Slavonic Papers

This paper introduces you to the essential elements of Russian grammar, starting with the declension of the nouns and verbal conjugation and ending with complex sentences with subordinate clauses, including the use of the subjunctive. The course covers a lot of ground very quickly. It will enable you both to understand and to use actively grammatical structures that form the basis of Russian. In addition, you will acquire a wide range of vocabulary and will learn how to read and understand authentic texts without a dictionary.

This Paper has two components: Translation from Russian into English, and Oral Russian.

Translation is an effective way of learning a foreign language. This exercise will expose you to a variety of basic Russian grammatical constructions and will help you to build up your vocabulary. You will be encouraged to look at the linguistic differences and similarities between the two languages and to develop your grasp of the essential structures and elements of Russian. 

Oral component: this part of the Paper is taught by native speakers, and it will enable you to acquire and to develop conversation skills through a variety of texts and exercises, in interaction with your teacher and with each other. 

Russian is a highly inflected language, and grammatical accuracy is essential both to understanding and to communication. Every area of grammar has therefore to be mastered. You will be building upon your prior knowledge of the language, acquired in your A-Level (or equivalent) course or in the Cambridge ab initio course. You will consolidate and develop your reading and writing skills. You will be trained to use correctly all principal elements of Russian grammar and syntax, and thus acquire a sound knowledge of modern standard Russian. This Paper is designed to provide a comprehensive training system, covering grammar rules, exceptions and subtleties, syntax, idioms and set phrases, equivalents and non-equivalents in English and Russian, register, style, formulation of ideas, and argument. 

This Paper aims to enable you to:

• read and understand advanced-level Russian texts on topics of general nature without a dictionary;
• engage closely with the content of the text and master the skill of nuanced understanding of reading materials;
• write in Russian with a high level of grammatical accuracy;
• manipulate both simple and complex structures, including ones without an exact equivalent in English;
• construct and develop a convincing argument in Russian;
• form an awareness of style and register in Russian

This paper is composed of two parts: Translation from Russian into English and spoken Russian.

In Translation you will be working with texts in the authentic Russian. This exercise will expose you to a range of more complex grammatical structures and will help you to expand your vocabulary. It will highlight linguistic differences between the two languages, foster nuanced understanding of reading material in Russian and encourage you to think about various problem-solving strategies when rendering a Russian text into stylistically appropriate, idiomatic English.

Oral practice will help you to develop your ability to maintain a conversation and to express your thoughts and ideas in Russian. 

The Translation component aims to foster qualities essential in language learning: depth, accuracy, clarity and flexibility. You will acquire the ability to read, understand and translate Russian texts into appropriately idiomatic English by developing your grasp of the grammatical structures of Russian, building up your vocabulary and improving your analytical and problem-solving skills. You will be encouraged to reflect on a range of idiomatic means by which to convey the meaning of the source text most accurately and effectively.

The Oral component: by the end of the academic year you should be able to engage in a conversation, to talk fluently in idiomatic, stylistically appropriate and grammatically correct Russian, and to formulate ideas of some intellectual substance. 

This paper is made up of two distinct components: Translation from English into Russian and Russian through Audio-visual Media (MD), the B3 Translation and MD elements will help you develop your linguistic skills and cultural competence in a range of areas. 

The B3 paper is only available to Part IB (i.e., second-year students) who had an A-level or equivalent in the language when they arrived. In addition, if your other language is ab initio, you can choose not to do this paper in Russian and instead do an extra literature/linguistics paper from the schedule of IB papers. If, however, both your languages are post A-level, then this paper (both components) is compulsory.

Translation into a foreign language is a challenging but effective tool of learning that language. This Paper will expose you to non-specialised texts of various styles and registers and it will help you to refine the skills necessary to communicate in Russian effectively: gaining accuracy, clarity and flexibility.  Not only will it enable you to master complex grammatical constructions and build up your vocabulary but also encourage you to think about adequacy and appropriateness of expression in written communication. You will focus on the structural differences between the two languages, with  the emphasis on English grammatical constructions which have no exact equivalent in Russian.

In this paper you will translate both from Russian into English and from English into Russian.

You will work with non-specialised texts of different styles. This exercise will  help you to hone your ability to manipulate Russian grammatical structures and idiom with a high degree of accuracy and to convey  to a certain extent nuances of style and register. You will be encouraged to reflect on problems of translation and to develop strategies of dealing with them. 

This paper offers the opportunity to engage with advanced use of the Russian language in stimulating and intellectually challenging ways, through the analysis of various texts of different types and genres under the topic of Identity.

