P
APER 3
20TH CENTURY WORLD HISTORY - ASPECTS OF THE HISTORY OF EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Weighting: 35%
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[A] IMPERIAL RUSSIA, REVOLUTIONS, EMERGENCE OF SOVIET STATE 1853-1924 This section deals with the decline of imperial power in Tsarist Russia and the emergence of the Soviet State. It requires examination and consideration of the social, economic and political factors that inaugurated and accelerated the process of decline. Attempts at domestic reform and the extent to which these hastened or hindered decline should be studied, together with the impact of war and foreign entanglements.
Policies of Alexander III (1881-94) and Nicholas II (1895-1917): backwardness and attempts at modernization; nature of tsardom; growth of opposition movements Significance of the Russo-Japanese War; 1905 Revolution; Stolypin and the Duma; the impact of the First World War (1914-18) on Russia 1917 Revolutions: February/March Revolution; Provisional Government and Dual Power (Soviets); October/November Bolshevik Revolution; Lenin and Trotsky Lenin’s Russia (1917-24): consolidation of new Soviet state;Civil War; War Communism; NEP; terror and coercion; foreign relations
[B] EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR 1870-1923 This section deals with the longer- and shorter-term origins of the First World War, its course and consequences. The breakdown of European diplomacy pre1914 and the crises produced in international relations should be examined. It covers how the practice of war affected the military and home fronts. The section also investigates reasons for the Allied victory/Central Powers’ defeat plus a study of the economic, political and territorial effects of the post-war Paris Peace Settlement.
Relative importance of: the Alliance System; decline of the Ottoman Empire; Austria Hungary and Balkan nationalism; arms race; international and diplomatic crises Effects on civilian population; impact of war on women socially and politically Factors leading to the defeat of Germany and the other Central Powers (Austria Hungary, Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria); strategic errors; economic factors; the entry and role of the United States Post-war peace treaties and their territorial, political and economic effects on Europe: Versailles (St Germain, Trianon, Neuilly, Sèvres/Lausanne)
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[C] INTERWAR YEARS: CONFLICT AND COOPERATION 1919-39 This section deals with the period between the two World Wars and the attempts to promote international cooperation and collective security. Obstacles to cooperation, such as post-war revisionism, economic crises and challenges to democracy and political legitimacy in Italy, Germany and Spain respectively, all require examination and consideration. The policies of the right-wing regimes and the responses of democratic states are also the focus of this section.
Italy 1919-39: Mussolini’s domestic and foreign policies The impact of the Great Depression (case study of its effect on one country in Europe) Spanish Civil War: background to the outbreak of the Civil War; causes and consequences; foreign involvement; reasons for Nationalist victory Hitler’s domestic and foreign policy (1933-39) Search for collective security; appeasement in the interwar years; the failure of international diplomacy; the outbreak of war in 1939
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