"The Fall of Communism" research paper.

I am doing a research essay on "The Fall of Communism" and I don't know where to start. She wants it to be 7 pages total. I was considering just looking up a timeline for the fall of communism and do a page on each event I suppose..

Also, how would I even create a thesis for this? I thought thesis are used more for argumentative essays because you have points to an argument but she's looking for a thesis on this research paper..

How would you format it? Do you guys have any ideas for the body & creating a thesis for it?

Thank you, help would be much appreciated.

Yes, yes, these are great questions and I have great answers. : )

There should always be a theme or thesis statement for anything you write. Really, even if you are talking to someone about something you should have one main 'message' to share.

But you won't know what that message is until you do ALL the reading and research.

That is the secret. What you are trying to do right now it a mistake. Don't plan it or try to write a thesis statement until you have been reading a lot of articles. You should start by looking at something simple like the wikipedia entry about communism. (But don't cite wikipedia in your paper, just use it to help yourself become an expert.) It was created as a way of improving capitalism, but it did not work. Both communism and capitalism have big flaws. Try using questia by getting a free one-day trial, and then when you go to cancel tomorrow morning it will give an option to extend it for 3 more days for free. Use google calendar to remind yourself to cancel before they charge your credit card! And look at professional journal articles about communism.

The idea is to do some reading until you know all about it. When you have an opinion, or some interesting observation, then and only then do you have something worth writing. That is when you should plan the approach. And don't write the thesis statement until last.

Step one: Write a paragraph about each article you read, and share its main idea with your own reader.
Step two: Go back and write and introduction for your paper.
Step three: make sure each of your paragraphs begins with a clear Paragraph Topic Sentence

: )