This is an essay question I have been struggling with, largely due to an unhelpful reading list.

I understand Stalin’s societal reforms, and the “class war” waged ultimately had an impact upon the Soviet military, but how exactly did this effect the way the Soviets went to war?

Additionally, if anyone has any literature recommendations on the culling of the Red Army in 38’ (I believe) and the subsequent failures of the Soviets early in WW2 that would be excellent.

Any advice or decent articles sent my way would be much appreciated! All the readings I’ve come across are long-winded books, full of noise without any real useful points or deductions.

It seems like a nice, neat and simple theory. That the easy availability of paper could explain why Egypt, Rome, Ancient China and others grew in significance and influence.

The Egyptians had access to reeds that easily turned into papyrus. Allowing them to produce enormous amounts of the stuff very cheaply. These were then sold to Rome, leading to widespread literacy and libraries there. Ensuring that Latin would dominate European books and scrolls for centuries. When Rome fell, paper became an expensive item being made mostly from animal skins. A single book, during the Dark Ages, costed hundreds of thousands of euros in today's money. This could explain why Europe lagged so badly during that period.

It's a compelling story, but is there any real truth to this? Was writing really so expensive in the Middle Ages?

The only English male name I can think of that ends with A is Joshua (there may be more, but that's all I could come up with). Plenty of female names end with A. Is it because of how words are gendered in Romance languages? Feminine words in Spanish, for instance, typically end with A.

I often see as a reply on here that one should not view history as a linear progression from stones to sharper stones, communities to settlements, snake oil to modern medicine, and so on.

But I don’t understand why is this meta-narrative not true, or not worth considering? Isn’t it true that for all peoples, their lives are better on average than they were a thousand years ago? That the 5th century is demonstrably way worse than the 15th century, on average, for all humans? That the “stock” of humanity (like in the stock market) is always increasing in value, and even if it dips here and there from plagues or wars, the graph always shows a performance that only keeps getting better as time goes on?

Chopsticks were developed in China and made their way around to nearly every Asian nation, changing their culinary culture, except India. Why?

There is plenty of contact in Himalayan and other regions and we know there was trade between these regions.

This story seems completely made up, but still, someone had to made that up. How did this story became so famous? And if it's true, who told that? How do we know of it?

Because i was discussing a lot with my roommate about Gorbachev and his liberal views, was he actually the reason why Communism fell all around the world?

During the Napoleonic War when Napoleon invaded the Dutch Republic and established the Batavian Republic, the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic fled to England and requested the British government to annex all the Dutch colonies. The British did that and after the Napoleonic War ended, they returned all the colonies to the Dutch except the Cape Colony. Why did they choose the Cape Colony which was merely a settler colony where European ships take a break in their journey towards the Orient rather than the more Lucrative Spice Islands in the Dutch East Indies?

After Constantine converted to Christianity and made it the official religion of the Roman Empire, where there sects of people who still continued to worship the Roman Pantheon? In secret or otherwise?

When did polytheism "officially die out" in Rome specifically (as opposed to the whole empire)?

Obviously, I'm not expecting an exact date and the name of the last person or anything, but just a general timeline of polytheism in Rome.

I have a copy of the holy bible from around 1884, and it has a map of "Prevailing Religions of the World". A note on this map reads "A corrupt form of Christianity prevails in Abyssinia". Any help on what this may be describing would be appreciated, as I can't seem to find any information on it.

I will add that this copy of the bible is rather biased/racist in places, also mentioning "Nondescript Heathens" on this same map.

Apologies if this is the wrong place to be asking this.

It seems that there is a pattern of Native American names being translated into English. Some famous examples would be Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Cornplanter, etc. On the other hand, names from other cultures are almost never literally translated into English, but transliterated (if written in a different alphabet). Why don't we refer to Hirohito as "Abundant Benevolence?" What is the history behind this tendency?

With other ancient language i can kind of see because they resemble letters but shapes? Amimals? Etc how did they know how to read them

Generally, it seems like the Catholic Church sees itself as the bastion of absolute, unchanging morality. In that case why does it seem like they now accept banking, whereas in the Middle Ages they banned banking and only let Jews do it? Was there a church ruling decreeing that banking was OK for Catholics?

Although maybe I understand the damage that normal shelling could do, it still doesn’t explain why a mixture of the shells couldn’t be used? Also, the use of shells like mustard gas shells show that they were fully capable of putting this into effect

I was reading about General Stanisław Maczek who was the commanding officer of the Polish 1st armoured division during World War 2 and later an army group. He and his unit were a very effective and successful military unit for the allies and would become almost local heroes in the regions they liberated such as in the Netherlands.

However at the end of the war he was stripped of his Polish citizenship by the communist Polish government so he had to live in effective exile in Britain. Despite being ostensibly a war hero and staunch ally the British government denied him a pension forcing him to be a bar tender and general labourer for decades to make ends meet.

The Dutch would eventually give him a full general's pension but I am interested to know if anyone has any insight for the British government's decision to not support the general.