H2 History Past Year Paper: 2025 A Levels Paper 1

Here is the 2025 H2 History Paper 1 for your reference. This can help you get a sense of how topics are framed and what examiners tend to emphasise. Feel free to use these questions for revision or timed practice.

Section A

You must answer Question 1.

THE END OF THE COLD WAR

Read the sources and answer the questions that follow.

Source A

The strategic plan of Andropov and Chernenko* has been and remains unchanged. This is the policy of speeding up the country’s social and economic development, towards perfecting all aspects of the life of society. The problem we face is restructuring the material and technical base of production and the perfection of social relations, above all economic ones. We will achieve a decisive turn in transforming the national economy. Through this we will quickly reach the most advanced scientific and technical positions, the highest world level in the productivity of social labour.

In foreign policy our course is clearly one of peace and progress. It is to preserve and strengthen relations with our closest friends and allies: the countries of the great socialist community. We will do everything we can to enhance the role and influence of socialism in world affairs.

As to relations with capitalist states, we will firmly follow a course of peace and peaceful coexistence. We value the successes of the relaxation of international tensions achieved in the 1970s and are ready to take part in carrying on with the process of establishing mutually beneficial cooperation between states.

*Andropov and Chernenko were the two Soviet leaders preceding Gorbachev.

From Gorbachev’s first speech as Soviet leader to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, March 1985.

Source B

I found myself at the head of a state that was already clearly in difficulties. There was plenty of everything, yet we lived much worse than developed countries and kept falling behind them more and more. The reason was clear. Society was suffocating in the grip of the command-bureaucratic economic system, doomed to serve ideology and bear the terrible burden of the arms race. All attempts at partial reform had failed. The country was losing perspective. We could not go on like that. Everything had to be changed radically.

We live in a new world. The Cold War has ended, the arms race has stopped, as has the insane militarisation which mutilated our economy, public psyche and morals. We opened ourselves to the world, gave up interference in other people’s affairs. But the old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working, and the crisis in the society became even more acute.

The August coup brought the general crisis to its ultimate limit. The most damaging thing about this crisis is the breakup of the state. And today I am worried by our people’s loss of the citizenship of a great country. The consequences may turn out to be very hard for everyone.

From Gorbachev’s farewell address to the nation, 25 December 1991.

Source C

I am cautiously optimistic. I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business. We both believe in our own political systems and we are never going to change one another. But we have two great interests in common: that we should both do everything we can to see that war never starts again, and therefore we go into the disarmament talks determined to make them succeed. Secondly, I think we both believe that these talks are the more likely to succeed if we can build up confidence and trust in one another about each other’s approach, and, therefore, we believe in cooperating on trade matters, on cultural matters, on quite a lot of contacts between politicians from both sides of the divide.

From a television interview with British Prime Minister Thatcher, December 1984.

Source D

An American cartoon titled ‘The Soviet Economy’, 1989. The mechanic’s overalls read ‘Perestroika Motors’.

Source E

In part, the Cold War came to an end because of the pressures exerted by Reagan on the Soviet system. He transformed what had been a marathon race into a sprint. In the 1980s Soviet stagnation made an aggressive strategy by the USA possible and by the end of his presidency arms control negotiations were progressing, and regionally the Soviet Union was in retreat. In Reagan’s first term he linked tough geostrategic policies with an ideological crusade against ‘the evil empire’, but his second term saw a commitment to improving East–West relations which coincided with the start of the disintegration of the Soviet system, a process speeded up by US policies.

From an American study of international diplomacy, 1994.

Source F

Andropov died in February 1984, and was succeeded by Chernenko, who rarely appeared in public but did abandon the confrontational approach of his predecessors to the West. Chernenko died in March 1985. He was succeeded by Gorbachev, a more innovative leader who recognised that the Soviet economy could not survive without serious reforms. He also hoped for better superpower relations. By 1986 and 1987, Gorbachev had determined that a more radical approach was needed in both domestic and foreign affairs. He believed that the restructuring of the Soviet economy (perestroika) could only occur if accompanied by political liberalisation (glasnost). Political and economic reforms, in turn, were possible only with better superpower relations. Gorbachev believed a less antagonistic Soviet–American relationship would permit a shift of money and resources away from the Soviet military toward the suffering economy.

From an article by a US academic, 2008.

Now answer the following questions:

(a) Compare and contrast the evidence in Sources A and B about Gorbachev’s views on the situation in the Soviet Union.  [10]

(b) How far do Sources A to F support the assertion that Soviet economic problems were the reason for the end of the Cold War?  [30]

Section B

You must answer two questions from this section.

EITHER

2 How important was the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in creating the difficulties faced by the global economy in the 1970s and 1980s?  [30]

OR

3 To what extent was the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) responsible for the Japanese economic miracle that occurred between 1947 and 1970?  [30]

AND EITHER

4 How important was the Suez crisis in the development of the Arab–Israeli conflict to 1979?  [30]

OR

5 To what extent was the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Congo a success?  [30]