Plebiscite? The Czechs and Poles solved the problem after the 2nd WW by simply expelling the Germans from Sudetenland and Polish corridor in 1946 -- if there are no Germans any more, then there is no more a problem of self-determination....
Second, the concept of "eternity" in history as applied to Ukraine; Prof Snyder has played with this notion without being too explicit about it. Russia obviously thinks of Ukraine as eternal part of Russia, starting with Vladimir's conversion. One can build the argument how this has affected Russian attitudes to Cossacks -- from Peter the Great to Catherine and after, and why this is not a paradigm that is acceptable.
Another idea has been mentioned a few times -- After Empire, What? This was a theme in Tony Judt's Postwar, and has been referred to various times by Prof Snyder. He is of the belief that as Empires collapse (viz France, Britain), they look to other ways to maintain their economic pre-eminence, and the EU perhaps is the cunning French way of doing this! (I am joking!) The Russian Empire collapse -- and how it affects the way Russia thinks of itself, and its relations to Ukraine - could be a good topic to explore.
At this late stage of the course, and my second time through, I am still unclear as to exactly how to define a "nation". It would seem this is a basic understanding that somehow eludes me.
Is a nation merely synonymous with an ethnic grouping ever? With a tribe? Or must it be a political entity? If political, how does one distinguish a nation from a nation state? I have tried Wiki, but it didn't help.
Is there someone reading this, someone actually expert in the language and terminology of political science as an academic discipline, who can help me here, please?
Excellent comment. This is the crux of the problem of Self Determination a la Woodrow Wilson. Please read Margaret MacMillan's The Peacemakers and see how this baffled the Versailles Treaty makers in 1919. I did not reply your question, as the interpretation is very political, and does not have a real solution,. For example, for Ukraine, Hrushevsky clearly found the themes of ancient stories and legends of the villages and Cossacks that bind the people in a culture that is unique to be called a nation of Ukrainians, to be differentiated from Russians. But look at Taiwan -- is it a different state from China, both have Han Chinese as majority and the same traditions and culture.... This now becomes a political question!
Fantastic lecture, one of several that I wish could have been divided into 8-10 lectures because the material you cover is just too complex for one. Another is the lecture on the Habsburg Empire.
yes, he covers a lot of ground. But there is nothing that prevents us from viewing it multiple times. That's what I like best about MOOCs - the ability to replay at will.
Hi Stephen! I am an autodidact historian. When you're self-taught, that means you don't have access to someone who knows more about the subject than you do. Even if I read everything that is assigned (or books that have nothing to do with this course), I still have questions. Sometimes I think that if I can have just one little question answered, everything will fall into place (The questions I have usually can't be answered by googling them). Such questions are often answered eventually, after I've read thousands of pages on the subject.
When I say that "the material you cover is just too complex for one [lecture]" and it would be helpful to have the subjects covered in this one divided into 8-10 lectures, I mean that I know this is a survey course and for that reason he can't get into too much detail. What I want is more detail, because that is the way I can get some of my questions answered. Sometimes when I'm listening to one of his lectures, the light bulb appears over my head, even about material covered in books I've read that have nothing to do with this course, and I say, "Oh, now I understand! Finally!" When bits of fog are cleared away here and there, it means that when I read about that subject in the future, I'll better understand what the author is trying to get across. If you're an autodidact, that means you have to wait, sometimes for a long time, before you can get your questions answered.
BTW, what is a MOOC?
Easy one first: Open your browser, an on the input line, type "MOOC".
For more information than contained in the lecture, try the suggested readings. I found Plokhy's The Gates of Europe and Shore's The Ukrainian Night to be especially useful; heven't gotten around to Snider's books yet.
Which brings me to the topic of being an autodidact. I am one too, in my view: though trained as a physicist I work mostly in engineering and art, though I have taken only one "real" engineering course (Robotics at UC Berkley). But I have read piles of books on engineering topics and spend weeks each year in art museums and Kunsthälle. I think of myself as having access to Norbert Wiener and Pablo Picasso even though I have never had the opportunity to ask them a question, because I have access to their works. I see reading and looking as advantageous over talking because they allow me to contemplate, to enter the slow thinking mode, as Kahneman might put it.
BTW, are you ever going to teach your Eastern Europe to 1914 class again? I'm dying to know the assigned reading, which is no longer up on the Yale course schedule page. That is a class I'd love to have on video.
Thank you for your generosity and your insight, Prof Snyder.
Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to help Trump win the 2016 election, a Republican-led Senate committee said in its final review of the matter. #PardonMe 😎
Several themes through the topics on Ukraine can be discussed -- as per the assignment that Prof Snyder set to his class.
First, the concept of Wilsonian self-determination and Ukraine. The country has evolved from Ruthenian or Rus backgrounds, to a mixed Slav and Rus, to the Cossack identity, and finally to the Ukrainian identity via Shevchenko and Hrushevsky. Is this identity persist in Crimea or the Donbas? How does one resolve the issue of identity in these parts? Russia claims that these are with Russian identity. Does going back to Wilsonian self-determination help? Plebiscite? The Czechs and Poles solved the problem after the 2nd WW by simply expelling the Germans from Sudetenland and Polish corridor in 1946 -- if there are no Germans any more, then there is no more a problem of self-determination....
Second, the concept of "eternity" in history as applied to Ukraine; Prof Snyder has played with this notion without being too explicit about it. Russia obviously thinks of Ukraine as eternal part of Russia, starting with Vladimir's conversion. One can build the argument how this has affected Russian attitudes to Cossacks -- from Peter the Great to Catherine and after, and why this is not a paradigm that is acceptable.
Another idea has been mentioned a few times -- After Empire, What? This was a theme in Tony Judt's Postwar, and has been referred to various times by Prof Snyder. He is of the belief that as Empires collapse (viz France, Britain), they look to other ways to maintain their economic pre-eminence, and the EU perhaps is the cunning French way of doing this! (I am joking!) The Russian Empire collapse -- and how it affects the way Russia thinks of itself, and its relations to Ukraine - could be a good topic to explore.
At this late stage of the course, and my second time through, I am still unclear as to exactly how to define a "nation". It would seem this is a basic understanding that somehow eludes me.
Is a nation merely synonymous with an ethnic grouping ever? With a tribe? Or must it be a political entity? If political, how does one distinguish a nation from a nation state? I have tried Wiki, but it didn't help.
Is there someone reading this, someone actually expert in the language and terminology of political science as an academic discipline, who can help me here, please?
Excellent comment. This is the crux of the problem of Self Determination a la Woodrow Wilson. Please read Margaret MacMillan's The Peacemakers and see how this baffled the Versailles Treaty makers in 1919. I did not reply your question, as the interpretation is very political, and does not have a real solution,. For example, for Ukraine, Hrushevsky clearly found the themes of ancient stories and legends of the villages and Cossacks that bind the people in a culture that is unique to be called a nation of Ukrainians, to be differentiated from Russians. But look at Taiwan -- is it a different state from China, both have Han Chinese as majority and the same traditions and culture.... This now becomes a political question!