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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 does Misha find out about Nicolai and Popov's situation?

2. Who is Novikov?

3. By whom does Tatiana become pregnant?

4. How does Rutherfurd characterize the serfs?

5. What deadline does the Countess give Alexander?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the relationship between Alexander Bobrov and the Suvorins?

2. Describe the relationship between Rosa Abramovich's and Peter Suvorin?

3. Describe Popov's subversive activities.

4. How does Rutherfurd describe the Russian experience of the Napoleonic War?

5. Describe Nicolai's discussion with Popov on the train to Moscow.

6. What was Tsar Peter's plan for modernizing Russia?

7. Describe Savva Suvorin's arrival in Moscow.

8. What role do Madame Adelaide de Ronville's salons play in Russka?

9. Who is Pavlo, and what is his role in Russka?

10. What is Alexander Bobrov's relationship with Sergei?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

If you were to boil Russian history down to a few main themes, what would you say are the primary oppositions, century to century? How did the progress of history change the nature of those oppositions? How did the past affect how Russia encountered these changes?

Essay Topic 2

How does Rutherfurd maintain the reader's interest for nearly 1,000 pages? What plot strategies, what suspense, or what kinds of stories does Rutherfurd include, to keep his readers zooming along? Where is he most successful? Where does the narrative slow down?

Essay Topic 3

What is the price of historical progress as Russia develops from the 1600s to the 1900s? What is gained? What is given up, or lost? For example, is brutality the price of progress, as under Tsar Peter? Was culture lost as Russia Westernized?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 752 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample