HIST 20 - Russia

Next Monday will begin my next class in history, taken online at Foothill College in Los Altos, CA. The class, taught by Prof. Dolores Davison, will be on the History of Russia and the Soviet Union. Oddly enough, I'm really looking forward to it! I say "oddly enough", because I never expected to be taking yet another history class, nor would I have imagined it to be one on Russia, if I HAD imagined it. Yet, here I am, signed up once again to study history, that of a country which has been very important for world history in general, and the Middle East and the Americas in particular.

Last quarter, the course on "History of the Middle East", taught also by Prof. Davison, proved absolutely fascinating, as I anticipated. What I did not expect, though, was to find out that Russia had been instrumental in the history of the Middle East for many years before the twentieth century. In fact, Russia had several wars with Turkey, especially over the Crimean lands, and access to the Mediterranean trade routes which it enabled. So, here I am, ready to learn about the history of the past, and eager to understand, through that study more about the realities of the present.