Why is the past so important to Winston? Help!!

Hi everyone,
For my exam, I'm ought to write additional diary accounts and I thought of elaborating on why the past is so important to Winston. However, I'm kind of stuck at the moment. Can anybody please help? :)

Winston believes everything from the past is important as it provides a link to a world without Big Brother, the world he dreams of. Winston wants to find out what life was like before the Party so that he may someday duplicate it.

Well in the other part of the book, there was :"There is truth, and there is un-truth". And having truly records about history (without ideology or cenzorship) is one way of "recording the truth".

And more precicely in the book, he sometimes wants to compare the life before Big Brother and the life with Big Brother (and he must compare with the history if he wants to do that)

All of this is true but i believe that the real reason is are people happier before of after the revolution.

Those who know the past, can predict the future. If you dont know the past, you dont know how 'things used to be'... Where they better? It doesn't matter because nobody knows. 'Ignorance is Strength.'