History Source Question Problems

Andrew_2006

Hi guys,

Say you get a source written by a historian, how are you supposed to use the origin and nature to argue for and against an argument?

For example I'm studying the russian revolution, and realise if a source was written by Lenin, he might particularly want to exaggerate something in order to justify his revolution. In the question i'm doing he has a particular tendency to glorify the popularity of the revolution.

So Should I acknowledge the limitations?

Does anyone have any tips for using the origin/nature better (provenance) in a question like this (40 marker)

Reply 1

kellywood_5

You need to discuss when, where, by whom and why the source was written to address reliabililty, as well as what it tells you and what it doesn't tell you to address utility. I don't know anything about the Russian Revolution apart from touching on it very briefly for GCSE coursework- my course was mostly about Hitler :rolleyes:

but as an example, you could say, 'Lenin wrote this source in Russia in 1919 as part of the propaganda effort, making it clearly biased and also limited in its utility because although it tells us about his broad aims, it does not tell us about some of his more sinister policies.'

Reply 2

Andrew_2006

Ahh someone else did the same course as me at gcse!! I changed school this year and everyone seems to have done Russia at GCSE!! I've had to catch up quite a bit...

Reply 3

kellywood_5

Andrew_2006

Ahh someone else did the same course as me at gcse!! I changed school this year and everyone seems to have done Russia at GCSE!! I've had to catch up quite a bit...

Apart from the tiny bit of Russia for coursework, I did International Relations (League of Nations etc), Nazi Germany and Britain (votes for women etc). It was OCR Modern World.