***Important Update: The course is now scheduled to take place on the following Tuesday evenings: 12/10, 12/17, 1/7, & 1/14, all at 8 pm US Eastern time. (Taking Christmas & New Year's weeks off.)
Who I Am
My name is CJ Killmer. I hold a Bachelors degree in history from Flagler College and a Masters degree in history from the University of Tennessee. I taught college history for 16 years (2006-2022), and have been hosting & producing the Dangerous History Podcast since 2014.
During my time teaching I got consistently positive teaching evaluations from both students & administrators. I enjoyed teaching but was always frustrated by the limitations of the conventional college classroom format. This course will enable me to teach a topic I want to cover in-depth, exactly the way I want to, with no limitations.
Over the past few years, my family & I have experienced & worked to overcome multiple significant hardships, including my own battles with addiction & depression, followed by my wife having to undergo multiple spinal surgeries that resulted in her being permanently physically disabled and having to leave her career.
While I've (thankfully) been able to overcome my mental health issues well enough to bounce back & be there to support my wife as she's gone through this painful transition, our finances have become severely strained due to the loss of my wife's income & all of the medical bills and other debts we've accumulated in the last couple of years, and getting through the last bit of 2024 is proving to be extremely challenging.
This fundraising campaign will literally keep a roof over my family's head, and in return will offer contributors something that I have been wanting to do for a long time: teaching a Dangerous History course about an extremely important, relevant & timely topic exactly how I want to teach it, with no limitations being imposed by institutions.
What This Course Will Be
The Decline & Fall of the Soviet Empire is one of the most important historical stories of the last several centuries and is a topic one must understand in order to make sense of the world as it currently exists today.
I believe that if more Americans understood the true story of this historical turning point, they would have a much better understanding of current world events, and a better idea of what to expect as the American Empire continues on its own path of decline & fall.
I will teach an online course which will cover the decline of the Soviet Empire beginning in the 1950s with the death of Josef Stalin & the reforms of Nikita Khruschev, continuing through the 1970s with the stagnation of the Brezhnev era, the accession to power & reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, the final collapse in the late-1980s/early-1990s, & the deterioration of Russo-American relations in the 21st century.
This course will be taught online via Zoom. It will consist of 4 sessions on Tuesday nights at 8pm Eastern (see dates posted above.) In each session, CJ will lecture for approximately 90-100 minutes and then answer students' questions. (Sessions will be recorded & shared with students so you can watch the recordings if you have to miss any live sessions, of if you simply want to rewatch any of them.)
A brief outline of what each session will entail:
Session 1: Khrushchev to Brezhnev (1953-1964) – This session will begin in the aftermath of the death of Stalin & the accession to power of Nikita Khrushchev. It will discuss Khrushchev’s partial rejection of Stalin’s legacy & his “thaw” & “de-Stalinization” reforms. It will also cover some of the main events of Khrushchev’s reign as Soviet premier, including the repression of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, the 1960 U-2 Crisis, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and Khruschev’s removal of power & replacement by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964.
Session 2: Brezhnev to Gorbachev (1964-1985) – This session will cover the era of stagnation under Brezhnev, including the suppression of the “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia in 1968, détente with the United States in the 1970s, the end of détente in the late-1970s (including the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan), the election of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency of the United States, the death of Brezhnev, and continued problems in the Soviet Union & the Warsaw Pact states under his short-lived successors Yuri Andropov & Konstantin Chernenko.
Session 3: Crisis & Collapse (1985-1991) – This session will pick up with the accession to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, and his attempts to improve relations with the United States, pursue disarmament agreements, and reform the Soviet system. It will also cover how those reforms did not save the Soviet system but ultimately sped up its disintegration, & how Communism fell in the Warsaw Pact states and ultimately in the Soviet Union itself.
Session 4: A Mini-Dark Age to a New Cold War (1991-present) – This session will look at how the former Eastern Bloc states fared in the aftermath of the end of Communism, showing what a wide variety of experiences there were, from relatively benign to downright catastrophic, and how Russia was one of the places that, for a variety of reasons, fared very badly. It will also mention the negative effects of American interventions in the former Soviet Union, the failures of the Yeltsin government, the coming to power of Vladimir Putin, and the ways that the United States & NATO have antagonized Russia and are largely responsible for creating the New Cold War that, unfortunately, turned hot in Ukraine.
What I Need & What You'll Get
I need to raise at least $2,500 in order to make teaching the course worth my time & effort. (More would obviously be better, as I'm currently genuinely struggling to make ends meet.)
Live sessions will be at 8pm US Eastern time over the course of 4 Tuesday evenings starting on 12/10. (For full schedule of all sessions, see above -- we're taking off the weeks of Christmas & New Year's.)
If you purchase a live ticket for $250, you will be able to access the online course sessions live/in real-time (during which you'll be able to ask CJ questions & engage in discussions), and you will also get access to recordings of the course sessions after they have been taught.
If you purchase a recordings-only ticket for $175, you will not have access to the course sessions live/in real-time as they're taught (& thus won't be able to ask questions or engage in discussion), but you will get access to recordings of all course sessions after they are taught.
