History 341 F05

Professor K. Addison

Takehome Final

Pick one of the following questions and write a 5 page essay (double-spaced, 1” margins, 12 point font), due Monday 12 Dec. in hard copy to the history dept main office. You must also run it through the posted site for turnitin.com with the same ID and password as before. You may not use internet sources. Your textbook will be sufficient, but you may use appropriate academic (i.e., books and articles) sources to support your argument. All your references must be appropriately cited.

1. Why was Socialism an accepted part of the political spectrum in post-war Europe? Use the parliamentary structures of Spain, Italy and Sweden as a basis for discussion. What did they offer and why did they find adherents?

2. “The Revolution will not be televised,” said Gill Scott-Heron; and yet in 1989, albeit differently than he intended, it was with the fall of the Berlin wall. Why does this symbolism resonate as the great epic event of the 20^th century, and yet is so very far away from what he intended? Explore the nature of decolonization, revolution from below, and the political enfranchisement of the masses in the second half of the 20^th century as expressions of political liberation.

3. There are many organizations and efforts in place to ensure that the Holocaust of the Jewish population of Europe may never be forgotten; hence your reading of Primo Levi and the necessity of understanding of the Hitlerian regime. How then to account for the holocaust that took place in the Balkans in the 90s? What failures led to the extermination of the population in the wars in Bosnia, Serbia, etc; and how much of this can be viewed as a carry-over from the previous Diplomatic creations of political entities like Yugoslavia?