History A2 Russia Paper

I'm taking History Late Modern and we're studying Russia and its Rulers... the paper is a thematic paper so it's really important not to go into narrative but assess the themes. Does anyone know how I would deal with a 'turning points' question?

E.g. "How far do you agree that the establishment of Stalin in power was the most important turning point in the development of Russian government in the period from 1855 to 1956" (in the actual updated papers its until 1964, but regardless, help please!)

heya, i'm going to put this in the history forum for you as you should get more responses there.:h

you should also check out the forum to see if there's any other threads there which might be helpful to you!

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=141

The first thing to do is plan and you can do it now for a variety of questions. As there is a strong chance that 'turning points' will come up what I would suggest that you do is make a list of themes such as, 'social', 'political', 'military', 'religion', 'economic' etc and then you can make posters listing all of these important events. If there is anything that you can see is common to a few/several of these lists then that is probably a period that will need to be considered depending on the question and the turning point in it.


For this question I would analysised the changes from each of the revolutions in the period (1905, 1917 (Feb and Oct)) assessing the methods of government and where the major shifts occured. It has been years since I studied the Russian Revolution so I can't remember specifics but I would have argued that the major turning point in Russian/Soviet government was the Feb. revolution because it was such a radical change from the Tsarist regime. The failures of the Provisional Gov. also provided a blue-print for what the Bolsheviks should and should not do when in power. E.g. Prov. gov. spoke for months about withdrawing from WWI but never did which caused great discontent amongst the people. Bolsheviks upon seizing power actually did withdraw from the war.

The first thing to do is plan and you can do it now for a variety of questions. As there is a strong chance that 'turning points' will come up what I would suggest that you do is make a list of themes such as, 'social', 'political', 'military', 'religion', 'economic' etc and then you can make posters listing all of these important events. .