OVERVIEW

This 36-hour (six-credit) course will be taught in the second semester (3 hours per week) in person and in Italian. It is intended for students in the TTMI program at the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Our first-year course introduces students to Russian literature and culture from its medieval origins to the mid 1800s. In the second year, students focus more specifically on problems of literary style and evolution by examining texts from the 19th and early 20th centuries; students who take the third-year course will go still more deeply into the literature and culture of a more specific historical period (such as The Thaw).

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims to provide students with critical tools to interpret Moscow as a symbolic and cultural space—a crossroads of history, ideology, and individual experience in twentieth-century Russia. To this end, students will analyze some of the most significant literary works (prose, songs) and films of the 20th century focused on Moscow themes. This analysis will run parallel to the historical events that, beginning in 1917, established Moscow’s return to a central political, cultural, and symbolic position within the Russian sphere.

By the end of the course, students will be able to conduct a critical reflection on each of the analyzed literary and cinematic texts, contextualizing them within the framework of the main historical, artistic, ethical, and political issues of their respective eras. Students will possess the necessary tools to connect every text in the syllabus to its specific literary or cinematic movement. Furthermore, they will be able to identify its original formal and thematic elements, and appreciate both its relevance within the Soviet and Russian cultural and social landscape of the time, as well as its universal dimension.

PREREQUISITES

None. Knowledge of Russian is not required for this course.

TEACHING METHODS

This course will be conducted in person and in Italian.

In order to keep pace with the course, it is necessary to sign up on Aulaweb. Not only will you receive announcements automatically via Aulaweb, but you will also find there information regarding the course syllabus, lectures, and the exam. N.B. Access to the course on Aulaweb does not require a password, but actually signing up for the course requires an extra step: You do need to be sure that your name appears in the list of "participants" or else you have not completed the sign-up procedure and you will not receive any notifications.

It is also necessary to sign up for the course on Teams. The relevant password will be available on Aulaweb.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The Best City on Earth

Literary and Cinematic Representations of Moscow in the Twentieth Century

The course aims to explore the multiple images of the city of Moscow in 20th-century literature and cinema, tracing the transformation of urban space from a revolutionary capital to a site of Soviet and post-Soviet everyday life. The title, The Best City on Earth, taken from a famous song of the early 1960s, refers both ironically and affectionately to the myth of Moscow as the symbolic, ideological, and emotional center of the Soviet experience, but also as a lived, contradictory, and deeply human space.

Through the analysis of literary works by Mikhail Bulgakov, Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky, Yuri Trifonov, and Andrey Rubanov, the course will highlight different ways of representing the city: the fantastic and demonic Moscow, the intimate and memorialized space of the Arbat neighborhoods, the city sung and narrated by informal culture, up to the Moscow of the "Thaw", of stagnation, and of new post-Soviet tensions. The city will emerge not merely as a backdrop, but as a character in its own right, capable of shaping individual destinies, narrative forms, and worldviews.

Alongside the literary texts, a central role will be given to cinema, with the screening and discussion of key films such as Zastava Il’icha  (Ilyich's Gate), Moskva slezam ne verit (Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears), Kur’er (Messenger Boy), and Brigada (Law of the Lawless). These works will allow students to observe how the Moscow urban imagination is also expressed through visual language, capturing atmospheres, generations, rhythms, and social transformations that are inseparable from the places that host them.

The syllabus is identical for both attending and non-attending students. 

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Literary texts

M. Bulgakov, Piccola prosa, Milano, Rizzoli, 1994

M. Bulgakov, Il maestro e Margherita, qualsiasi edizione, purché integrale

Ju. Trifonov, La casa sul lungofiume, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1988

A. Rubanov, Questa era la Russia, Roma, Sandro Teti Editore, 2026

Films

Zastava Il’iča  (La barriera Il’ič)

Moskva slezam ne verit, (Mosca non crede alle lacrime)

Kur’er (Il corriere)

Brigada (La gang)

Historical-cultural essays (for consultation)

G. Spendel, La Mosca degli anni Venti. Sogni e utopie di una generazione, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1999. 

A. Nove, Stalin e il dopo Stalin in Russia, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1976.

G. P. Piretto, Quando c'era l'URSS. 70 anni di storia culturale sovietica, Milano, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2018. 

S. Romano, Il suicidio dell’Urss, Roma, Sandro Teti Editore,  2021.

R. Medvedev, La Russia post-sovietica: un viaggio nell’era Eltsin, Torino, Einaudi, 2002. 

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Second Semester

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Oral exam. Students may take the exam in either Italian or Russian.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The exam will test whether or not students have actually read the literary texts and seen the films found on the syllabus and will evaluate students' ability to offer a critical interpretation of these. The quality of students' exposition and the correct use of scholarly terms will be taken into consideration.

FURTHER INFORMATION

ATTENDANCE: There is no special syllabus for students who do not attend lectures; that said, attendance is strongly recommended since the course is based on the individual analysis of the texts, on the assignments, and on the discussions held in class. As a result, those w

DISABILITIES: Students with certification of learning or other disabilities should inform prof. Sara Dickinson, who is  the Departmental contact for the Inclusion of Students with Learning and Other Disabilitiesin order to discuss possible accommodations regarding this course or studies at the University of Genoa in general.