I did Russia, but the biggest thing for me was to link change and continuity. My history question when I did A2 was roughly:
did the condition of the Russian peasantry change between *the period*?
So I linked the standard social/economic/political standards of the peasantry throughout the period, saying how they were pretty much similar at the end as the beginning, padding it out of course, whilst saying throughout the period things were periodically better/worse. For example, during Lenin's policies they typically benefited, whilst suffered under Stalin.
That way you're looking at the whole period and picking out individual events to explain that.
I got full marks for the exam, so I guess it worked.