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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What are the women happy to do?
(a) Cook meals in the kitchen after the cook dies.
(b) Share what they each have.
(c) Help cut each other's hair.
(d) Clean up the prison grounds for a chance to be outside.

2. What strikes Ginzburg when talking with Tulub?
(a) Tulub still believes in the greater good of Communism.
(b) Tulub has such a strong faith in a god force.
(c) Tulub is so optimistic despite everything she's been through.
(d) Ginzburg feels that Ginzburg's life story Ginzburg is telling is someone else's.

3. Who is Vasily Petukhov?
(a) A lawyer from Moscow.
(b) The new prison camp director.
(c) A doctor from Leningrad.
(d) A guard who often whips prisoners.

4. How long do Ginzburg's parents spend in prison?
(a) Two months.
(b) Two years.
(c) Almost a year.
(d) Five years.

5. Why are Julia and Ginzburg put outside for an hour and a half?
(a) So the guards can contain the fire.
(b) So the guards can hose down the cells.
(c) So they can get some Vitamin D from the sunshine.
(d) So the other prisoners do not hear them complain.

6. Who is Yezhov?
(a) The new prison Governor.
(b) A Party organizer.
(c) The former Commissar-General.
(d) A close advisor to Stalin.

7. What does Polina Melnikova explain to the new prisoners?
(a) How to cheat the quota system.
(b) How to make ice shelters.
(c) How to stay warm in the cold.
(d) How to find trees that have a weakness and can be cut more easily.

8. What does Ginzburg write?
(a) A chapbook of poetry.
(b) An appeal to the head of the Politburo.
(c) A treatise on the abuses of the Soviet system.
(d) A novel about her childhood.

9. How are the sections divided up at the transfer camp?
(a) By region.
(b) By crimes.
(c) By gender.
(d) By age.

10. To what does Ginzburg attribute her inability to distinguish one day from the next in the following year?
(a) Her instinct to survive.
(b) The depressing atmosphere.
(c) The lack of clean air and being ill.
(d) Her state of mind.

11. Where is Ginzburg assigned?
(a) To the children's hospital.
(b) To the laundry rooms.
(c) To the camp library.
(d) To the kitchen crew.

12. How old is Ginzburg when she is writing this book?
(a) 70s.
(b) 60s.
(c) 50s.
(d) 40s.

13. With what are Ginzburg and Julia becoming disillusioned?
(a) The prospect of better conditions in the prison.
(b) The prospects of an early release.
(c) The prospect of vindication.
(d) The Soviet system.

14. To whom does Ginzburg write?
(a) Her lawyer.
(b) Her mother.
(c) Her mother-in-law.
(d) Her children.

15. What does Ginzburg say is at the base of the walls in her cell?
(a) Mold.
(b) Blood stains.
(c) Names and dates sculpted on the stone.
(d) Mementos of previous prisoners.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Vasily Petukhov notice when he sees Ginzburg?

2. Who is Zinaida Tulub?

3. For how long is Ginzburg at Yaroslavl?

4. Who is the latest of the higher members of the Party to be imprisoned?

5. How many hours a day is Ginzburg confined to her cell?

(see the answer keys)

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