Deck 9: Brave New World: the Rise and Fall of Communism

Question 1

All of the following were characteristic of Soviet society in the 1960s and 1970s except which?

A)Obvious military weakness
B)Economic stagnation
C)The low quality of most consumer goods

Answer 1

Obvious military weakness

Question 2

The statement "internal reform, external loyalty" refers to which of the following?

A)The promise of Josip Broz Tito to remain loyal to the Soviet Union in exchange for domestic freedom
B)The authorization for Georgy Malenkov to pursue domestic reforms so long as he remained loyal to the legacy of Joseph Stalin
C)The agreement between Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka and Nikita Khrushchev, which authorized Poland to allow more religious freedom but remain in the Warsaw Pact

Answer 2

The agreement between Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka and Nikita Khrushchev, which authorized Poland to allow more religious freedom but remain in the Warsaw Pact

Question 3

The failure of Soviet communism was most apparent in which of the following?

A)A shortage of consumer goods and housing
B)A failure of its space program
C)A breakaway of the Ukraine in 1947

Answer 3

A shortage of consumer goods and housing

Question 4

Where was Charter 77 formed in 1977 to protest Communist civil rights violations?

A)Czechoslovakia
B)East Germany
C)Hungary

Question 5

How are the newspapers Pravda and Izvestiya best described?

A)They provided Soviet citizens with honest criticisms of their rulers despite state censorship.
B)They were state controlled and presented only the approved news.
C)They were important instruments for reforming the Russian educational system.

Question 6

Which of the following Cold War symbol appeared in 1961?

A)Chernobyl nuclear disaster
B)Berlin Wall
C)"Prague Spring"

Question 7

The "double shift" refers to which of the following patterns of work in the Soviet Union?

A)The necessity for factory workers to work longer hours to fulfill the quotas of the five-year plans.
B)Women in communist societies working at their jobs and then again in their homes as housewives and mothers.
C)The more relaxed policy toward child labor implemented after Stalin's death when Nikita Khrushchev replaced Georgy Malenkov.

Question 8

In 1956, where did popular discontent against the Soviet system erupt?

A)Czechoslovakia and East Germany
B)Rumania and Bulgaria
C)Hungary and Poland

Question 9

Which country revolted against its hardline Communist rulers in 1968?

A)Czechoslovakia
B)East Germany
C)Hungary

Question 10

An example of the failures of Soviet technology was illustrated by the nuclear accident at which location?

A)Chechnya
B)Minsk
C)Chernobyl

Question 11

The Soviet economy was characterized by which of the following approaches?

A)Laissez-faire collectivism
B)Centralized planning
C)Socialist individualism

Question 12

Where was the first indication of unrest in the Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe?

A)In East Germany in 1953
B)In Hungary in 1952
C)In Poland in 1956

Question 13

In order to restore the economy of the Soviet Union after World War II, Stalin resorted to all of the following except which?

A)A new version of Lenin's New Economic Policy
B)Goods and materials were removed from occupied Germany
C)Raw materials were extorted from the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe

Question 14

In the Soviet Union, "on the left" referred to which of the following?

A)The correct political and philosophical ideology
B)Left-handedness as a crime
C)The black market

Question 15

Which Soviet author won the Nobel Prize for Literature but was not allowed to accept it?

A)Ilya Ehrenburg
B)Boris Pasternak
C)Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Question 16

Which of the following was an outcome of the Prague Spring?

A)Alexander Dubcek was elected first secretary of the Communist Party.
B)The Brezhnev Doctrine failed to work.
C)Gustav Husak rallied reformers to put a human face on communism.

Question 17

Which literary work portrayed the horrors of Russia's forced labor camps?

A)Ilya Ehrenburg's The Thaw
B)Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
C)Mikhail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don

Question 18

In his 1955 visit to Yugoslavia, Nikita Khrushchev admitted which of the following principles?

A)Resistance to Soviet influence in the socialist world would not be tolerated.
B)Soviet socialism may not be the route all socialist states take.
C)Other socialist countries might align against the Soviet Union.

Question 19

Under Soviet control, most Eastern European countries experienced which of the following?

A)Made the transition from peasant societies to urban industrialized economies
B)Adopted capitalism
C)Had constant shortages of basic consumer goods

Question 20

It is estimated that what percentage of the Soviet economy operated outside the legal system?

A)10 percent
B)20 percent
C)33 percent

Question 21

Which of the following was an example of glasnost?

A)Khrushchev's criticism of Stalin
B)The publication of The Gulag Archipelago in the Soviet Union
C)The reporting of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Pravda

Question 22

The "new course" promised by Stalin's successors had which of the following goals?

A)Incorporate West Germany into the German Democratic Republic.
B)Reduce military expenditures and improve the standard of living.
C)Abandon communism and adopt capitalism.

Question 23

Who was the first president of the Russian Republic?

A)Mikhail Gorbachev
B)Boris Yeltsin
C)Vladimir Putin

Question 24

Who was Stalin's immediate successor?

A)Nikita Khrushchev
B)Georgy Malenkov
C)Leonid Brezhnev

Question 25

Since becoming president of Russia in 1999, Vladimir Putin has accomplished all of the following except which?

A)Centralized power in the hands of the government
B)Introduced market reforms and strengthened capitalism
C)Attacked and annexed territory in former Soviet satellites in Ukraine

Question 26

One of the reforms instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev was to do which of the following?

A)Legalize the formation of opposition political parties
B)Encourage the secession of Lithuania from the Soviet Union.
C)Restore the Soviet alliance with the People's Republic of China.

Question 27

Why was Soviet central planning so inefficient?