This course aims to develop advanced use of written Russian through the analysis of various texts of different genres and styles. By the end of the course you are expected to be able to:

• demonstrate a nuanced understanding of the text;
• define the principal themes and ideas of the text;
• locate the text in its Russian historical, cultural or political context;
• identify ironies or subtexts that might be present;
• formulate and develop a clear argument of your own;
• comment on formal features of the text and point out the most salient linguistic devices used by the author (word choice, syntax, figures of speech and tropes);
• write in Russian fluently, with a high level of grammatical accuracy, employing a wide range of stylistically appropriate idiom

This paper offers students the opportunity to strengthen their skills in translation from Ukrainian into English and from English into Ukrainian. The students will work with non-specialised texts of different styles. The candidates will be encouraged to reflect on problems of translation and to develop strategies of dealing with them.

The aim of the C1 paper is to consolidate students’ knowledge of advanced Ukrainian grammar and vocabulary. The paper is designed to help the students:

• to acquire the ability to move easily between the two languages;
• to refine the ability to manipulate complex grammatical structures and idioms;
• to enhance the skill of conveying stylistic nuances and effects;
• to develop the ability to identify dialectal terms and successfully translate them

This paper offers the opportunity to engage with advanced use of the Ukrainian language in stimulating and intellectually challenging ways, through the analysis of texts of various types and genres under a prescribed topic as specified by the Faculty Board. At the moment, the main focus of the paper is "Identity". Students will be expected to engage critically with relevant texts, placing them in their cultural contexts and analysing their formal features and content through written work in Ukrainian.

The aim of the paper is to provide the students with an opportunity to consolidate and expand their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills acquired in SL9 and during the Year Abroad. The paper will explore various thematic units in the course of the year. 4 sub-topics around the central theme of identity will be discussed each year, including themes such as history, society, art and culture, law, language, philosophy, geography, politics, and religion.  Some of the questions students will be expected to be able to discuss are: How was the Ukrainian identity formed and changed over the course of time? Which factors are relevant for the formation of a Ukrainian identity?  How is identity defined by language and religion in the Ukrainian context? How does the law reflect on changes in society?

This paper offers an interdisciplinary overview of key issues in Russian history, literature, the visual arts, and linguistics from the medieval period to the present. The paper is designed to introduce students to the analysis of a wide range of cultural artifacts and practices: its primary sources and prescribed texts include not only literary and historical documents, but also icons, buildings, paintings, posters, films, and monuments. The primary sources, topics, and methodologies explored in this paper are intended to provide both ab initio and post-A-level students of Russian with a solid foundation for more specialised study in Part IB and Part II.

The paper consists of seven topics (including one optional Linguistics topic) and one set text, Mikhail Lermontov's Geroi nashego vremeni [A Hero of Our Time]. The topics examine historical, literary, visual and linguistic materials produced between the 14th century and the present. They are presented in chronological order, each emphasising a different theme. Lectures will address both the immediate historical contexts and cultural impact of prescribed topics and texts, as well as their continuing resonance within contemporary Russian cultural debates.

Paper SLA3 (required of all students in Part IA, Option A) and Paper SL1 (required of all students in Part IA, Option B) follow the same course of lectures, but supervision arrangements, reading lists and examinations for the two papers have been designed to accommodate the differing language skills of students in Options A and B.

Three modern nation-states – Belarus, Russia and Ukraine – trace their historical and cultural inheritance to medieval Rus'. Any critical insight regarding the bonds between and tensions among these states and their neighbours is dependent on the understanding of their relationship to Rus' history and culture. The SL2 paper does just this; focusing on select topics and analysing primary written, pictorial and architectural sources together, it investigates the world-views of Early Rus’ authors, patrons and audiences from the mid-tenth century to the emergence of the grand duchies of Lithuania and Moscow.

Selected primary readings introduce students to the written language of Rus’ and familiarize students with a variety of literary genres, including chronicles, lives of saints, inscriptions on images, graffiti and birch bark letters. While students will be encouraged to read designated segments of the sources in the original language, which though challenging in places, is reasonably accessible with practice; all texts will be available in Russian, Ukrainian and English translation. (Part 1B students are not required to read texts in the original).

Similarly, the analysis of select monuments of art and architecture as primary sources in their own right will introduce students to the visual forms and pictorial language that formed the built environment of Early Rus’, and, in the case of icons and churches, enacted the transition between earth and heaven. The materiality and devotional function of art in Rus’ society will be explored in terms of the historical specificity of ‘seeing’.

Considering current events and the Russian-waged war on Ukraine, this paper redresses an existing gap in the coverage of the history and culture of Eastern Europe; it introduces students to premodern developments on the lands that are today Ukraine. Through the study of primary literary and visual sources, the paper leads students in an investigation of historical memory, identity construction, and statehood formation in the lands that have come to form modern Ukraine. Examining evidence of cultural resonances and experiences in texts and images, the paper explores how life was understood and visualised on the territory of Ukraine in different temporal and spatial contexts. Always with an eye on the present, the paper assesses the impact of the cultural inheritance of Kyivan Rus’, of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia, of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and of the Cossack Hetmanate on the changing formulations of nationhood and identity in Ukraine. 

