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Between the Revolutions: Russia 1905 to 1917
Classic Pamphlet
"The key question is this - is the peaceful renovation of the country possible? Or is it possible only by internal revolution?"This quotation succintly expresses the problem that faced both contemporaries and subsequant generations of historians confronting the development of Russia between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. The upheavals...
Between the Revolutions: Russia 1905 to 1917
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A comparative revolution?
Teaching History Article
Although the curriculum changes of 2008 brought with them new GCSE specifications, Jonathan White was disappointed by the dated feel of some ‘Modern World' options, particularly the depth studies on offer. Drawing on his experience of teaching comparative history within the International Baccalaureate, and building on previous arguments in Teaching History...
A comparative revolution?
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How representing women can convey a more complex narrative of the Russian Revolution to Year 9
Teaching History article
Barbara Trapani was troubled by the oversimplified judgements her students were making about the Russian Revolution. Could the women of the revolution help her students overcome their tendency to focus on success and failure? Trapani revised her enquiry, selecting stories of women who could ‘illuminate’ a longer, more complex history of...
How representing women can convey a more complex narrative of the Russian Revolution to Year 9
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Russian Revolution: Social Movements between the Revolutions Feb-Oct 1917
Lecture
On the 29th November Dr Jane McDermid gave the second of her lectures on the Russian Revolution, at the Weston Theatre, Manchester. John Laver, Principal Examiner in History at AQA also gave some invaluable advice on how to answer A Level History Exam questions.
Click the links below to access their lecture notes>>>...
Russian Revolution: Social Movements between the Revolutions Feb-Oct 1917
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Film: Brezhnev's early life and career
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film Dr Edwin Bacon takes us through Brezhnev’s early life and career: his birth in Ukraine in 1906, the opportunities brought by the revolution, his role in the battle of Ukraine and his eventual arrival to the Politburo at the end of the 1950s. Dr Bacon looks at...
Film: Brezhnev's early life and career
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Chinese history?
Teaching History feature
Teaching Chinese history in the UK runs up against some immediate obstacles. It lacks the familiar staging posts of European history: Chairman Mao is among the few well-known names, and terms such as Cultural Revolution and Opium War may attract recognition, but are often not understood in detail. The situation...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Chinese history?
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The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
Classic Pamphlet
The defeat of the revolution of 1905 afforded the absolutist Tsarist monarchy an opportunity to reform the administration and to seek a new basis of support in place of the declining gentry class. Historians have been divided ever since over the constitutional system's chances of success. Had Tsardom advanced far...
The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
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Film: Stalin - Early Life
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
Joseph Stalin was born Joseph Besarionis dze Jughashvili in 1878 into a poor family in Gori, Georgia, part of the then Russian Empire. Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary while his own radicalism grew, before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction through...
Film: Stalin - Early Life
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Reimagining the ‘Aba Riots’
Teaching History article
As an Early Career Teacher, Eleri Hedley-Carter set out to make the history she teaches in school more reflective of her undergraduate study of history – a discipline that strives to uncover a diverse past through various lenses and historical methods. In addition to expanding her school’s curriculum to include an...
Reimagining the ‘Aba Riots’
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Absence and myopia in A-level coursework
Teaching History article
It is a charge commonly laid at history teachers that we, myopically, teach only the same-old same-old. Steven Driver has taken extreme steps to avoid this by focusing on a particular neglected event – the American occupation of Nicaragua in the early twentieth century – as part of his preparation...
Absence and myopia in A-level coursework
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Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan
Article
Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan
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Exploring and Teaching Twentieth-Century History
A secondary education publication of the Historical Association
This resource is free to everyone. For access to our library of high-quality secondary history materials along with free or discounted CPD and membership of a thriving community of history teachers and subject leaders, join the Historical Association today
For a long time, history curricula on the 20th century prioritised...
Exploring and Teaching Twentieth-Century History
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Polychronicon 139: Civic denouncer: The lives of Pavlik Morozov
Teaching History feature
Germaine Greer (in the context of the Pirelli Calendar) once commented that the defining feature of a legend was that almost nothing said and believed about it was true. Pavlik Morozov, notorious both inside Russia and internationally for having denounced his father, almost certainly never did so. In September 1932, local...
