Interpreting a source means working out what it says, what it shows and what it cannot show, using what is documented about who made it and when. It appears in every Russia depth study whenever a question asks what a source suggests, how reliable it is or how useful it is for an enquiry.
This lesson builds on evidence and source interpretation and uses the dated outline from building a chronology.
What do you ask of any source?
Use five prompts, in order.
- Who made it, and in what role?
- When and where, set against your chronology?
- For whom and why? Was it private, official, public, persuasive?
- What does it say? Use the words, not your memory of the topic.
- What follows, and what does it not cover? Separate a safe inference from a leap.
Prompts 1 to 3 are the documented setting. Prompts 4 and 5 are the reading. Skip the setting and you end up treating the source as a window when it is more like a photograph taken from one position.
Worked example
Invented practice source, written by our team. From the diary of a factory worker in Petrograd, written in winter 1916 to 1917 and never intended for publication: “Bread queues now start before dawn. The foreman says the factory may close for lack of fuel. My neighbour went home to the village because she cannot find flour here.”
Question: How useful is this source for studying conditions in the capital before the revolution of 1917?
Setting. A private diary, so little reason to impress an audience. Written in the capital, in a winter that falls within your chronology before March 1917. The writer is one factory worker, not an official.
What it says. Queues begin before dawn, a factory may close for lack of fuel, a neighbour left for the village because flour was hard to find.
What it shows (inference). Food and fuel were short for at least some people in this district at this time. A private diary is unlikely to exaggerate for a reader.
What it cannot show. How widespread this was. One diary cannot tell you about every district, every class or every region, and it does not say who was to blame.
Judgement. Useful for the daily experience of one worker in one place. Limited as proof of national conditions. To go further, compare it with other kinds of evidence that your course provides.
The mistake to watch for
A common slip is to generalise or to pin blame the source does not give.
Mistaken answer: “This source proves the whole country was starving because of the government.”
The source covers one writer in one district, and it does not mention the government at all.
Correction: write “this source suggests that in this district at this time…”, then name the limit. “Suggests” and “shows that one worker saw” are safer than “proves”.
Check yourself
Use this second invented source for the questions. Invented practice source, written by our team: “From a newspaper printed by a political party during the civil war: ‘Every honest citizen has welcomed the new order in the villages.’”
1. Name one thing the provenance tells you about how to read this claim.
Show answer
It is printed by a political party, a body with a purpose, during a war. The claim may reflect what the party wanted readers to believe, so it is evidence of the party’s message more than of villagers’ actual feelings.
2. Give one thing the source could still usefully show.
Show answer
It shows how the party described its policy to the public and what response it wanted to portray. That is useful for an enquiry about propaganda or messaging.
3. Is “the villagers all supported the new order” a safe inference?
Show answer
No. The source states the claim but cannot confirm it, and “all” goes beyond any single report. A safe version is: “the party claimed that villagers welcomed it.”
Where this leads next
Once you can read one source in context, move to supporting an explanation with relevant evidence. If you want a teacher to listen to your reasoning as you read, ask about online one-to-one History tuition.