History

Learners will acquire a wide variety of skills during their course. They will:

• Improve as effective and independent learners.
• Develop as critical and reflective thinkers with curious and enquiring minds.
• Establish critical reading and analytical writing skills.
• Develop the ability to ask relevant and significant questions about the past and to research them.
• Acquire an understanding of the nature of historical study; for example, history is concerned with judgements based on available evidence.
• Develop their use and understanding of historical terms, concepts and skills.
• Make links and draw comparisons within and/or across different periods and aspects of the past.
• Organise and communicate their historical knowledge and understanding in different ways, arguing a case and reaching substantiated judgements.
• Essay writing skills, research skills and debating skills.

The four themes identified in this module require students to have an overview of political, social and economic change in the USSR over the period. Learners need to have knowledge of the specified themes.

Topic 1: Communist Governments in the USSR: the nature of the communist government created by Lenin, Stalin, investigate de-Stalinisation under Khrushchev, and the reluctance of Brezhnev to tamper with the system.

Topic 2: Industrial and Agricultural Change: the aims and methods of the first three Five-Year Plans, where the dramatic transformation of Soviet industry & agriculture took place.

Topic 3: Control of the People: the ways in which the communist authorities imposed conformity on the Soviet people by force and by other methods of control such as propaganda.

Topic 4: Social Developments: examines the ways in which communist rule improved the lives of the Soviet people, and also considers the failures of government policy.

Historical Interpretations: What explains the fall of the USSR, c1985–91? This topic focusses on the conditional and contingent factors which influenced the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Learners will acquire a wide variety of skills during their course. They will:

• Improve as effective and independent learners.
• Develop as critical and reflective thinkers with curious and enquiring minds.
• Establish critical reading and analytical writing skills.
• Develop the ability to ask relevant and significant questions about the past and to research them.
• Acquire an understanding of the nature of historical study; for example, history is concerned with judgements based on available evidence.
• Develop their use and understanding of historical terms, concepts and skills.
• Make links and draw comparisons within and/or across different periods and aspects of the past.
• Organise and communicate their historical knowledge and understanding in different ways, arguing a case and reaching substantiated judgements.
• Essay writing skills, research skills and debating skills.

Topic 1: Establishing Communist Rule: covers the establishment of communist rule in the aftermath of the civil war and the development of the political system within China in 1949, the challenges these posed to the new communist government, the roles played by the CCP, the government, the bureaucracy and the PLA in the establishment of communist rule as well as the dominance of Mao. The Hundred Flowers campaign and the military campaigns in Korea in the years 1950–53 are also a key component of this topic.

Topic 2: Agriculture and Industry (1949–65): is about the agricultural and industrial changes from the early years of communist control until the Cultural Revolution. As well as learning about the economic reforms introduced by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping after the failure of the Great Leap Forward.

Topic 3: The Cultural Revolution and its Aftermath (1966–76): covers the years of the Cultural Revolution from the destructive anarchy of its early years, through the restoration of order within the country, to the death of Mao in 1976.

Topic 4: Social and Cultural Changes (1949–76): is about the social and cultural changes which occurred alongside the political and economic developments  and the government’s attempts to impose ideological uniformity on the Chinese people.