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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. On July 29, what power did Yeltsin want Gorbachev to give to the republics?

2. Where did the czars have their prison camps?

3. In 1991, where did Yakovlev tell his friends they would soon be seeing one another?

4. What young politician was elected chairman of the October District in Moscow during the first elections?

5. Where did Men teach courses on religion?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Who was Edward Lee Howard?

3. How did Yeltsin's appeal to the people for resistance to the coup get published in Izvestia?

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

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

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

7. After watching the film "Wall Street" at the Moscow Higher Party School, how did Remnick know that Communist ideology was dead?

8. 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?

9. What did Volkogonov's team reveal in a draft of a history they were writing that appalled the hard-liners?

10. Why would the Sinegorsk mine on Sakhalin Island never be profitable in a normal economy?

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

The hard-liners began a coup in August 1991. Explain how and why the actions of the conspirators, the military, the secret police, the people, the media (television, radio, and press), and the reform politicians caused the coup to fail.

Essay Topic 3

When people's convictions are threatened, they either capitulate or stand up and defend their convictions. Using specific examples from the book, compare individuals who abandoned their convictions when threatened to individuals who stood up to attacks on their convictions at great personal risk or cost.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,105 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample