View a FREE sample

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Gorbachev study at Moscow State University?

2. How big was Remnick's Moscow apartment?

3. What piece of Tretetsky's equipment was sabotaged?

4. What group threatened the Jews in Leningrad, Moscow, and Novosibirsk?

5. What did Brezhnev want from the Uzbeks?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What was the homeless situation in Moscow in 1988?

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

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

6. What was Magadan like in the late 1930s?

7. Why was the Communist Party doomed to failure after they lost control of history?

8. What gnawing uncertainty is the condition of life in the Soviet Union for an empire inhabited by holocaust survivors and the children of survivors?

9. What central fact of Gorbachev's early life did he keep to himself until 1990?

10. What happened in the 1940s in the woods outside Kalinin?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explain the double meaning of the book's title, Lenin's Tomb.

Essay Topic 2

The first piece of writing to appear in the Soviet Union by Solzhenitsyn in three decades was a piece titled "How Can We Revitalize Russia." Explain how Solzhenitsyn wanted to solve the problems in the Soviet Union and why the Party felt so threatened by his views.

Essay Topic 3

In Lenin's Tomb, Remnick states that the Communist Party apparatus was the world's largest mafia. Using examples from the book, argue that the Soviet Union was or was not the world's largest mafia.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 966 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample