TELL ME THIS IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE. OOOH. I DARE YOU.

[x_los]

"Take Home Essay
You are to write an essay approximately 3-5 pages long, in which you address the following question.  Your answer must be typed, one inch margins all around, double spaced, 12 point font and the paper must be stapled (no paper clips, or little folded over corner with a tear through it!).  Nothing past page 5 will be read and if you play games with the font or the margins I will stop reading earlier. (Erin: Um, way to preemptively be a bitch, but whatev) Essays are due in class when you turn in your short answer portion of the final exam.

The question:
Obviously, no one factor can account for as complex an event as the fall of the USSR.  A variety of political, economic, and social forces contributed to popular disillusionment with the regime and a decline in its authority.  Drawing on the assigned readings, lectures, discussions, and films, what are the most crucial factors that would you highlight in explaining the collapse of the Soviet experiment from the perspective of (a) politics [domestic or international]; (b) economics; and (c) society.  Please articulate and provide evidence for one “factor,” as you define it, for each of these three categories. What patterns can you discern among these three aspects of the Soviet system across the postwar period?  In your conclusion, in addition to recapping your paper, address to what extent you see the post-Soviet period as representing a break or a continuation of these patterns. (Erin:...all that in 3-5 double spaced? Oh you have got to be kidding me)

Before you start to write, think about how to structure your paper so as to answer all parts of the question. I expect you to have some discussion somewhere of the late Stalin era, likely in the context of discussing the continual post-Stalinist efforts at various reforms.  This is not a long essay, so you will need tight organization and well-chosen, strong evidence/examples. (Erin: WHAT. WHAT. I CANNOT FIT ALL OF MY GORBACHEV THEORY AND A SEPARATE POST-SOVIET ANALYSIS INTO THIS, LET ALONE SUSTAIN A CRITIQUE FROM THE STALIN ERA ONWARDS RE: REFORM. THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY IN HELL.)

Conclussion: I will do what I can: 1) steal Richard Pipes' theory of the impossibility of grafting Western bits onto a totalitarian system, and 2) do a three-pronged analysis of Gorbachev era with perestrokia/glasnost for two (lame, but if it's what she wants than it is, facile as it seems) and a political vector of center-periphery multinational tension for the last, and 3) some post-Soviet total bullshit in the conclussion.

COMPLETELY IGNORING THE BIT WHERE SOMEHOW I WAS SUPPOSED TO PROVIDE SOME STALIN-ON CRITIQUE B/C W.T.F.

...oh my god, why would you write the world's fattest-assed paper assignment?! Why would you do this to the world?!

Comments

[aralias.livejournal.com]

... wow.

and, er, i'm sure that's not impossible... just get rid of all those words you don't need, like 'the' and 'and'.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

My entire essay will be in newspeak. It will save space and be Very Poignant. Somehow.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

newspeak makes me sad. nothing else in 1984 really traumatised me, but the newspeak left me wandering around for weeks afterwards saying '... but why?" to passers by who looked scared and moved on.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Did you read the Black Dossier? Alan Moore did a really creepy section of it in New Speak, b/c it's set right after the fall of that government. Also, love the sad!icon.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

i haven't. actually, i haven't even heard of it before, though i assume alan moore=political and disturbing graphic novels (ah, wikipedia tells me it so here also). i'm intrigued by the idea of someone actually writing in newspeak, but at the same time it genuinely does me incredibly upset. i would never say 'i love language/words', having watched the history boys (damn you alan bennett), but i do, i like complicated latinate words, and old out of use slang, and the word bottom (rather inexplicably). so, down with newspeak, although props to orwell for coming up with something that so completely repulses me.

is the black dossier good? i tried the first LXG graphic novel when i was about 16 and ran away quite quickly because of the invisible man rape, but it does intrigue me as a concept.

p.s. i like my sad!rose icon also. though i think this one is possibly even more angsty. woe, at my writers block dead girlfriend.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Huh. I have not seen/read History Boys, but it sounds interesting?

Well, I liked the original a fair bit, and the second is a bit of a rolecall of everyone in brit lit ever, so you spend a fair bit of it squealing "OMG BERTIE! Ah! James Bond at last! Yes! Hit him with your bag, AWESOME....Oh. Orlando. Hey." and so on for like, everyone ever. So from that angle at least, v. cool. Though I dunno if the plot's as compelling this time, possibly because the formal expirimentalism kind of detached me from it a bit.

