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.

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• Stalin and the USSR – A-Level / IB History

This resource is part of a new roleplay unit for teaching this topic at IB / A-Level. The teacher takes on the role of the Tsar, and the students as his ministers. Over several hours the ‘reformers’ and the ‘reactionaries’ debate the issues whilst the teacher uses the 30-slide presentation to guide the debate and inform students about what has actually been decided. It’s a great way to maintain student interest and engagement throughout a unit which might otherwise be rather abstractly academic.

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• Alexander II: An Introduction

This resource is part of a new roleplay unit for teaching this topic at IB / A-Level. The teacher takes on the role of the Tsar, and the students as his ministers. Over several hours the ‘reformers’ and the ‘reactionaries’ debate the issues whilst the teacher uses the 30-slide presentation to guide the debate and inform students about what has actually been decided. It’s a great way to maintain student interest and engagement throughout a unit which might otherwise be rather abstractly academic.

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Related Articles at ActiveHistory:

• Debate Preparation Worksheet (Tsar Alexander III Roleplay Unit)
• An Introduction to Tsar Alexander III’s Reign
• Keyword Checker: Compare and Contrast the reigns of Tsar Alexander II and Tsar Alexander III.
• Tsar Alexander II: Complete scheme of work with teacher notes
• Alexander II: An Introduction

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.

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Related Articles at ActiveHistory:

• The Red Terror – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• Research Grid – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• The Constituent Assembly – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• The 1917 Decrees and the 1918 Constitution – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• Lenin – Peace and War: From Brest-Litovsk to Civil War

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.

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Related Articles at ActiveHistory:

• The Red Terror – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• Research Grid – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• The Treaty of Brest Litovsk – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• The 1917 Decrees and the 1918 Constitution – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• Lenin: Political Oppression: From the Constituent Assembly to the Red Terror

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].

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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.

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Related Articles at ActiveHistory:

• The Red Terror – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• Research Grid – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• The Constituent Assembly – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• The Treaty of Brest Litovsk – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• Lenin’s Russia: Decision Making Adventure! (AS / A2 / IB History)

American industrialist, film producer and aviator Howard Hughes broke the U.S. transcontinental air record, flying from Burbank, California to Newark, New Jersey in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. The New York Times report of the event can be found here.

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British explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition reached the South Pole, but discovered that Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian team had beaten them by over a month. In addition to Capt. Scott, Lieut. Bowers, and Dr. Wilson, two others, Capt. Titus Oates and Petty Officer Edgar Evans made the final push to the Pole. Conditions were appalling: temperatures plummeting to minus 45 degrees F., nearly impassable terrain, blinding blizzards, or blinding sunshine. On January 16, nearing their objective, Scott and his team make a disheartening discovery – evidence that the Norwegians have beat them to the Pole. In fact, the Norwegians had arrived four weeks earlier on December 14, 1911. Psychologically numbed by the finding, the team pushes on. We pick up Scott’s journal on the following day… [more].

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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.

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Related Articles at ActiveHistory:

• The Red Terror – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• The Constituent Assembly – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• The Treaty of Brest Litovsk – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• The 1917 Decrees and the 1918 Constitution – Lenin’s Russia, Roleplay Unit
• Debate Preparation Worksheet (Tsar Alexander III Roleplay Unit)

Lenin’s Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party broke away from the main party and formed what would later become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks were born out of Russia’s Social Democrat Party. When the party split in 1903, the Bolsheviks only had one obvious leader – Lenin.

In the last years of the C19th, the Social Democrats had competed with numerous other ideologies in Russia. Included in these ideologies were the Socialist Revolutionaries and Populists. As with many movements based on pure ideologies, the Social Democrats frequently spent their time arguing about their beliefs and where they should go to further them. The intellectuals in the movement, men such as Plekhanov and Julius Martov, spent their time in debate as opposed to actually getting their beliefs out to the workers and peasants. It was as a result of this that Lenin wrote “What is to be done” in 1902. The work was smuggled into Russia and clearly expressed his views regarding what the Social Democrats should be doing as a party. Lenin attacked party members who “were content to wait while history took its predetermined course.” Rather than wait, Lenin wanted to kick-start the issue he believed in to get things done rather than wait on polemics…[more]

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A worksheet to help students plan their essay assignment. A completed teacher version is also available.

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A worksheet activity designed to get students thinking about the key historiographical debate.

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Two model essays, written by RJ Tarr to help students understand how to structure an effective essay:
1. How Fascist was Fascist Italy?
2. How Successful were Mussolini’s Domestic Policies?

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• Keyword checker: A tool for developing essay skills

A student test; there is also a completed teacher version available.

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