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HIST 434: HISTORY OF THE SOVIET UNION

Office Hours:

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday

11:15 A.M.-12:15 P.M.

WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Students must submit EITHER a 7-10 page research paper, OR two (2) book reports of no less than 5 pages each. Below are instructions for both of these options.

 RESEARCH PAPER ASSIGNMENT

A 7-10 page research paper will be due in this course on THURSDAY, APRIL 29. A brief paragraph explaining your intended topic and including a list of the materials to be used is due on THURSDAY, APRIL 1.

The topic may be drawn from any of the issues covered in this course. It may be a biographical study of a famous individual which assesses his or her role in one of the great issues of Russian history (example: Leon Trotsky and his role in the Russian revolution); an analysis using literature to understand a historical period (example: Alexander Solzhenitsyn's portrayal of Soviet life); an in-depth exploration a particular issue (example: Soviet foreign policy and the origins of the Cold War); or an analysis of current events from the perspective of history (example: the historical background to the problems in Chechnya). Your research materials should include at least TWO books and, if possible, an article or two. These book(s) and article(s) should be cited in proper bibliographic form on the topic proposal that is due April 1 (i.e.: for books: author, title, name of publisher, date of publication; for articles: author, title, name of periodical, date of publication). Make sure that the books and/or articles you intend to use will be available when you are ready to write your paper! Extra credit will be given for use of foreign language sources.

The final paper should have footnotes or endnotes. The footnotes should refer to the sources you used. The rules for when to footnote are: 1) all direct quotations must have a footnote indicating the source; and 2) all opinions must be footnoted. Information generally available, such as most dates ("World War II broke out on September 1, 1939") should NOT be footnoted. You should avoid the parenthetical style of footnote notation used in social sciences such as sociology or political science, i.e. (Nolte, 1991, 21). Rather the footnote (or endnote) should be indicated by a number at the end of the sentence.¹ You may write the number in by hand if your word processing program lacks the capacity to print the number. The first time a source is cited, you should give the full bibliographic citation of the material you are using, as in footnote 1 on this page. The second time you cite the same source in a footnote, however, you may use an abbreviated form, as in this note 2.²

In addition to footnotes, the final paper must have page numbers and must be typed and doublespaced. You must never quadruple space, not even between paragraphs. Quotations longer than four lines should be presented as a block, that is indented slightly on both sides and SINGLE-SPACED. Block, or indented, quotations should not have quotation marks since by indenting them, you are indicating that they are quotations. Like all direct quotations, they must have a footnote at the end indicating their source. Use only normal sized fonts and margins. My vision is excellent with glasses, and I do not need three inches of white space on each side of the page to write in my comments.

If you need assistance with footnotes, grammar, or writing in general, it is available in the Academic Support Services office in Manhattan 301D. Don't wait until the night before the paper is due to go there, rather allow enough time for corrections and rewriting after visiting the Center. You will be graded on the cogency of your arguments and the clarity of your presentation, which encompasses things like grammar and spelling, so be sure to proofread your paper carefully before submitting it.

If you have any questions about this, or are having problems selecting a topic, please come to see me during my office hours, which are listed above.

BOOK REVIEWS

Students may opt to submit TWO book reviews of not less than five (5) FULL pages each in lieu of a research paper. These reviews can be submitted individually, if you wish, and at any time, but NO LATER THAN THURSDAY, APRIL 22. Before you begin to undertake the book review, please submit the names of the books you intend to review to me for my approval. You should provide me with the author, title, publisher, and date of publication no later than THURSDAY, APRIL 8. You may not review two books on the same topic, i.e. if you review one book about the 1905 Russian Revolution, the second book you review must be on another topic, such as the Great Purges of the Stalin era.

The review itself must give a thorough overview of the contents of the book, and must analyze these contents in the context of the issues discussed: i.e., is the author prejudiced? is his understanding of the situation accurate? A book you are reviewing may have been published many years ago, and reflect ideas and beliefs of that time. You should interpret its contents in that light as well. It may be necessary, in order for you to properly analyze the book, to do additional outside reading on the subject. In some cases, this may merely mean reading ahead in our textbook.

In terms of format, the heading of the review must list the author, title, place of publication, name of publisher, date of publication, and number of pages. Each review must have page numbers and must be typed and doublespaced. You must never quadruple space, not even between paragraphs. If you quote more than four lines of text, it should be indented as a block quotation, that is indented slightly on both sides and SINGLE-SPACED. Block, or indented, quotations should never have quotation marks, since by indenting them, you are indicating that they are quotations. You should indicate the page numbers of all quotations, either by footnote or parentheses, i.e. (p. 24). Use only normal sized fonts and margins. My vision is excellent with glasses, and I do not need three inches of white space on each side of the page to write in my comments.

If you need assistance with grammar, or writing in general, it is available in the Academic Support Services office in Manhattan 301D. Don't wait until the night before the paper is due to go there, rather allow enough time for corrections and rewriting after visiting the Center. You will be graded on the cogency of your arguments and the clarity of your presentation, which encompasses things like grammar and spelling, so be sure to proofread your reviews carefully before submitting them.

If you have any questions about this, or are having problems finding books to review, please come to see me during my office hours, which are listed at the top of this instruction sheet.

²Nolte, Footnoting, p . 59 .