The cross-listed course introduces students to Soviet history through several famous works of literature and film. Key periods and events include the Bolshevik Revolution, Civil War, WWII, the post-Stalin Thaw, the Brezhnev years, Glasnost’ and Perestroika, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Along with short historical readings, we will examine works of popular culture, as well as book and films that were unable to be published and shown until Glasnost’ and the post-Soviet period. Among the readings will be Babel’s Red Cavalry, Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita, and works by Zamyatin, Solzhenitsyn, Alexievich, and others. Films include, for example, works by Vertov, Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, Kalatozov, and Balabanov.