In this presentation (which will take roughly 20 minutes), students are given some provocative images, an entertaining video clip, and plenty of ideas to think about and reflect upon prior to the main lesson.

This worksheet is part of the new Scheme of Work through which the entire topic of Lenin’s Russia is taught through an extended roleplay with students taking the role of different Politburo members.

Frederick II’s first act on assuming the throne of Prussia in 1740 was to take his state to war—a consequence, he later explained, of possessing a well-trained army, a full treasury and a desire to establish a reputation. For the next quarter century he confronted Europe in arms and emerged victorious, but at a price that left his kingdom shaken to its physical and moral core. As many as a quarter million Prussians died in uniform, to say nothing of civilian losses. Provinces were devastated, people scattered, the currency debased. The social contract of the Prussian state—service and loyalty in return for stability and protection—was broken…[more].

This worksheet is part of the new Scheme of Work through which the entire topic of Lenin’s Russia is taught through an extended roleplay with students taking the role of different Politburo members.

The second Moscow show trial (The Trial of the Seventeen) took place. 17 leading Communists were accused of participating in Trotsky’s plot to overthrow Stalin. 13 of them were sentenced to death. The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police. After Stalin’s death and Nikita Khrushchev’s revelations in the 1950s, the Moscow Trials are today universally acknowledged as show trials in which the verdicts were predetermined, and then publicly justified through the use of coerced confessions, obtained through torture and threats against the defendants’ families…[more].

This worksheet is part of the new Scheme of Work through which the entire topic of Lenin’s Russia is taught through an extended roleplay with students taking the role of different Politburo members.