Notes:
The Battle of Okinawa was the last major battle of World War II, and it one of the bloodiest battle fought. The Navy’s Fifth Fleet and more than 180,000 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps troops descended on the Pacific island of Okinawa for a final push towards Japan on April 1, 1945.

Notes:
Italy was the first Axis power which give up in World War II. It surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943, six weeks after leaders of the Italian Fascist Party deposed Benito Mussolini who was Fascist leader and Italian dictator.

Notes:
In 1774, Louis XVI of the Bourbon family of kings ascended the throne of France. Bourbon dynasty had been ruling France for a while. Louis XVI was a very powerful Bourbon King. So, statement 1 is incorrect. The term Old Regime is usually used to describe the society and institutions of France before 1789.The members of the first two estates, that is, the clergy and the nobility, enjoyed certain privileges by birth. Rest of the population, which was more than 90% of the total, belonged to the third estate, which included big businessmen, merchants, court officials, lawyers, peasants, artists, landless labourers, servants etc. So, statement 2 is correct. The Church extracted its share of taxes called tithe from the peasants, and all the members of the third estate had to pay taxes to the state. These included a direct tax, called taille, and a number of indirect taxes which were levied on articles of everyday consumption like salt or tobacco. So, statement 3 is correct.

Notes:
The Russian Social Democratic Workers Party was founded in 1898 by socialists who respected Marx’s ideas.Some Russian socialists felt that the Russian peasant custom of dividing land periodically made them natural socialists. So peasants, not workers, would be the main force of the revolution, and Russia could become socialist more quickly than other countries. They formed the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1900. This party struggled for peasants’ rights and demanded that land belonging to nobles be transferred to peasants. The Social Democratic Workers Party disagreed with the Socialist Revolutionary Party about peasants. Lenin, a leader of the Social Democratic Workers Party, felt that peasants were not one united group. The Social Democratic Workers Party was also divided over the strategy of organisation. Vladimir Lenin (who led the Bolshevik group) thought that in a repressive society like Tsarist Russia the party should be disciplined and should control the number and quality of its members. So, statement 1 is incorrect. Others (Mensheviks) thought that the party should be open to all (as in Germany). Thus, statement 2 is incorrect.

Notes:
In March 1918, despite opposition by their political allies, the Bolsheviks made peace with Germany at Brest Litovsk. However, this peace treaty was very humiliating as Germany annexed almost one third of the total European territories of Soviet Russia in this treaty. Lenin agreed to this treaty so that the Bolshevik party could focus on internal consolidation and winning the civil war. So, statement 1 is correct. Soviet Russia soon became a one-party state as all the parties, other than the Bolshevik Party, were banned. Trade unions were kept under strict party control. The secret police (called the Cheka first, and later OGPU and NKVD) punished those who criticised the Bolsheviks. So, the statement 2 is correct.

Notes:
Proletarianisation literally means to become impoverished to the level of working classes.The economic crisis in the aftermath of the ‘Great Depression’ created deep anxieties in people. The middle classes, especially salaried employees and pensioners, saw their savings diminish when the currency lost its value. Small businessmen, the self-employed and retailers suffered as their businesses got ruined. These sections of society were filled with the fear of proletarianisation, an anxiety of being reduced to the ranks of the working class, or worse still, the unemployed. Only organised workers could manage to keep their heads above water, but unemployment weakened their bargaining power. So, option ‘c’ is the correct answer.

Notes:
The Great Depression, which had its origin in USA, affected the whole world. It was basically a deep economic recession that chipped away a significant portion of GDP of the European states and USA. But, in USA, some of the worst effects of the economic recession began to be remedied after 1933. This happened during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was first elected in 1932 and won three subsequent elections. The programme of reform which he started is known as the ‘New Deal’. A large program of welfare was initiated which alleviated the misery of many sections of the population. The New Deal was inspired from the Keynesian economic model, in which expansionary fiscal and monetary policies were used to spur the demand in the economy. This increased demand could boost production and employment. So, both the statements are correct.

Notes:
E. M. Forster (1879-1971), in his novel A Passage to India (1924) describes the experience of living among the Indian masses. James Joyce (1882-1941), in his highly published experimental work Ulysses (1922) unfolded the thinnest possible layers of the human mind within a circle of events lasting twenty four hours. While sharply criticizing the modern society, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) in his seminal work ‘Resurrection’ (1899) has hinted at the advent of a new system and the birth of a new human order.

Notes:
The modernist movement may be said to have started with impressionism. Its birth has been pointed as the year 1872, when Claude Monet, a Parisian painter, exhibited a painting, entitled ‘Impression: Sunrise’. It was painted with off colours squeezed straight out of the tubes and directly applied on the canvas without any preliminary drawing or mixing them on the palette. To traditional painters it looked ‘unfinished’. A bewildered journalist contemptuously referred to it as an ‘impressionist’ painting. Vincent van Gogh and Gauguin were post-impressionist painters. Georges Seurat was a neo-impressionist painter. So, option a is the correct answer.

Notes:
Italy is considered the birth place of the Renaissance for several reasons. Some of them were:

• Italy was the seat of ancient civilization and the Latin language.
• The rich city states in Italy like Florence and Venice patronized art and literature. For example, the Medici family of Florence had patronized many scholars.
• Dante’s work of art Divine Comedy triggered the Renaissance and made it spread to other parts of Europe and reach its peak in the sixteenth century.