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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. How far did prisoners typically have to walk on foot if they were being transported to another prison?

2. Who famously uttered the words, "Intelligentsia are not the nation's brains, but their excrement"?

3. Why were the peasants in Tsarskoe Selo executed?

4. Which of the following medical conditions did Lenin suffer from in 1922?

5. Which of the following terms did the Gulag soldier use to describe the prisoners who partook in hunger strikes?

Short Essay Questions

1. When and where did the first Gulag hunger strike occur?

2. How was time in Gulag measured?

3. What happened in the trial of Shakhty?

4. What types of prisoners were separated from the native population at Gulag?

5. Which prisons in the Gulag network does Solzhenitsyn remember living in as a prisoner?

6. Why was capital punishment banned in 1920?

7. What major change did Lenin make to the law right before he suffered his first stroke?

8. What changed about capital punishment after the revolt of 1952 in the Gulag prisons?

9. What would prisoners drink while being transported?

10. Who was in charge of preparing stolypins for prisoner use, and how were the stolypins prepared?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Throughout the memoir, Solzhenitsyn compares the real evil of the world (such as the evil of Gulag) to the evil forces presented in literature. First, describe Solzhenitsyn's personal definition of what evil is and where it is hiding in the world. Next, compare/contrast that definition to at least one of the literary greats Solzhenitsyn discusses in the book.

Essay Topic 2

Many prisoners were sent to the Gulag labor camps after being considered counter-revolutionary. First, explain how counter-revolutionary behavior is defined in the text and who was at the forefront of creating those definitions. Next, explain how the work camps struggled to re-educate the prisoners to rid them of their counter-revolutionary tendencies?

Essay Topic 3

The years 1937-1938 were considered the "Great Terror" years in Russia. Describe how life changed for the prisoners in the work camps during this era. Explain how Stalin used these two years to promote his own political agenda. What effect did this time have on Stalin's popularity within Russia?

(see the answer keys)

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