Question 28

Which Czech playwright helped remove the communist government in 1989?

A)Imre Nagy
B)Vaclav Havel
C)Matyas Rakosi

Question 29

The most far-reaching economic reforms in Eastern Europe satellite states during the 1970s and 1980s were in which states?

A)Poland
B)Hungary
C)Czechoslovakia

Question 30

During the last half of the 1990s, Russia was engaged in a brutal war in which former Soviet republic?

A)Armenia
B)Azerbaijan
C)Chechnya

Question 31

What was the independent labor movement that emerged in Poland in the early 1980s called?

A)Stasi
B)Truth and reconciliation
C)Solidarity

Question 32

What was Khrushchev's opinion of Stalin?

Question 33

How is Boris Yeltsin best described?

A)He was committed to introducing a free market economy to Russia.
B)He believed that a socialist but non-Communist system would work best for Russia.
C)He attempted to reconquer the Ukraine but failed.

Question 34

Why did Stalin's economic policies focus so much on military production?

Question 35

Gorbachev's reforms and initiatives included all except which of the following?

A)Urging the breakup of the Soviet Union and the creation of a more federal political structure
B)The open reporting of government and other official corruption
C)Legalizing the formation of other political parties

Question 36

Who was the head of the Polish labor movement in the early 1980s?

A)Wojciech Jaruzelski
B)Edward Gierek
C)Lech Walesa

Question 37

Why was Khrushchev replaced in 1964?

Question 38

Why did Khrushchev's reforms make so many powerful enemies?

Question 39

How did Brezhnev reverse or modify Khrushchev's policies?

Question 40

Putin attempted to extend Russian power by strengthening ties with which adversaries of the United States?

A)Iran, Syria, and Venezuela
B)China, Korea, and Vietnam
C)Iran, Germany, and Iraq

Question 41

What is Putin's main foreign policy goal?

Question 42

What role did Russia play in the reformed Soviet Union after 1988?

Question 43

What was the Prague Spring, and what effect did it have within Czechoslovakia and in the region in general? How did the Soviet regime respond?

Question 44

What role did an economic depression play in the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Question 45

What does "communism with a capitalist facelift" refer to?

Question 46

What was the Solidarity movement?

Question 47

What are the similarities in the vision of contemporary Russia offered by Alexievich and Sorokin?

Question 48

What was Glasnost?

Question 49

What role did education serve in communist Eastern Europe?

Question 50

How did obsolete technology contribute to the Soviet Union's problems by the 1970s?

Question 51

What was "shock therapy"?

Question 52

Nikita Khrushchev pursued which of the following policies?

A)Began giving free bread to the Soviet Union's poorest residents
B)Pursued a "virgin lands" agricultural policy in Soviet Kazakhstan
C)Allowed the publication of subversive literature without censorship

Question 53

What were the short-term and long-term effects of Khrushchev's liberalization policies?

Question 54

What indications of trouble were apparent in the Stalinist economy? How did these indications translate into struggles in daily life in the Soviet Union?

Question 55

At the Twentieth National Congress of the Communist Party in 1956, Khrushchev made a speech intended to do which of the following?

A)He criticized major shortcomings of Joseph Stalin.
B)He embraced the New Economic Policy of Vladimir Lenin.
C)He rehabilitated Stalin after Malenkov's attack on the former Communist leader.

Question 56

Why was Solzhenitsyn's work so controversial?

Question 57

What was the effect of the Brezhnev Doctrine?

Question 58

Why was Honecker's regime so reviled in East Germany?

Question 59

How were traditional societies in Eastern Europe affected by communist rule?

Question 60

What was Perestroika?

Question 61

Why did Yeltsin implement "shock therapy"? To what extent was it successful and to what extent did it cause his downfall?

Question 62

How did reforms within the Soviet Union affect nationalist uprisings across the Soviet Empire?

Question 63

In the Soviet Union prior to the era of Mikhail Gorbachev, cultural freedom, such as it was, was greatest under which leader?

A)Stalin
B)Khrushchev
C)Brezhnev

Question 64

Why was the Berlin Wall built? Was it more motivated by internal East German concerns or wider Cold War issues?

Question 65

Describe the process by which the Soviet Union was dismantled from 1988 to 1991.

Question 66

Why is disarray and disillusionment such a common theme in contemporary Russian literature?

Question 67

Describe the differences between Solzhenitsyn's, Pasternak's, and Ehrenburg's criticism of the Soviet system on the one hand and Trifonov's and Iskander's on the other.

Question 68

Khrushchev fell from power in 1964 for all of the following reasons except for which?

A)His policy of abolishing dozens of government ministries, which alienated the Soviet official and bureaucratic classes
B)His criticism of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party
C)His foreign policy failures, such as in the Cuban Missile Crisis

Question 69

The 1977, Soviet state constitution stated that the Soviet Union had changed in what way?

A)It had become a proletarian dictatorship.
B)It was no longer a proletarian dictatorship.
C)It was now a multicultural and multireligious society.

Question 70

Why did Putin involve Russia in so many conflicts with former Soviet republics and satellite states? What has been the outcome of his aggressive foreign policy?

Question 71

Which was a more substantial reform, perestroika or glasnost? Why?

Question 72

In comparison to Khrushchev, how is Leonid Brezhnev best described?

A)He was more cautious and avoided any changes that could lead to instability.
B)He was more critical of Joseph Stalin and his legacy.
C)He immediately restored permanent good relations with Communist China.

Question 73

How did education serve to create a new Communist elite in Eastern Europe? How did this affect Eastern European societies living under communist rule?