Urbicide: (Re-)conceptualising Urban Annihilation through History

In September 1941, the German Wehrmacht put the Soviet city of Leningrad under siege. It would not be lifted for almost 900 days.

By that time, the toll on the city and its inhabitants had become immense. Shortly before the siege began, around 400,000 people, mostly children, were hurriedly evacuated. Those left behind were subjected to daily bombardment, starvation, and chronic fuel shortages.

By the end of the siege, in January 1944, some 800,000 people had died of starvation and up to 200,000 more had been killed by military attacks or in fighting to defend the city.

Russian Responses to the Great War: Reconsidering Textbook Narratives

In July 1914, Russia entered the First World War. It was a momentous decision, which would ultimately seal the fate of the Tsarist government and shape the revolutionary and Soviet regimes that succeeded it.

But how did the people of the Russian Empire respond?

This post provides an explanation and outline to teaching the question of the response of Russians (and non-ethnic “Russians” and non-Russians) to the outbreak of war. Lesson resources can be found in the link here.

The Spanish Civil War: A Connecting Story

This scheme of work has recently been updated and can be found in full on the SHP's Curriculum PATHS project page here: https://padlet.com/cpaths/shp-curriculum-paths-sharing-hub-67fifmslrhyo1e0x

Something a little bit different.

A few years ago, I set about planning and writing a scheme of work on the Spanish Civil War. To the best of my knowledge (then and now), this is not something that's typically taught in British schools. So why Spain?

For the purposes of Soviet foreign policy, the Spanish Civil War is hugely significant. Stalin had the distinction of being the only European leader who militarily backed the Spanish Republic (although his motives have been, quite rightly, doubted by all commentators since). Spain, like Russia, was also exceptional in being one of the only European countries to experience a full-blown social revolution in the first half of the twentieth century. And like Russia, this coincided with a devastating civil war.

More widely, the story of Spain during its civil war, 1936-1939, has the potential to connect to the wider story of European (and world) history between the end of the first, and the start of the second, world war.