Themes: Explanation

The course also requires students to be able to take a sweeping view across the whole fifty-year period studied. There will only be one question on this length of time, and you will not necessarily have to do it (as there are three questions and you only have to answer two), but it is never-the-less a good way to revise, and it would be foolish not to plan for these, in case there is another question that you just can't answer. Like... one on Brezhnev for example.

The most likely themes to come up are -

- the role of the CPSU
- the economy
- foreign policy
- nationalities
- leaderships
- political change (covered by "Leaderships" and "the role of the CPSU" - role them together for this topic & I won't bother covering it separately)
- the role of Stalinism
- social change
- and elements within social change

Although Laver, the chief examiner, is reported to have warned students to neglect culture at their peril, the relative lack of information on this, especially within his own textbook for the course, makes study of this unnecessarily difficult, and so I will not be covering it here - or answering a question on it, should one arise!

I'm going to cover these themes in the same way as ever. Usually, however, thematic questions are easier to plan for in exams, as there isn't all that much that can vary, so these are also good as sample essay plans.

- HistGrrl x