Russian literature came of age in the nineteenth century.  Within a few decades (1810s to 1860s), authors went from struggling to develop and refine the literary language, to writing some of the greatest novels of all time.  Beginning with Pushkin and the Golden Age of Russian poetry, this course traces the evolution of the Russian literary tradition and the rise of the great Russian novel, culminating with its heyday in the 1860s-70s, and then the return to shorter forms at the end of the century.  Students will learn how Russian authors engaged with formal/aesthetic problems and also made literature the site for rich debates about all the pressing concerns of their day: social, psychological, political, scientific, and philosophical.

In order to achieve a balance of depth and breadth, the paper is organized around the study of two set texts and four topics. (There are suggested pathways through the texts and topics tailored to Part IB, option A [ex-ab initio] students).

Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 launched a new era in Soviet and Russian cultural history as artists confronted the past and looked for new means of self-expression. This paper examines literature, film, drama, and visual art produced from 1953 to the 1990s, with an emphasis on the Soviet period. It situates cultural texts in historical, social and political context while providing a range of theoretical tools for analysing post-Stalinist and late Soviet works.

• Topic 1: Realisms
• Topic 2: Testimony
• Topic 3: City and Country
• Topic 4: Identity
• Topic 5: Resistance
• Topic 6: Speech

This course investigates the history of Soviet and Russian cinema from its beginnings in the early 20th century through the present : from early silent comedies and melodramas to the emergence of the avant-garde in the 1920s; from Stalinist blockbusters of the 1930s through the Soviet ‘New Wave’ of the 1960s; from the tumultuous changes of the glasnost’ era through the postmodern challenges of the present. The paper encourages students to explore the work of one or more directors in depth, but it also asks students to think comparatively about the evolution of filmmaking practices, genres and themes across historical periods and political changes. This course is open to students in both Part IB and Part II; it does not assume any prior study of film, but students are expected to read a wide range of critical, historical and theoretical texts (in both English and Russian) as essential context for the films under discussion.

Topics:

• Revolutionary Film Culture: From Boulevard to Avant-Garde
• From Silence to Sound: Sergei Eisenstein, Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Dziga Vertov
• The Other Soviet Classics: Popular Cinema in the Stalin Era
• Soviet Cinema After Stalin:  Rewriting the Past, Confronting the Present
• Russian Cinema from Perestroika to the Present

The earliest texts written in an East Slavonic language appear in Kyivan Rus’ in the 11th century. These texts exhibit both Church Slavonic and native East Slavonic features. The Church Slavonic features in the texts represent a continuation of the sacral language that came into being in Moravia following the Cyrillo-Methodian mission in the 9th century. Over the course of many centuries both Church Slavonic and native East Slavonic varieties appear to have been in use, sometimes coexisting and sometimes mixing with each other. The breakthrough of a unified standard based on the East Slavonic variety took place in the 18th to 19th centuries. This is the beginning of the period of Contemporary Standard Russian.  

In this course we will focus on the language situation in what is now Russia (although we will be drawing some comparative data from the related East Slavonic languages -- Belarusian and Ukrainian). We will trace the changes in the sound structure, morphology and syntax of Early East Slavonic and subsequently Russian. We will explore the interaction of Church Slavonic and East Slavonic in a number of medieval and early modern texts. The supervisory component of the paper was designed to confer an additional set of meta-skills: (i) ability to work with unfamiliar linguistic data (i.e., to generalize, establish patterns, and present the findings in a manner consistent with the conventions of the field); (ii) facility with certain technologies (Latex). We will also address the historical and socio-cultural factors that have played a role in the development of the Russian language.

This paper gives students the opportunity to delve deeply into the life and writings of one of Russia’s greatest and most prolific writers, Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910). He not only changed the shape of Russian and world literature, but also impacted political and social movements across the globe. With Russia currently at war, war will be a central theme.

The bulk of the paper will focus on Voina i mir (1865-69), which in its scope and ambitions challenged all the reigning ideas of its time about how history is recorded, how novels are written, and about the individual’s place in the world. Tolstoy’s life was vast; he grew up in a serf-owning gentry family shortly after the Decemberist Revolt and died just years before the Bolshevik Revolution.  During that time, he thought and wrote about all the burning questions of his day, so while this paper has a single-author focus, it also gives us the chance to consider most aspects of nineteenth-century Russian literature and culture. 