Polychronicon 139: Civic denouncer: The lives of Pavlik Morozov
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The New Imperialism
Classic Pamphlet
This Classic Pamphlet first published in 1970 comes with a new introduction written by the author M. E. Chamberlain.The New Imperialism - Introduction by M. E. Chamberlain Professor Emeritus at Swansea University. May 2010.When this pamphlet was first published imperialism was a hot political topic and battle raged between Marxist and...
The New Imperialism
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Film: Lenin's early thought
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
As Lenin’s own political outlook and beliefs developed so did the European movements of Socialism and Communism. Groups emerged that wanted to radically change society and social structures. Lenin positioned himself as one of the leaders and crucially one of the thinkers behind these new ideas and movements.
Dr Lara...
Film: Lenin's early thought
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Films: Mikhail Gorbachev – Interpretations
Film series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
How much of what Russia is today, how its people behave, and how they are perceived is dependent on its history and those that have led it? Was it the first melting pot of the world? Do its broad range of cultural traditions and diversity play a part in its...
Films: Mikhail Gorbachev – Interpretations
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'But why then?' Chronological context and historical interpretations
Teaching History article
When Michael Fordham was introduced to Dr Seuss's Butter Battle Book he immediately recognised its potential value in the classroom as a popular interpretation of the Cold War.
Wanting his Year 9 pupils to explain how and why the past has been interpreted in different ways he shows the potential pitfalls...
'But why then?' Chronological context and historical interpretations
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Confronting conflicts: history teachers’ reactions to spontaneous controversial remarks
Teaching History article
Sometimes, things don’t go to plan. Current events come into the classroom, especially the history classroom. How should students’ responses to current affairs be dealt with there? How should students’ desire to voice their opinions be handled if their opinion is unpopular. What if the student is simply wrong? How...
Confronting conflicts: history teachers’ reactions to spontaneous controversial remarks
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The League of Nations
Classic Pamphlet
It is common to see the failure of the League of Nations in its inability to stand up to the crises of the inter-war years.Peter Raffo shows that the League was flawed from the start. Never more than a voluntary association of sovereign states hoping to create ‘an atmosphere capable...
The League of Nations
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Recorded Webinar: India and the Second World War
Article
Two-and-a-half million men from undivided India served the British during the Second World War. Their experiences are little remembered today, neither in the West where a Euro/US-centric memory of the war dominates, nor in South Asia, which privileges nationalist histories of independence from the British Empire. What was it like...
Recorded Webinar: India and the Second World War
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Triumphs Show 133: Little Miss Cold War
Teaching History feature
Students can find it hard to understand and remember the differing schools of interpretation that they encounter at A2. The process of studying differing historiographic claims can also seem rather dry and tedious. It is crucial that they grasp differences in interpretation if they are to succeed in their examinations,...
Triumphs Show 133: Little Miss Cold War
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‘It’s More Complex Than I Assumed’
IJHLTR Article
International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 15, Number 1 – Autumn/Winter 2017ISSN: 14472-9474
Abstract
As with many nations, the teaching of history in Australian schools is often contested. Two prevailing standpoints can be identified, the first of which, in broad terms, emphasises the acquisition of historical knowledge....
‘It’s More Complex Than I Assumed’
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Stalinism
Classic Pamphlet
Stalin's remarkable career raises quite fundamental questions for anyone interested in history. Marxists, whose philosophy should cause them to downgrade the role of ‘great men' as an explanation of great events, have problems in fitting Stalin into the materialist interpretation of history: did not this man ride rough-shod over the...
Stalinism
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WWI and the flu pandemic
Historian article
In our continuing Aspects of War series Hugh Gault reveals that the flu pandemic, which began during the First World War, presented another danger that challenged people’s lives and relationships.
Wounded in the neck on the first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, Arthur Conan Doyle’s son Kingsley...
WWI and the flu pandemic
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Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
Teaching History article
Is it a good thing to have a lot of evidence? Surely the historian would answer that yes, it is: the more evidence that can be used, the better. The problem with this approach, though, is that too much data can be overwhelming for the history student - and, in...
Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
