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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 year did the Bolsheviks size power in Russia?

2. Who did Remnick tell Flora Litvinov he was looking for?

3. How did Yeryomenko learn to speak excellent English?

4. What was the news on August 19, 1991?

5. What did Gorbachev use to spread his message?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did filmmaker Tofik Shakhverdiyev say it meant in 1988 to be a Stalinist?

2. In the 1980s, why did Gorbachev say that there should be no more "rose-colored glasses"?

3. Why is life in the mines not fit for human beings?

4. Why did Shakhnazarov say that Gorbachev, himself, and all the others who surrounded Gorbachev were double-thinkers?

5. As people learned about the true history of the Stalin era, why were they weary and bored?

6. Why did Natasha Rapoport not emigrate to Israel?

7. How did the revolution from below begin in July of 1989?

8. How did Yakovlev know that the article "I Cannot Forsake Principles" was sanctioned?

9. Why did the salmon catch rot on Sakhalin Island?

10. What was Vremya?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In the Soviet Union a common power struggle involved truth and the Party's version of truth. Using examples from Lenin's Tomb, explain why man's struggle against power is also the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Essay Topic 2

Throughout the book, Remnick provides examples of times the Party attempted to block the words of various writers. At the beginning of Chapter 24 is a quote: "What is written with a pen cannot be hacked away even by an ax." Using examples from the book, argue that words can or cannot be forever destroyed by violence.

Essay Topic 3

In 1989, healers were seen on television shows that were broadcast across the Soviet Union. Explain why the people turned to miracles and the supernatural and why the Party allowed and promoted this indulgence.

(see the answer keys)

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