Monday, May 29, 2006

Deadline for missing work has passed!

Friday, May 26, 2006

Attention All Shulmaniacs

Since today is the last day of class, all outstanding work should be turned in today if you wish to receive credit.

However, I will accept any work (due in the last eight days) through SUNDAY AT MIDNIGHT via email. NO EXCEPTIONS WILL BE MADE BEYOND THIS DEADLINE.

If you do not receive a response from me that I have received your email by Monday at noon, then it is your responsibility to follow up with me by calling me on Monday and coming by to talk to me about it first thing Tuesday morning. I will expect you to bring a dated copy of the email you sent which demonstrates you sent it before Sunday at midnight.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Reading Questions!

1) Explain: “The Cold War… had provided a way of ordering the world.”
2) What was the Brezhnev Doctrine? How and why did Gorbachev steer the USSR away from this policy? What was the result?
3) List the reforms for which Jewish dissenters, intellectuals and professionals were calling. Why did they want each one of these reforms?
4) What do the authors mean by this statement: “Stalin understood the political significance of the weapon”? (Italics are mine, not the authors’.)
5) List the early Cold War scientific advancements that heated up the “Space Race.”
6) What was the message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that shaped the relationship between the Cold War superpowers? How did the US and Soviet Union react to it?
7) List the attempts made to slow down nuclear proliferation and the arms race and explain what each attempt was designed to do. What was détente?
8) Why were the 1980s the “dangerous decade”?
9) How was Gorbachev a new kind of leader from his predecessors?
10) While the Soviet Union was prospering more after Stalin’s death, list the reasons why the Soviet citizens were unhappy with their quality of life.
11) List the reforms that Gorbachev made economically and politically.
12) Who was Boris Yeltsin, what happened in August 1991, and what was the result for Yeltsin’s political career?
13) Read the conclusion. It is an excellent summary of what you have just read.

Friday, May 05, 2006

New extra credit assignment!

And both movies are playing locally this weekend and all this week. Check them out!