events shape people more than people shape events (1 Viewer)

[CromptonChanan]

this was the 2007 personality question, im doing Leon Trotsky...this is all i got

• shaped in his youth(when in jail library), by his time at university and time with other revolutionaries namely good old Lenin
• shaped by his time in the Balkans-perhaps made him a better military strategist
• shaped by his time as bolshevik, when realised war communism sucked as a policy
• shaped by the civil war and his role as Commissar of War and was forced to rethink his aversion to the use of terror
• shaped by the way stalin treated him-having his name denigrated and been forced into exile
• he was also possibley made to rethink his permanent revoluiton theory but im struggling to find a particular even which would have made him do this
• personaly i think he actually shaped events more than they shaped him; he basicly began the october revoluiton and came up with most of the policies he also sucked a political manouvering and thats why russia was stuk with stalin the fascist pig

so this is where i am, any help would be much appreciated, assignment due very soon

 

[Hanny8123]

If you think that he shaped events, more than events shaped him.. then you're allowed to challenge the statement.

"Students do not have to agree with the idea contained within the quotation"

.. just make sure you don't reject the quotation completely in your intro and then write your response without any further reference to the quotation..

"Any refutation must be in terms of the ideas in the quotation; having done this, students may then introduce a new line of thought"

"The normal "to what extent" rules apple - students must make sure at least 50-60% of the response is dealing with the quotation, even if it is to argue against it."

Hope that helps! goodluck! im struggling with Sun Yixian atm :mad1:

 

[cem]

I marked that question - although not Trotsky - and your approach seems fine to me.

It is important that you actually address the quote and refer to it throughout your response, even if you are going to argue against it.

The biggest mistake kids make in this question is that they have a set answer, based on the last couple of dot points of the syllabus e.g. good Nazi, bad Nazi for Speer, and they are determined to turn the actual question into the one they have prepared.

The best responses I read that year were ones that actually looked at what events shaped the person e.g. childhood, war, depression etc and what events the people shaped and then made a judgement about which was the bigger influence (although one or two actually argued that they were equal in influence).

Also be careful with the historiography and make it relevant to the quote and your argument rather than fit the prepared argument.