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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 play did Yegor Ligachev and other Party ideologues object to?

2. When did Gorbachev give a speech designed to manipulate the historical debate and to "spit on Stalin"?

3. How old was Dmitri Yorosov when he started filling out index cards with the names of people who disappeared?

4. In English, what is the title of Yerofeyev's book?

5. Which former cellmate of Solzhenitsyn was a role model for Pavel Litvinov?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Gorbachev do about the letter published March 13 in the Sovetskaya Rossiya?

2. Was the corruption in the Party a secret to the Soviet people?

3. Why did no one believe that a new "epoch of human progress" began in October 1917?

4. What was a difference between the czarist repressions and the Bolshevik Terror?

5. Why was Andropov important to Gorbachev?

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

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

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

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

10. What is the dilemma that Mishal and Flora Litvinov faced with their children?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Some have said that the under socialism in the Soviet Union everyone was equal, equally poor. Argue that socialism caused the extreme poverty that the Soviet People endured using specific examples from the book to support your opinions.

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

Shekhovtsov, Korniyenkova, and some of Stalin's grandchildren still revere Stalin. Explain the reasons why they still support Stalin and their motives for supporting him.

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