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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who started what was billed as the first independent newspaper in the Soviet Union?
(a) Shatrov.
(b) Karaulov.
(c) Tretyakov.
(d) Karpinsky.

2. Why did poet Varlam Shalamov spend seventeen years in a camp at Kolyma?
(a) For saying Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin was a classic author.
(b) For writing articles blasting the KGB.
(c) For speaking against Stalin.
(d) For writing poetry that made fun of the military.

3. How much was a million Russian rubles worth on the open market in the late 1980s?
(a) $100,000.
(b) $25,000.
(c) $1,000,000.
(d) $10,000.

4. What American movie was shown to students at the Moscow Higher Party School?
(a) Wall Street.
(b) The Matrix.
(c) Forest Gump.
(d) Schindler's List.

5. Who came from Iowa to coach baseball?
(a) Alex Pryor.
(b) Bob Protexter.
(c) Richard Spooner.
(d) David Kauffman.

6. In 1989, with whose portrait did some older women replace their portraits of Lenin?
(a) Kashpirovsky.
(b) Gorbachev.
(c) Shakarov.
(d) Ligachev.

7. How old was Boris Yeltsin when he had his first encounter with the Communist Party?
(a) 18.
(b) 5.
(c) 12.
(d) 15.

8. Who was the Soviet who supposedly collaborated with Christine Keller to bring down Profumo, Britain's minister of war?
(a) Yevgeny Ivanov.
(b) Grigori Vasiliyev.
(c) Nikolai Yakovlev.
(d) Andrei Nuikin.

9. Who wrote "How Can We Revitalize Russia" published September 18, 1990, in "Komsomolskaya Pravda"?
(a) Solzhenitsyn.
(b) Dostoevsky.
(c) Herzen.
(d) Sokolov.

10. Who was Miss KGB?
(a) Larisa Bogoraz.
(b) Regina Bogachova.
(c) Valentina Alisovna.
(d) Katya Mayorova.

11. Who became the new KGB chief in 1988?
(a) Vladimir Kryuchkov.
(b) Jonas Jablonskis.
(c) Stepan Khamara.
(d) Viktor Chebrikov.

12. What did Mikhail Leontyev, who studied economics at Plekhanov Institute, do to avoid working for the regime?
(a) Restored old Russian furniture.
(b) Wrote books.
(c) Worked on a collective.
(d) Became an auto mechanic.

13. During the Gorbachev era, what did old women sell in city parks as a vaccine against Aids?
(a) Magnets.
(b) Bottled medicines made mostly of alcohol.
(c) Copper bracelets.
(d) Herbal sachets.

14. In what city did the Party cancel the May Day parade in 1990?
(a) Irkutsk.
(b) Leningrad.
(c) St. Petersburg.
(d) Moscow.

15. How long did economist Stanislav Shatalin think it would be before the Soviet Union would have a modern economy?
(a) 5 years.
(b) 500 days.
(c) Generations.
(d) 25 years.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the plan called that was supposed to dismantle the Soviet system?

2. What was General Antonovich Volkogonov assigned to write by the hard-liners in 1990?

3. How did Yeltsin lose a thumb and forefinger?

4. What Article of the Constitution did Sakharov want Gorbachev to appeal?

5. How did some miners get to their work stations in Sinegorsk?

(see the answer keys)

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