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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 was the radical opposition faction called that Sakharov, Yeltsin, and Popov put together in the legislature?

2. What did Orwell call a KGB type organization?

3. Why was Vitaly Goldovitch, a physicist who had worked in defense research, in a labor camp in the 1980s?

4. How did Yeltsin lose a thumb and forefinger?

5. How long did economist Stanislav Shatalin think it would be before the Soviet Union would have a modern economy?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who was the free man Remnick met on Sakhalin island?

2. Why did Ilya Zaslavsky hobble to the podium at the Congress the day after Sakharov's death?

3. When did healers, mystics, and "holy fools" usually come to prominence?

4. What were three omens that occurred in September 1990?

5. Why did Yakovlev say that rehabilitation was an act of repentance?

6. How did Yeltsin win his first battle inside the "horror house" of the Soviet system?

7. What did the designer of the Chernobyl reactor say about the nuclear accident?

8. How did one of Parkomenko's investigative reports cause a terrific scandal?

9. What happened when the tanks were sent to Lithuania in January 1991?

10. Why did the publishers of the Novy Mir not know what to expect when Gorbachev suggested that the Soviet Writers' Union decide whether Solzhenitsyn should be published in the Soviet Union?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The poem "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova became a voice for the organization Memorial. Explain how the poem and the experiences of the poet made this poem a suitable voice and a credo for remembering the victims of the Soviet regime.

Essay Topic 2

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.

Essay Topic 3

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

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