Source A and B offers a valuable insight for a historian studying the lives of Russian people at the beginning of the 20th century.
Source A is a primary source. It is a photograph from the year of 1905 but the origins of the source are unknown. The photograph shows the Prolartiat living in a small lodging house that shows the unsatisfactory living conditions that the Russian working class is known to have lived their daily lives in. The perspective of source A is that of a socialist perspective. As this source is from a socialist party it can therefore affect the reliability of the source.
Source A would not be considered reliable because the meaning behind the photograph is somewhat biased considering the source of the photograph and the motives behind it are to some extent unclear. Although it does give a historian an insight into the living conditions of the Prolartiat there is no information to suggest that the photograph is trustworthy as it could have been a tactic of the socialist party to publish an exaggerated account of the inadequate living conditions of the working class to a large audience of people. This can therefore affect the usefulness of the source A to a historian studying the lives of the Russian People. As this Source only shows the Prolartiat in Russia it does not provide a historian with information about other working classes in Russia at the time for example the nobility or the peasants.
By examining Source A we can see that it is partially useful to a historian studying the lives of Russian People at the beginning of the 20th century because it is a primary source that was taken around the studied time period. Although this is true considering the fact that information is limited and somewhat biased this therefore affects the usefulness of the source. If more than one area of the lodging house was shown it could thus make the source more useful to a historian studying living conditions as it