Remember always that SAC and the related syllabi are just parts of a larger picture. You can build on this toward the habit of conceptual distinctions between types of historical experience , such as between institutional developments and intellectual trends. Then you can develop a taste for thinking about the many ways these different types of historical experience relate to one another. Along with this comes the habit of conceptual distinctions among the many different interests that motivate and shape human experience, and among the many different groups of individuals who are variously motivated and shaped, and who thus experience events so very differently. My hope would be that these habits would then help you to read primary historical documentation for pleasure as well as instruction.
Entries here touch on many different national histories.
We should take a world historical approach to all national histories. This is not altogether a new idea. But we must go further. Much that we might associate too narrowly with Russian or any other national history and therefore think of as distinctly national phenomena are also characteristics of other people's histories. Yet nation-states are distinct realities in certain regards and they do have their own histories.