Morozova

This course examines the history of international relations within the "Greater Central Asia" region, encompassing the five post-Soviet Republics, Afghanistan, Transcaucasia, Mongolia, and peripheral territories of contemporary Iran, China, and Russia. Historically, this dynamic region connected Europe, the Middle East, and Asia through conquest, migration, trade, and cultural exchange. From the mid-17th century, it became increasingly contested by the Great Asian Empires of the Modern Era and the expanding Russian Empire. The curriculum focuses on the 19th-century "Great Game" - the imperial rivalry between the British and Russian Empires for regional influence, while highlighting the role of translocal actors in geohistorical dynamics.

Although Central Asia fell under near-total Russian hegemony from the late 19th century, the disintegration of the USSR transformed the region into a focal point for renewed geopolitical and geoeconomic competition. This modern rivalry involves not only nation-states but also regional alliances, financial institutions, transnational corporations (TNCs), NGOs, criminal groupings and other. While the hydrocarbon reserves of the Caspian Sea dominated the agenda in the 1990s, the current post-2022 geopolitical landscape, characterized by climate change and shifting energy policies, has brought renewed international attention to the region. Crucially, this is occurring alongside a more pronounced assertion of regional identity. The course will analyze China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Russian-backed Eurasian Economic Union, and the European Union’s evolving strategic approach to the region.

Students are required to carefully read the recommended literature on a weekly basis, while communicating regularly with the lecturer (who will provide concrete assignments with questions for the reading). They are expected to participate actively in seminar discussions, giving a 10-minute presentation and acting as discussants for other students' presentations. After all the seminars have taken place, students should write a six-page essay on the topic of their presentation and submit it by the end of the semester.

In the wake of the present-day geopolitical reorientation and security distortions, the resource markets, including energy, are shifting. The competition for exploiting them spirals, yet it resembles the exploitation patterns in the twentieth century. This course studies how oil and natural gas markets emerged, paralleling decolonisation, revitalisied after WWII and boomed from the 1950s, going through crisis in the 1970s and the glut in the 1980s. At the course, we will discuss how the end of the Cold War impacted the resource development scenario for post-Soviet Republics. We will discuss the share of hydrocarbons in the world energy system, the status quo of the knowledge of exploration and estimation of the amounts of hydrocarbons, the production costs in various countries and the mechanisms of global price regulation. We will particularly focus on how oil and natural gas production reflects global inequalities and international relations of exporting and importing states and how political and economic elites consolidate their rule from the oil rent and use the oil factor in diplomacy.

We will study the particularities of the national and transnational oil and natural gas corporations in the Middle East, Asia, Russia and the OECD countries, considering the role of the state in the oil and natural gas sector in different states. The politics around transport corridors, legal regimes, monopolies and embargoes will be highlighted. Not the least we will consider environmental effects and green policies’ impacts on global oil and natural gas production and consumption. The course will shed light on the politics of energy reports and prognoses. 

The students are required to read the recommended literature carefully and actively participate in the Seminar discussions. Students are also expected to make a 10-minute presentation and write a 6-pages essay on the topic of their choice.

This course provides an overview of the propaganda and
policies of the Soviet leadership towards the population of the Central Asian
Republics during the Second World War, as they were mobilised to the front and
at home. The region of Central Asia, namely the five republics - Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan - mapped within their
present borders during the Soviet era, is often neglected in the study of
Soviet history. Even fewer history students know about the involvement of the
regional population in the Second World War. This tutorial aims to fill this
knowledge gap. Students will work with the quantitative and qualitative sources
available in the archival repositories. Oral history collection projects will
also be discussed.

The course focuses on people's loyalties during the
period of social upheaval and intensification of repressive policies in urban
and rural areas of Central Asia. It discusses deportations (Germans, Chechens),
migrations (Uyghurs from China) and the evacuation of population and industries
from the European parts of the USSR to Central Asia. Finally, the role of
Central Asia in Lend-Lease and the role assigned to Central Asia by the Allies
and the Third Reich will be examined. 

By the end of the course, students should be able to
orient themselves towards recent scholarly debates on the role of the Central
Asian population in the Second World War in international and national
historiographies, and to distinguish between different types of available
original sources (in translation). Assessment will be based primarily on
regular reading and active participation in seminar discussions.

Introductory reading:

Allen J. Frank, Kazakh Muslims in the Red
Army, 1939-1945. Brill’s inner Asian library, vol. 42. Leiden; Boston:
Brill, 2022. 

This course aims
to examine the ideas and politics of consolidation of Turkic, Iranian and
Mongolian groups living along the southern borders of the Russian Empire and
the Soviet Union in the twentieth century. The course will look at various
Turkic and Iranian groups across the borders of Russia, Central Asia and
Transcaucasia, as well as Mongolian and Turkic-Altaic groups in Mongolia, China
and Russia. Claiming a common language, cultural and religious heritage,
economy and infrastructure projects, their leaders sought political
representation within imperial structures, but also links with transregional
and international groups. In class, we will examine in particular the upheavals
in the empires, such as the WWI, the civil war on the territories of the former
Russian Empire, the WWII and the USSR’s dissolution, and the political projects
they fostered. We will apply postcolonial theory to the available historical
and ethnographic data in order to analyse how the ideas of transnational unity
of the studied groups affected the USSR’s foreign policies in times of crisis.

At
the end of the course, students will be expected to orient themselves towards
recent scholarly debates on transnational identities in the twentieth century
and to situate empirical research on the Russian/Soviet borderlands in relation
to these debates. Assessment will be based primarily on active participation in
seminar discussions. The reading list consists of academic literature and
available translations of original written and oral sources in English and
German.

Introductory reading:

Caroline Humphrey, “Concepts of “Russia” and their
Relation to the Border with China” in: Billé, F., Delaplace, G., Humphrey, C. Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and
Mongolian Border (Open Book Publishers, 2012), pp. 55-70.

The course presents an overview of the Sino-Soviet relationships since the October revolution of 1917 in Russia till the USSR's and CMEA's disintegration. It focuses on China's transformation domestically and internationally: from positioning Chinese revolutionaries in the Third Communist International and the rivalry between the Communist Party of China and Guomindang, and the role of the Soviet leaders in it, to the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and Stalin's supervision; from Mao Zedong's application to Lenin's model of socialism through Mao's social and cultural campaigns, the Sino-Soviet split (1960-1989) and China's ambition to lead the revolutionary struggle in the Third World under the ideology of Maosim, to China's deviation from the socialist planned economy in the 1980s known as Den Xiaoping reform. The Sino-US rapprochement (since 1971) is given special attention in the context of the Cold War. China's policies towards its closest neighbours, Mongolia and Vietnam in particular, are analysed vis-a-vis Moscow's visions on East Asian geopolitics. The course shall contribute to the students' understanding of modernisation theories, socialist ideologies and revolution as they were transferred, interpreted and reproduced in the USSR and in Asia and the complex inter-dependencies within the international socialist system.

Extensive literature and secondary sources readings, as well as primary sources (available translations into Germany and/or English) are expected.

Introductory reading: Jian, Chen, "China's changing politics towards the Third World and the end of the global Cold War" in: Kalinovsky, A.M. and Radchenko, S. (eds.) The End of the Cold War and the Third World. New perspectives on regional conflicts (London & New York: Rutledge), pp. 101-121.