Specification Decoded

The specification for this course is a little bit confusing - as with all exams specifications - so let's split it down into easy chunks and make it nice and simple!

(Key to my posts is HERE)

The course is made up of four units:

1. Stalinism, 1941 - 53
   - includes the Great Patriotic War, 1941 - 45
   - & "High Stalinism", 1945 - 53
2. Destalinisation, 1953 - 68
   - includes Khrushchev
   - & the emergence of Brezhnev and Kosygin
3. The Brezhnev Era, 1968 - 82
4. The End of the USSR
   - includes Andropov and Chernenko
   - & Gorbachev
   - & Yeltsin and the collapse of the USSR

For the exam, you have to write two essays out of three options. Two will be based on topics within one unit, and one will be based on an extended period and thematic assessment.

What are you marked on?

• Understanding of the demands of the question
• Ability to select information - the wider ranging and better focussed, the higher the marks!
• Ability to sustain an argument
• Synopticity & awareness of historical debate - or, not just presenting one view

The key to a good essay?

Never assuming you're right, and always providing two sides to an argument, however unbalanced that may be.