I have put together a new section on the website covering “The Decline and Collapse of Soviet Control over Eastern Europe”, which is the compulsory sourcework paper for IGCSE History, Summer 2010.

I plan to teach this unit to my students at the International School of Toulouse in the New Year as their final topic. Over the Christmas Holidays I will prepare full teaching materials and make them available on this site. Until then, this page is designed to provide an overview of how I plan to structure the unit.

There is no clear statement in the IGCSE syllabus regarding the date period covered by the topic. However, in my opinion the examination will cover a topic from the 1980s (e.g. Solidarity in Poland, the role of Gorbachev), especially since the main Paper 1 syllabus addresses the questions “What was the significance of ‘Solidarity’ in Poland for the decline of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe?” and “How far was Gorbachev personally responsible for the collapse of Soviet control over Eastern Europe?”.

Based on the fact that I anticipate that the Paper will focus on a topic relating to the 1980s, I will spend half of the available 12 weeks on events up to 1979, and then spend the other half of the time focusing purely on the 1980s.

If you have any thoughts on what you think the topic for the Paper might be, and / or how best the unit should be taught, why not add a reply to this blog entry below?