SMSS Sec 4E Prelim E History 2023 QP + Answer Key

This document consists of 6 printed pages. ST. MARGARET’S SCHOOL (SECONDARY) Preliminary Examinations 2023 CANDIDATE NAME CLASS REGISTER NUMBER HUMANITIES (HISTORY) Paper 2 The Making of the Contemporary World Order, 1900s—1991 Secondary 4 Express / 5 Normal (Academic) 2273/02 23 August 2023 1 hour 40 minutes Additional Materials: NIL READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST Write your name, registration number and class on all the work you hand in. Write in dark blue or black pen. Do not use staples, paper clips, glue or correction fluid on your answer scripts. Section A Answer all parts of Question 1. Section B Answer one question. At the end of the examination, fasten scoresheet, Sections A and B together. The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question. The total of the marks for this paper is 50.

2 Section A: Source-Based Case Study Question 1 is compulsory for all candidates. Study the Background Information and the sources carefully, and then answer all the questions. You may use any of the sources to help you answer the questions, in addition to those sources you are told to use. In answering the questions, you should use your knowledge of the topic to help you interpret and evaluate the sources. 1 a) Study Source A. What can you learn from this source about the lives of the Soviets under the Great Terror? Explain your answer. [5] b) Study Sources B and C. How similar are these sources as evidence about Stalin’s Soviet Union? Explain your answer. [5] c) Study Sources D and E. Does what Source E says make you surprised about what was said in Source D? Explain your answer. [6] d) Study Source F. How useful is this source as evidence about the Great Terror? Explain your answer. [6] e) Study all the sources. ‘The Great Terror was necessary for Stalin to control the Soviet Union.’ How far do these sources support this statement? Explain your answer. [8]

3 [Please turn over Stalin’s Great Terror BACKGROUND INFORMATION Read this carefully. It may help you answer some of the questions. The period of Great Terror was initiated by Stalin in mid-1934 and lasted till 1938 to preserve control over the Soviet Union. This period consisted of three major features: the show trials of leading members of the Politburo and senior army officers, purg es of a vast number of Communist Party members, and the arrest of ordinary citizens suspected to be ‘enemies of the state’. These methods were successful in eliminating many of Stalin’s opponents. It was estimated that at least 10 million people died during Stalin’s Great Terror. Subsequent leaders after Stalin such as Khruschev felt that the methods used in the Great Terror were too harsh and went on to criticise Stalin’s rule during this period. Did Stalin really need to use these methods to preserve control over the Soviet Union? Source A: An account by a survivor of the Great Terror in 1970. [Please turn over With regard to the Great Terror, we could never imagine it would end. It was essential to smile because if you did not, it meant that you were afraid or discontented. Everybody who worked for the State had to walk around wearing a cheerful expression, as though to say, ‘What’s going on is no concern of mine. I have very important work to do, and I am terribly busy. My conscience is clear and if somebody has been arrested, there must be a good reason.’ The mask was taken off only at home. Some people had adapted to the terror so well that they knew how to profit from it—there was nothing out of the ordinary about denouncing a neighbour to get his apartment or his job.

4 Source B: An extract from a book ‘Stalin’ written by Issac Deutscher, a communist based in Poland in 1961. Source C: Extract from a history reference book by a British author, 1997. Source D: From the autobiography of L. Kopelev, a member of the Communist Party published in 1981 after Stalin’s death. Kopelev was imprisoned from 1945 to 1954 for speaking out against Russian atrocities in World War II. Source E: From a speech by Khrushchev in a Politburo meeting with key communist members in 1956. [Please turn over Stalin offered his nation a positive and new programme of social organisation which, though caused suffering for many, but also created undreamt -of openings for others. For nearly three years, his iron broom had furiously swept every office in the state. Not a single administrator who had held office in 1936 could be around by the end of 1938. The purges created numberless vacancies in every field. From 1933 to 1938 about half a million administrators, technician, economists, and men of other professions gr aduated, and filled the ranks of the purged and emptied offices. These men, brought up in the Stalinist cult from childhood, threw themselves into their work with a zeal and enthusiasm undimmed by recent events of the Great Terror. Between the years 1934 to 1938, hundreds of important officials were arrested, tortured, made to confess to all sorts of crime such as plotting with Trotsky or with capitalist government to topple the Soviet state. They were also forced to appear in a seri es of ‘show trials’ at which they were certainly found guilty and sentenced to death or labour camp. The purges were successful in eliminating possible alternative leaders and terrorising the masses into obedience, but the consequences were serious: many of the best brains in the government, in the army and in the industry has disappeared. I regarded the purge trials of 1937 and 1938 as an expression of some far -sighted policy. I believed that Stalin was right in deciding on these terrible measures to discredit all forms of political opposition, once and for all. We, the communists had to be united, knowing neither indecisiveness nor doubt. Therefore, the opposition leaders had to be depicted as villains, so that the people would come to hate them. Finding myself in prison, I did not lose my conviction as in prison, I became even more consistent a Stalinist. It became apparent that many Party members who were branded during the period of the Great Terror as ‘enemies’ were actually never enemies or spies but were always honest Communists. Stalin was a distrustful man, sickly suspicious. This suspicion created i n him a general distrust, even toward eminent Party workers whom he had known for years. Everywhere and in everything he saw ‘enemies’ and ‘spies’. Possessing unlimited power, he indulged in great willfulness and choked a person morally and physically. A s ituation was created when one could not express one own’s will.

5 Source F: A Soviet photograph of factory workers voting for the arrest of the ‘enemy of the state’ in 1937. [Please turn over

6 Section B: Structured Essay Question Answer one question. 2 This question is about World War II in the Asia-Pacific. (a) Explain why Japan