History 342

Devine/Dufresne

Fall 2014

Paper Assignment #1 Option A

This essay is due Sunday, September 14. You may email your essay to me as an email attachment. If you choose not to do this assignment, you may complete either Option B (due October 1) or Option C (due October 18).

If you are submitting this essay as a draft and intend to work with a writing tutor on a revision of your essay, please indicate in the subject line of your email that the document you are submitting is a draft. Your final version will be due ONE WEEK after your appointment with the writing tutor. To make an appointment, call the History Department at 818.677.3566.

All students are welcome to make an appointment with me to go over a draft before submitting a revision and the same deadline will apply.

How Long?

• Papers MUST 900 words.

Format?

• Typed, double-spaced, 12-point font with one-inch margins all around.

• Please remember to number your pages.

• Give your essay a title that indicates what the paper is about. (Something more revealing than “Essay #1” or “Stalin”) Clever titles will be duly noted.

• Base your essay entirely on the assigned course reading. You should not draw on any outside sources.

Don’t forget to put your name at the top of page 1 of the essay before you email it. (People actually forget to do this.)

How to cite?

If you are quoting directly from a source, cite the author and page number in parentheses within the body of the text, i.e. (Leffler, 47). All direct quotes MUST be in quotation marks and must be cited. Paraphrases of ideas drawn from the readings MUST also be cited.

How will I be graded?

You will be graded on:

1) focus (do you have a thesis statement and does it answer the question asked?)

2) evidence (do you back up your argument with specific information from the reading?)

3) coherence (is your argument consistent and your writing understandable throughout the piece?)

4) scope (does your paper deal with the question in appropriate depth and breadth?)

If you have any questions or are in any way unsure about what you are being asked to do, be sure to speak with me via email or in person. 

THE ASSIGNMENT

Answer ONE of the following questions:

1. Why did the relationship between the US and the USSR grow increasingly hostile between 1946 and 1948? In explaining why their relationship became so strained, cite specific factors that were generating this hostility.

2. Why was the Marshall Plan central to President Truman’s grand strategy for successfully containing Soviet influence in postwar Europe?

3. How was Stalin able to establish Soviet dominance over the nations of Eastern Europe between 1944 and 1949?

4. Stalin feared the emergence of an anti-Soviet European-American bloc. How did his imposition of the Berlin Blockade and his support for Kim Il Sung’s invasion of South Korea end up not preventing but hastening the emergence of an anti-Soviet European-American bloc?