Communism in Crisis 1976-89
CONTENTS
Contents
Advice on tackling Paper 1
Acknowledgements and Thanks
Prescribed Subject 3 Syllabus details
CHINA 1976-89
Background
The struggle for power following the death of Mao Zedong, Hua Guofeng,
the re-emergence of Deng Xiaoping and the defeat of the Gang of Four
China under Deng Xiaoping: economic policies and the Four
Modernizations
China under Deng Xiaoping: political changes, and their limits,
culminating in Tiananmen Square (1989)
Key Events: China 1976-89
The USSR 1976-89
Background
Domestic problems of the Brezhnev era: economic and political stagnation
Andropov and Chernenko
Gorbachev and his aims/policies (glasnost and perestroika) and the
consequences for the Soviet state
Background to Soviet foreign policy
Soviet foreign policy under Brezhnev – including the invasion of
Afghanistan
Soviet foreign policy under Gorbachev and the transformation of EastWest relations
Key Events: The USSR 1976-89
The Revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe
Consequences of Gorbachev’s policies for Eastern European reform
movements: Poland – the role of Solidarity; Czechoslovakia – the Velvet
Revolution; fall of the Berlin Wall
Bibliography
Practice source questions on Deng Xiaoping’s economic policies
Practice source questions on Soviet foreign policy under Brezhnev
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2-4
4
5
6-27
6-11
11-14
15-19
21-26
27
28-64
28-32
33-40
40
40-50
50-52
52-59
60-63
64
65-75
65-75
76
77-83
84-89
Communism in Crisis 1976-89
Advice on tackling Paper 1 (Route 2 – 20th Century World History)
What is Paper 1?
• Paper 1 is a source-based paper set on prescribed subjects drawn from the 20th century
world history topics.
• Your school will enter you for one of the three Prescribed Subjects listed below.
• You must answer all four questions from the section; they are worth a total of 25 marks.
• The examination lasts one hour and makes up 20% of the assessment for Higher Level
History and 30% of the assessment for Standard Level.
What are the Prescribed Subjects?
They are:
Prescribed subject 1: Peacemaking, peacekeeping-international relations 1918-36
Prescribed Subject 2: The Arab-Israeli Conflict 1945-79
Prescribed Subject 3: Communism in Crisis 1976-89
Is there any information on particular topic areas within each prescribed subject that the
IBO will set the source questions on?
Yes. The IBO have included in the History Syllabus a list of topic areas on which the source
questions will be based. The questions set will not cover all of these areas in each year’s
examinations and, in many cases, will be largely based on just one of them. I have listed the
topic areas on page 5 of this guide.
What types of source will be included on the examination paper?
• They will be either primary (sources produced at the time of an event) or a mixture of
primary and secondary (sources produced after the event by someone who was not there at
the time the event occurred).
• They may consist of written sources (e.g. letters, the text of a speech, extracts from books),
visual sources (e.g. paintings, cartoons, photos), diagrams and statistical information.
• The number of sources set for each prescribed subject will be five.
What type of questions will be set?
• Question 1 asks you to explain in your own words the message of one of the sources or
selected parts of it, e.g. ‘According to Source A, why did...?’ Question 1 will be subdivided
into a part (a) and a part (b). Question 1 is worth 5 marks, and so, the paper will indicate that
one part is worth 2 marks and the other 3.
• Question 2 asks you to compare and contrast the views expressed by two sources, e.g.
‘Compare and contrast the views expressed in Source A and Source C about the reasons
why...’ It is worth 6 marks.
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Communism in Crisis 1976-89
• Question 3 asks you to assess the value and limitations of two sources with reference to the
sources’ origins and purpose, e.g. ‘With reference to their origins and purpose assess the
value and limitations of Sources B and D to an historian studying the fall of the Gang of
Four.’ It is worth 6 marks.
• Question 4 asks you to use your own knowledge and the sources to construct an argument
in answer to a question about the prescribed subject, e.g. ‘Using the sources and your own
knowledge, analyse the results of Gorbachev’s reforms.’ It is worth 8 marks.
Advice on answering questions
• Write in complete sentences.
• Use the mark allocation for each question to determine how long you spend on each
question. In particular, give yourself enough time to do justice to Question 4 as it is worth 8
marks out of the total of 25. A rough guide might be to spend about 10 minutes on Question 1
(worth 5 marks), about 15 minutes on each of Questions 2 and 3 (worth 6 marks each) and
about 20 minutes on Question 4.
• Remember to judge each individual source on its merits or weaknesses; avoid
generalisations like ‘Source A is a secondary source and so is unreliable because the author
will not know exactly what happened’. Both primary and secondary sources can be reliable
or unreliable. Also just because a source is biased does not mean it is of no use to an historian;
e.g. a Chinese Communist Party poster produced in the 1970s about its economic plans might
not provide the historian with accurate information about the plans’ achievements but it
might tell us something very useful about the sort of image that the Chinese Communist
Party wanted to project to the Chinese public and the world.
• In answering the comprehension type of question (Question 1), you need to remember to
use just the source, not your own knowledge. In this type of question the examiners are
testing your understanding of the source. It is better if you keep direct quotations from the
passage brief and avoid quoting back whole chunks of the passage at the examiner. If you
need to make longer references to the text, paraphrase (put it in your own words). In general,
on Question 1, the IBO mark scheme awards one mark for each valid point made; ensure that
your explanation is clear and reasonably full (whilst not overrunning in terms of time).
• In comparison questions (Question 2), where you are asked to ‘compare and contrast’ two
sources, don’t forget to indicate both points of similarity and points of difference between the
sources.
• In answering questions which ask you to evaluate the limitations and usefulness of
particular sources (Question 3), keep focused on the sources’ origins - who produced them,
when were they produced etc - and purpose - why and for whom were they produced - and
ensure that you identify both the sources’ value and limitations, otherwise you will be unable
to score more than just over half marks for your answer. So, what is meant by ‘value’ and
‘limitations’? – ‘value’ means what the sources are useful for, linked to their origin and
purpose; ‘limitation’ means what aspects of the issue referred to in the question the sources
do not tell us about, and, the extent to which the sources may not be reliable or accurate,
linked to their origin and purpose.
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