A full year devoted to Tolstoy will enable students to trace the evolution of his thought and writing from his early war stories and experiments in narration, through Voina i mir, to the late novellas and non-fiction where he boldly proclaimed his new worldview arrived at after spiritual conversion. It will also offer the space to consider Tolstoy’s legacy through different lenses, from a feminist approach to his writing on women, to a postcolonial examination of his writings about the Caucasus, to an ecocritical examination of his views on nature. For Tolstoy, all the big questions of life—how must I live? what must I do? what is the purpose of science and art? what is religion? how should society be structured?—were open and pressing.  Engaging with Tolstoy on his own terms means wrestling with these burning questions anew.

The spectre of the Soviet Union has, in recent years, returned to haunt Western perceptions of Russia in sources as diverse as the news media—with the perennial comparisons between Putin and Stalin—to Hollywood blockbusters, where Russian master-criminals sport hammer and sickle prison tattoos. The implicit claim is that the Soviet legacy, more than that of any other period, has shaped Russia as we know it today. This paper will explore the first part of this claim by leading you through the Soviet period, from the October Revolution in 1917 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. We will examine both the history and the historiography of the period, tracing how historians have interpreted and debated topics such as the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of Stalin, the push to construct socialism, the Terror, the (inescapable?) legacy of Stalin, the Cold War, perestroika and glasnost', and the collapse of the USSR.

We will examine the ‘Soviet experiment’ to reshape political structures, economic relations, society and human nature itself. We will assess the achievements and costs of this epic undertaking from a variety of perspectives: from the central leadership who achieved a position of authority rivaling that of history’s most powerful dictators, to the ‘enemies of the people’ who paid with their freedom and lives for Soviet Great Power status; from the Stalin-era peasants who were educated and promoted through the ranks of the nomenklatura, to the Brezhnev-era apparatchiki who got on with life thanks to access to black markets and deals on the side. By the end of the paper, students will be equipped to engage critically with the so-called new Cold War discourse that posits the Russia of today as simply the Soviet Union in disguise.

The Russian twentieth century was an age of transformations - of revolution, of the Soviet Union, and of its collapse. In cultural terms, it was extraordinarily rich and varied.

This paper covers the period from the first ‘revolution’ in 1905, through 1917, to the death of Stalin in 1953. It travels from the poetry, film and theatre of the ‘Silver Age’, through the revolutionary experiments of avant-garde writers and film-makers, to the feel-good ideological texts of Stalinist Socialist Realism. In the fraught political arena of Soviet Russia, literature and culture were formed in relation to state imperatives, which could be accepted or rejected, but which were difficult to ignore. The texts that we study in this paper provide a wide variety of responses to the particular contexts of early twentieth-century Russia, and reveal the remarkable creativity that flourished, perhaps paradoxically, in that world.

This paper offers the chance to tackle texts of different kinds (novels, poetry, drama, short stories), work with different media (written texts, film, visual and performing arts), and different modes of cultural enquiry (literary criticism and theory, intellectual and cultural history).

The paper is divided into two sections. Section A examines two set texts: Isaac Babel’s cycle of Civil War stories Konarmiia (1926) and Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel Master i Margarita (1928-1940).  Section B offers four thematic topics. Each of these topics will require you to think across disciplinary boundaries, to make connections among texts produced in a range of media, and to explore both verbal and visual modes of cultural expression. 

In the light of the war in Ukraine, how do we approach the examination of Russian culture, specifically of the contemporary period? What is the ethical way to study Putin’s Russia? And how can the knowledge of post-Soviet cultural history help us comprehend a region riven with contradictions and crises for the past thirty years? This paper covers the period from Gorbachev’s Perestroika to the collapse of the USSR and the tumultuous 1990s to the early Putin years to the annexation of Crimea and until the present. It posits that contemporary Russian culture has been shaped by the coexistence of two ostensibly opposing discourses, the official and the dissident, that have interacted throughout the late- and post-Soviet period in different and often contradictory ways. The paper covers different media, focusing particularly on cinema and literature, with excursions into drama, painting, and performance art. The paper is divided into four topics and two set texts. Each of the topics engages a broad array of sub-topics, including those of identity, nationalism, gender, sexuality, trauma, memory, and nostalgia.

Why did an independent Ukraine emerge in 1991, and how does the study of culture shed light on this emergence? What was Soviet culture outside of Russia — or Soviet politics beyond Moscow? Paper SL 10 addresses these questions and more by way of close readings of literature and film — from blockbusters to banned, underground works — which accompanied the rise of Ukraine from imperial periphery to sovereign state in the 'short twentieth century’. Our chronological frame between the 1910s and 1990s, two periods marked by declarations of Ukrainian independence, offers you a unique synoptic cultural history of Soviet Ukraine.

Each of the paper’s sections considers the unique demands of literary and filmic texts on readers and spectators in an era when literature aspired to be cinematic and when film aspired to be poetic. It examines the intersection of aesthetic representation, signification, and political power from a broad theoretical perspective -- and with one eye on dramatic twenty-first century developments in Ukraine, especially the Maidan Revolution and the current armed conflict with Russia.