Ah! All your sad icons V SAD.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

history boys is awesome. twas originally a play by alan bennett, and then they made it into a movie with the same cast, which should be reasonably easy to get hold of but which is remarkably inferior. also, i think the specific joke i'm referring to isn't in the movie because its remarkably inferior.

and i'm really rather intrigued by your description of LXG (particularly 'hit him with your bag') and i really like formal experimentation in novels/graphic novels... which is odd because i don't really get poetry. but anyway - may go track down the league. (n.b. do you mean bertie wooster?? becuase if so i am definitely there)

[x-los.livejournal.com]

I shall read or rent then! And yeah, there's a whole Bertie Wooster section in BD, which just rocks.

[blinkidybah.livejournal.com]

I dunno it doesn't seem that hard. She doesn't say anywhere to address anything in any DEPTH, after all. Just do a high-school level essay, with a page per para, and you'll probably be fine.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

It's the Stalin Era thing that seems particularly impossible to me? Like the rest I can cover, shallowly, but I can't contextualize it in a history of all previous reform efforts from the Stalin era onwards? Because there's no way I can even glancingly cover that material in addition to touching on those three things and a post-soviet conclusion? I mean, she's going to want a lot of names and dates to back my shit up on the new theory, there's not a lot of time to be like btw, everything else in Russia after Stalin did BLAH. I wouldn't know how to begin to generalize that, it's too erratic?

[blinkidybah.livejournal.com]

She stated the Stalin thing goes in the conclusion. Just offhand mention shit from that era? Or don't make up a new theory, crib somebody else's like a lameass so you don't have to quote as much stuff?

[x-los.livejournal.com]

*wince* too late, is due in 10 min. Dammit.

[blinkidybah.livejournal.com]

Whoops.

[sovietkitsch.livejournal.com]

Haha, my final essay for My Philosophy 303: Ethics class was:

Does morality exist?

5 page limit. :-P

[sovietkitsch.livejournal.com]

ALSO. In college, I was the queen of papers-with-the-corner-folded-over-with-a-little-tear-in-it. I mean, who needs staples?

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Staples are for the weak! Save metal, just sort of bite it with your teeth. They'll get the idea, right?

[gritsinmisery.livejournal.com]

I thank sweet baby Jeebus that I got a computer science degree from an engineering uni every time I read someone's assignment like that. I'd rather take the Double-E flunk-out course as a non-major again than deal with that crap. Diffy-Q? Orthogonal Vectors? Combinitorics? Bring 'em on.

Oh, my favorite humanities class in college was the first American Lit course I took. A new Language Arts professor had been hired; she used to teach at f-in' Dartmouth but had to move to take care of a dying mother. She was so very, very unprepared for the status of the humanities and social sciences at Rolla... The best moment was when, after she'd returned all of our first essays with dismal marks, we gleefully informed her that no, even tho Composition was required to graduate, it was not a requirement for any of the Literature courses. I thought she'd pop a gasket right there.

As for whether your assignment is possible... Is it possible that she's testing to see which of you are sheep / drones and who calls her on it?

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Ha!

And no, I wish that were the case, but from her instructions on other things I think she may just have a bit o the batshit in her. Augh. WhatEVER, woman.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

*laughing* Well, she's a psycho. I can tell, not because of the stupid amount of stuff she demands in this paper (though seriously, the Stalinist era? And that's such an artificial way of setting up an analysis of the fall of Communism to begin with), but because she is obsessing over margins, staples, and type-size. I'm surprised she didn't dictate what font she wanted (12 point is different sizes in different fonts, you know).

Do you think she'll actually break out the ruler and measure? Or does she believe she's got a good enough eye to judge on sight?

Honestly, I had teachers who did this sort of thing in high school, but in college they were like, "It's way too much effort to care what you do to the margins. Just don't kill me with your babbling, because I've got 20 of these to go through and five other classes I'm teaching."

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, I should have turned it in in something ENRAGING, like papyrus!font. I hope she measures Every. Single. Paper. I would respect the 'please don't' teachers more, a) because we are in goddamn college and b) because asking me to respect your time makes me feel inclined to do so. Rather than whinging on re: STAPLES.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

AH hahahahahaha! A whole paper in Papyrus...god, that would've been priceless.