Group 1:
1. Compare and contrast Communist China’s “Great Leap Forward,” with Stalin’s 1930s Collectivization and industrialization as to the means employed and the results within the five years of their termination.
2. In the late 18th Century, the American colonists threw off colonial rule with the aid of a liberal democratic ideology just as, in the 20th Century, the Vietnamese threw off colonial rule with the aid of Marxism-Leninism. What are the pros and cons of this comparison? Cite at least two features of Vietnam’s revolution to illustrate or demonstrate your answer.
Group 2:
3. What were three key events in the ‘long decade’, 1979-1991, that transformed U.S. global commitments and power relations and how were they changed?
4. How would you explain the appeal of the anti-Israel issue in uniting Arabs and Muslims practically everywhere? What about their history explains their empathy for the plight of the Palestinians besides their common religious heritage?
Group 3:
5. Why were policy makers in the U.S., by far the most powerful country in the world in 1945, so wary and fearful of war torn Soviet Russia?
6. What were the key conditions, both internal and external, that allowed Britain to undergo an industrial revolution first of all other countries?
7. Why would it be inaccurate to call the U.S. Republican Party “fascist?” Respond by drawing on your knowledge of interwar European Fascism