Assignment: Answer in your own words as a 18 year old African American male online sophomore. Do not use any AI words or phrases
Final Assignment: The Making of a Modern Crisis
For this assignment, you will select one current trending topic from the news and investigate its historical roots. Your task is to explain "how we got here" by creating a five-slide PowerPoint presentation.
Key Requirements:
Slide Count: AT LEAST five slides.
Content: Each slide MUST contain at least 30 words of explanatory text.
Visuals: Each slide SHOULD include at least one relevant image to support your analysis, but it is not required.
Notes: You MUST attach at least ONE page of notes, showing how you would theoretically present each slide.
Topic: Choose a significant, contemporary issue (e.g., the microchip shortage, AI regulation, climate policy shifts, a specific geopolitical conflict, the global dismantling of Women's Rights, the rise of scamming, the introduction of gambling, large corporations not paying taxes, etc) and trace the historical events, processes, and decisions that led to its current state.
The goal is to demonstrate how past developments in politics, economics, technology, and society have shaped the modern world we see in today's headlines. Need Assignment Help?
Below is a Sample of the text I would insert for a PowerPoint discussing and explaining the Ukraine/Russia Conflict. You cannot copy and paste this example and give it back to me. You have to do something else; you cannot choose this topic unless you are going to approach it from a completely different angle. And if you want to write about this war, I need you to verify your angle on this conflict with me first.
Slide 1: Title Slide - The Russia-Ukraine War: A Crisis Forged in the 20th Century
Student Name - Ballantyne The Baddie
Making of the Modern World
Date - DECEMBER WHENEVER WHOEVER WHATEVER 2025
(Image: A historical map of the Soviet Union with the Ukrainian SSR highlighted, juxtaposed with a modern map of Ukraine.)
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked the world, but its roots are not found in the 21st century alone. This conflict is a direct product of 20th-century history, from the artificial boundaries drawn by Soviet leaders to the tumultuous collapse of the USSR. To understand the deep-seated motivations and historical grievances driving this war, we must examine the legacy of Soviet nationalism, the trauma of the Soviet collapse, and the subsequent geopolitical vacuum that defined the post-Cold War era for Russia.
Slide 2: The Soviet Foundation: Nationalities Policy and the "Imperial Legacy"
(Image: A photograph of Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in 1945.)
The modern Ukrainian state was fundamentally shaped within the Soviet Union. While creating the USSR, Bolshevik leaders like Lenin and Stalin drew internal borders that grouped large Russian populations within Ukraine, notably in Crimea and the Donbas. Furthermore, Soviet policies vacillated between promoting Ukrainian culture and brutally suppressing it, as seen in the Holodomor famine. This created a complex national identity and left behind a contested map, embedding ethnic and political fault lines that would re-emerge after the Soviet empire's dissolution.
Slide 3: The Collapse of the USSR: The "Greatest Geopolitical Catastrophe"
(Image: A crowd celebrating in front of a toppled statue of Lenin, or the signing of the Belavezha Accords in 1991.)
The sudden and unexpected dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the pivotal event that made this conflict possible. Ukraine declared independence, becoming a sovereign nation for the first time in modern history. For Russian leadership, however, especially Vladimir Putin, this collapse was viewed as the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." It represented a humiliating loss of empire, territory, and global prestige. The birth of an independent Ukraine was seen not as a triumph of self-determination, but as an amputation of a core part of historical Russia.
Slide 4: The Post-Cold War Divide: NATO Expansion and Russian Resentment
(Image: A map showing the eastward expansion of NATO from 1999 to the 2000s, with countries highlighted in a different color.)
The 1990s and early 2000s saw the West consolidate its victory in the Cold War, a process Russia perceived as aggressive. The eastward expansion of NATO, incorporating former Warsaw Pact allies and even ex-Soviet states like Estonia and Latvia, was viewed in Moscow as a betrayal of informal promises and an encroachment on its sphere of influence. This created a narrative of Western containment and humiliation. The discussion of Ukraine potentially joining NATO crossed a red line for the Kremlin, framing the conflict as a defensive action against a hostile West.
Slide 5: Conclusion: The Unresolved Legacy of the 20th Century
(Image: A modern image of a Ukrainian soldier, with a black and white photo of a Soviet soldier in the background.)
In conclusion, the Russia-Ukraine war is not a spontaneous dispute but the violent culmination of 20th-century history. The Soviet Union's arbitrary borders, the traumatic nature of its collapse, and the subsequent post-Cold War power struggles created a tinderbox. Putin's invasion is an attempt to redraw the map and resolve what he sees as the historical mistake of 1991. This conflict demonstrates with tragic clarity that the end of the Cold War did not resolve its underlying tensions, and the ghosts of the 20th century continue to shape modern warfare and geopolitics.