Writing requirement:

Each question write about 300 words count

Write essays on both of the prompts. Each essay should begin with a formal thesis statement that presents an argument about what you consider the most essential parts of the prompt. You should follow the thesis with several paragraphs of argumentation and information with the twin goals of providing evidence for your thesis and showing your mastery of course readings and lectures. As always, make sure that you provide page-number citations.

Question 1:

During the later 1950s and 1960s, Soviet society changed considerably. Identify and discuss some specific changes in the context of an argument about the engine of change. Did the society change primarily because of political leadership and state policies, because of economic prosperity, because of new cultural influences, or for some other reason?

Question 2

Two major strands of the Soviet dissident movement were liberal socialism and Russian nationalism. Use Hosking’s book to describe the preoccupations of Russian nationalists and “Manifesto II,” by Andrei Sakharov, Roy Medvedev, and Valentin Turchin, as an example of liberal socialism. Compare and contrast the nationalists and the liberal socialists with respect to both the problems they perceived and the solutions they prescribed.

Extra Credit: (200 words count)

Were Soviet women emancipated by socialism in Natalya Baranskaya’s portrait of an ordinary week in a young woman’s life? Give some evidence for or against.