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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is an important value among the Bashkirs?

2. What kind of land is "fallow"?

3. What is the "kumiss" that the Bashkir women make?

4. When Pahom "inquired" how to find the Bashkirs, what did he do?

5. How do the Bashkirs react when Pahom asks for land?

Short Essay Questions

1. What procedure do the Bashkirs outline for marking the land that Pahom claims?

2. What is the price of the land the Bashkirs offer Pahom, and how much land do they offer?

3. What is the response of the Bashkirs to Pahom's arrival?

4. What causes Pahom to become dissatisfied with his situation in the new settlement?

5. After the chief offers Pahom land, how does Pahom respond, and why?

6. When Pahom asks the Bashkirs for some land, what is their response?

7. What deal does Pahom strike to buy some land of his own in the settlement beyond the Volga?

8. When Pahom and his family arrive in the new settlement beyond the Volga, what does he do first, and what is the result?

9. How does the text contrast the life of the Bashkirs with the life of Russian peasants, and what is ironic in this description?

10. What deal does the traveling dealer tell Pahom he was able to get on land from the Bashkir?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explain what the devil's plan is and how he carries it out. Be sure that you discuss his motives, for the plan as a whole and for its details as well.

Essay Topic 2

How is Pahom's fate related to his class and circumstances? How is it related to his individual character? Write an essay that take a position on what factor is most responsible for his fate, and why.

Essay Topic 3

At the beginning of Chapter II, the reader learns that "Close to the village there lived a lady, a small landowner, who had an estate of about three hundred acres. She had always lived on good terms with the peasants...." Write an essay in which you explain how this detail comments on Pahom's subsequent difficulties with his community.

(see the answer keys)

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