April blog: revision, site update plus Khrushchev and Putin
Monday 17 April 2023
Exam time
Exams are around the corner and so just a reminder that we have a revision section on this site to help students with revision strategies:
And with the revision season in mind, we have also added three more quizzes:
Note that to access all quizzes on the site go to this page:
If you have not yet set up student access for your classes, this is a great time to do so as there are plenty of pages to help students with their revision. Not only the revision strategy tips section but also the ATL and video pages, the essay planning and the interactive quiz pages within each section of the site.
Site Update
In addition to the new quizzes mentioned above we are continuing to add activities and content to existing sections of the site. This month you will find new pages with new content and ATL under each of these sections:
Anniversaries
This month sees the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement which was so important for bringing peace between Republicans and Unionists in Northern Ireland. There is a wealth of information on this important event in the news at the moment and much discussion on the process and individuals who enabled this peace agreement to take place.
Good Friday Agreement: 25th anniversary of NI peace deal marked (BBC News)
Politicians, bereaved families and communities mark the 25th anniversary of the 1998 agreement.
This is good overview of the key events that led to the final agreement:
Good Friday Agreement (canvas-story.bbcrewind.co.uk)
The peace talks that aimed to end the Troubles.
Genocide Awareness Week
This week is Genocide Awareness Week. The aims of this week are explained below and feel very pertinent to the current global situation:
The 11th Rosenbluth Family Charitable Foundation Genocide Awareness Week, held April 17-21, 2023, is a series of lectures, exhibits and storytelling by distinguished survivors, scholars, politicians, activists, artists, humanitarians and members of law enforcement. This week-long event seeks to address how we, as a global society, confront violent actions and current and ongoing threats of genocide throughout the world, while also looking to the past for guidance and to honor those affected by genocide.
Linked to this theme – we recommend to your students this award winning book written by Philip Sands: East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
The book traces the birth story of international human rights law at the same time as being a family memoir with Sands investigating the stories of his own Jewish relations caught up in the holocaust.
Combining memoir, biography, work of history and study of international law, it could most aptly be described as a ‘biography of a generation’ (as Mark Mazower argues) or of generations — generations that still live with the trauma of genocide and try to find justice in its aftermath, generations that suffered from a lack of international law before the 1945-1946 Nuremberg Trials and generations that benefit from it today.
https://theoxfordculturereview.com/2017/01/31/review-east-west-street/
For students studying the Cold War, we also recommend reading this article, published this month in Foreign Affairs magazine:
'Blundering on the Brink' The Secret History and Unlearned Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis By Sergey Radchenko and Vladislav Zubok:
Radchenko and Zubok have had access to newly released Soviet documents which '[challenge] many assumptions about what motivated the Soviets’ massive operation in Cuba and why it failed so spectacularly.'
It seems strange that at this particular time, Russia is releasing key information and Radchenko and Zubok make this interesting comment on this situation:
The decision to release these documents, without redaction, is just one of many paradoxes of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where state archives continue to release vast troves of evidence about the Soviet past even as the regime cracks down on free inquiry and spreads historical propaganda. We were fortunate to obtain these documents when we did; the ongoing tightening of screws in Russia will likely reverse recent strides in declassification.
The article, which is able to give much more insight into Khrushchev's gamble in putting the missiles on Cuba and how this plan was executed, draws parallels with Putin and the gamble he has made in invading Ukraine: 'like Khrushchev, Putin is a gambler, and his misadventure in Ukraine suffers from the same feedback failures, excessive secrecy, and hypercentralization that plagued Khrushchev’s in Cuba'.
Essential reading!