Document Analysis Paper

From the start, this paper was well written and conveyed a strong understanding of the material. The intro paragraph was clear and set an important path for the thesis. The thesis was clear and was original and thought provoking. The guidelines for an ‘A’ thesis state that it must be clearly in focus and must be an original or well-developed perspective. The thesis is kept clearly in focus throughout the paper. Each paragraph alludes to and promotes the general understanding of the thesis itself.

Throughout the paper, the logical argument is strong. Each paragraph looks at a few perspectives brought up in the topic sentence. Each paragraph allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the material without reading the sources for themselves. This is shown specifically in the paragraph that describes Catherine the Great’s reform policy before and after Pugachev’s Rebellion and how that affected the choices she made regarding foreign and domestic policies in the eighteenth century. This paragraph explains clearly to the reader what this rebellion was and how detrimental it was to Russia during Catherine’s reign. Each paragraph is organized in a logical way that provides a lot of evidence to prove the thesis.

The writing of this paper is clear, concise and the sentence structure is well formatted and constructed. “The Table of Ranks thus strived to create harmony within the nobility, which, in turn, would help to uphold a more general deference for rankings and thus establish Peter’s power as absolute and nonnegotiable.” This particular sentence not only ends the first paragraph clearly, but also refers back to the thesis and aids to prove it.  This paper does not read as a first draft and definitely sufficiently analyzes the documents “Table of Ranks”, “Statute on Provincial Administration”, “Charter to the Nobility” and “Charter to the Towns”.

The final paragraph concludes the paper extremely efficiently. It summarizes the entire analysis without being too repetitive. It also introduced new ideas that incorporated the thesis without coming off as something that needed an entire paragraph to explain. The paper as a whole was formatted properly, was very informative without being dry or repetitive, and is well deserving of an ‘A’ based off the paper’s formatting, structure and understanding of the material.