The popular portrayal of commissars is that they were fanatics who acts as ruthless communist enforcers and affects the morale and fighting capabilities of the Red Army badly, how close these views are to reality?

I've always heard arguments like he didn't have siege equipment or his army was tired and depleted after Cannae but they never seemed convincing.

I don't know if its been asked before but besides the Swahili Coast, did other city states or similar exist in the premodern Islamic World.

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I know that with black slaves ending up pregnant with a child by their master/white women/indentured servants being impregnated black slaves, the child would be put/sold into slavery. But did anything different happen when there was a white-passing slave within the bunch? Were those said slaves freed because they looked white? Was it problematic for a white slave owner to have a white-passing slave in his possession? As I was reading the Hemings-Jefferson controversy, I read that a political enemy of Jefferson accused Hemings' children of being fathered by Jefferson because he saw "light-skinned slaves" running around his plantation. And being accused of fathering enslaved children was a serious accusation back then, something people wanted to avoid. So I would reckon having white-passing/light-skinned slaves would bring unnecessary controversy to your plantation.

A few years ago I read an article, or maybe just a blurb, about how American military leadership (possibly British, but fairly certain it was American) proposed a lottery that would designate certain pilots for death. The idea was that the overall death rate would be reduced and each individual pilot would have a higher chance of survival. The article's take was that the idea was roundly rejected because the pilots each had a firm belief—albeit, perhaps, a mistaken one—that their likelihood of survival depended not on pure chance but rather on their individual level of skill.

I have told numerous people this story. Just last night I wanted to look it up in more detail when, to my surprise, I literally could not find any mention of it anywhere. I may have read it in a book, a newspaper, or a print magazine.

I am beginning to think I made it up. Not really, but this is very frustrating.

As the title says, my question is two fold;

A)When was the Golden Age of Ancient Egypt; when was the most politically and economically stable time in the history of ancient Egypt? Why was it so stable?

and

B) If, during the Golden Age, I found myself in a marketplace what goods could I buy? What grains and greens and meats were on offer? What about spices? Wines? Beers?

BONUS QUESTION: How would I pay for the goods I wanted to buy?

This may be a very stupid question, as I don't understand military tactics. The context I read about this is the napoleonic period, but I'm sure the concept of marching or moving in columns in more expansive than this. My first assumption was simply because they need to march down roads, but what I am reading also involved column marching over countryside. I am especially unsure considering warfare during this time consisted of lines of infantry firing on other lines of infantry, so wouldn't a vertical column be a hindrance? thanks

Typically, U.S. Presidential candidates enjoy an uptick in support or polling immediately following their party's nominating convention (even if it might be only temporary).

Obviously, conventions were contested more frequently in the not-too-distant past, and that can be a crapshoot in terms of uniting the party or attracting independents. But have there ever been uncontested conventions, that nevertheless hurt the nominee simply due to how poorly they went?

He was a sugar factory manager during Dutch colonialism in Central Java, Indonesia, about mid-19th century, so he got this huge colonial house in the middle of rice field. He seemed to be an influential man; I was told everyone in the village knew him (he was local, btw).

We used to go to this house once a year, but it's going to be sold to real estate developer (which means everything's gonna be demolished completely).

Now, since this is a quite old house, I suppose there are a number of historical tidbits which can be preserved. I'm going over to the house this weekend.

If I were a historian, what should I do/what should I gather to document this house? Besides photos and videos of course.

I'm a fan of soviet history as much as a layman with little education can be, but every time I try to understand how Stalin became the leader of Russia during a period where there seemed to be many possible options, I seem to get lost in the minute details and was hoping for a general overview. I'm especially confused at how Stalin evaded the fact that Lenin I guess did not believe he should rule the Soviet Union, so how did he overcome this? I tried to search this issue first, figuring it would have been covered, but I honestly could not find it. Thanks in advance for any clarity.

Did literate, educated people during the Rennaissance know that they were living at a time that would be considered sufficiently discontinuous with the previous period to be given its own name?

This question is largely about his early education, since I understand he was mostly too sick to attend school, yet does seem to have been able to start at a regular high school at about the right time, age-wise. So in those early years when he could not attend school, who looked after his education and what kind of education would it have been?

In the past few decades, the advancement in computing, genetics and other areas of science and technology has provided new tools that historians can take advantage of. Are there good examples of recent historical discoveries and research that have been possible thanks to new science and technologies?

I have been reading a lot of Sharpe lately and though Bernard Cornwell seems to write about historical battles well, his depiction of tactics seem suspect. Namely, in the books the french seem consistently to attack in a column vs the british line. Surely this can't have been so?

For clarity, I'm talking about the polytheistic religion that includes gods like Horus, Isis, Osiris, etc. I understand that Christianity led to the decline of the Greco-Roman paganism. Was it the same for Egypt, except with Islam? I also checked the FAQ and was unable to find any useful threads

Hello! Just a few questions about Britain in 1914 and 1940 especially after watching "The Pity of War" on Netflix:

• Was there an awareness in the British government that while they may well be able to beat Germany and Austria Hungary when combined with France and Russia that a fatal blow to their position of a world power may be struck?
• With the same question in mind for the Second World War, did they realize that their place in the world would be almost entirely take over by the United States if they fought another war with Germany?
• How would the world be different if Britain had stayed out of the First World War ? Can we presume Germany woupd have beaten France as well as Russia?Would in the long term there have been a more multiple power situation in the world today as opposed to the Cold War? Or would a big conflict between some of the powers gave happened any way?

For example, how did bakers in the Middle ages rationalise the fact that they needed to 'feed' their starter culture routinely?