Khrushchev in love

I’m currently enrolled in a course called “comparative world history”. I have a good feel for the history part of the class, but can’t figure out what, exactly, the “comparative” part is supposed to mean, and only have the vaguest feelings about the “world” part (that, for example, we’re not focusing on a single area or a single period). I also occasionally get the odd pang of discomfort with the ways in which globalization comes up in the course without a critique of either what, precisely, the term is supposed to mean or what negative effects it may have, either as a consequence of our technology (which seems to be the focus) or as a project (which seems not to be a topic for discussion). I’m glad, though, that I’m not the only student who seems to feel this discomfort.

It is an odd thing though. When I’m wearing my Russian history student hat, I often find myself annoyed with, for example, the East/West dichotomy that frequently comes up in discussions of Russia (Is Russia a European country? An Eastern country? Both? Neither?), as if the line were real, the sort of thing given by the geography of the world, or maybe something in the water. I’m annoyed that professional historians still harp on this subject (long after they’ve given up questions like “Who is the Russian?” – as if there’s only one Russian – as if Plato was right, and the form of The Russian was just waiting to be discovered, a discovery that would finally unravel that mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a vest). I’m also annoyed that I still use phrases like “the West”. It seems like this is the sort of class where students could really do some of the work of dissolving that binary, but that doesn’t seem to happen, or hasn’t yet.

I guess that the course is just frustrating because I haven’t yet figured out what’s going on, and the instructor is doing a good job of trying not to just get up in front of the class and say “this is world history”, which is usually nice, but right now blaaargh.