Mikhail Gorbachev Trivia
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49 free Mikhail Gorbachev trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Mikhail Gorbachev trivia quiz covers the last leader of the Soviet Union from a combine harvester in the North Caucasus to a Pizza Hut commercial. The easy questions handle the year the USSR dissolved, what perestroika and glasnost mean, the nuclear disaster that forced openness, and the singer who lent his name to a doctrine. From there it moves into the diplomacy: the Iceland summit that almost abolished missiles, the treaty signed in Washington, the seasick summit off Malta and Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate. The harder end is for Cold War buffs: his subject at Moscow State University, the region he governed for decades, the 'acceleration' slogan, the 1988 law on cooperatives, the vice president with shaking hands, the minister who killed himself after the coup, the two republics that stood by him at the end, and his 0.5% in the 1996 election. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Gorbachev, his policies, the summits, the coup and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our Cold War, Soviet Union and Ronald Reagan quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Mikhail Gorbachev holds what place in Soviet history?
Its last leader
Its last leader. He took over in 1985 meaning to reform the Soviet system, not to end it; six years later he resigned as president of a country that had ceased to exist.
Q 02Which Western leader, after meeting Gorbachev in 1984, declared that they could 'do business together'?
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher, the fierce anti-communist a Soviet journalist had dubbed the Iron Lady, told the BBC 'I like Mr Gorbachev' three months before he took power.
Q 03As a teenager Gorbachev spent his summers operating what on a collective farm?
A combine harvester
A combine harvester. He worked the harvests beside his father and, still a teenager, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour for it, which probably helped win him his university place.
Q 04What did Gorbachev study at Moscow State University, graduating in 1955?
Law
Law. A close friend on the course was a Czech student, Zdeněk Mlynář, who went on to be one of the brains behind the 1968 Prague Spring, the reform movement that Soviet tanks crushed.
Q 05Gorbachev married Raisa Titarenko in 1953, months after which Soviet leader's death?
Stalin
Stalin. Both of Gorbachev's grandfathers had been arrested in the 1930s, yet he joined the crowds that queued to see the dictator lying in state.
Q 06In which southern Russian region did Gorbachev spend his early career, becoming first party secretary in 1970?
Stavropol
Stavropol. Running the region brought him to the notice of two Kremlin heavyweights with ties to it, Mikhail Suslov and Yuri Andropov, and their backing carried him to Moscow in 1978.
Q 07Gorbachev became general secretary in March 1985 after the death of which short-lived leader?
Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Chernenko was the third ailing leader to die in under three years, after Brezhnev and Andropov; the Politburo finally turned to its youngest member, who was 54.
Q 08Which religious leader did Gorbachev visit in December 1989, promising Soviet believers greater freedom of worship?
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II. The Soviet leader called on the Polish pope at the Vatican, and the two agreed to open diplomatic ties between Moscow and the Holy See.
Q 09What does the Russian word 'perestroika' literally mean?
Restructuring
Restructuring. Gorbachev meant to repair the socialist economy, not to swap it for a free market, yet the half-reforms he set in motion ended by bringing the whole system down.
Q 10What does 'glasnost' mean?
Openness
Openness. Censorship was lifted, the press began to write about Stalin's purges, the Gulag, crime and corruption, and the blanks in official Soviet history started to be filled in.
Q 11Which dissident did Gorbachev telephone in December 1986 to end almost seven years of exile in the closed city of Gorky?
Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Sakharov, the physicist behind the Soviet hydrogen bomb, had been banished in 1980 for his protests. Freed by that call, he was elected to the new Soviet parliament three years later.
Q 12Gorbachev's 1988 Law on Cooperatives allowed Soviet citizens to do what for the first time since the 1920s?
Own private businesses
Own private businesses. Cafés, workshops and traders sprang up under the cooperative label, the first legal private enterprise since Lenin's New Economic Policy was shut down in 1928.
Q 13The 1986 explosion at which nuclear plant, and its cover-up, became a catalyst for glasnost?
Q 21Student protests upstaged Gorbachev's May 1989 summit in which communist capital, the first such visit in 30 years?
Beijing
Beijing. Protesters filled Tiananmen Square, so his welcome ceremony had to be moved to the airport, and the foreign press that had come for the summit stayed to report the uprising.
Q 22Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush held their storm-tossed December 1989 summit aboard ships off which island?
Malta
Malta. A winter gale made the sea so rough that the leaders could not meet aboard the two navies' warships as planned, and the talks shifted to a Soviet cruise liner tied up in harbour.
Q 23After an earthquake in which Soviet republic did Gorbachev ask America for aid in 1988, the first such request in 40 years?
Armenia
Chernobyl
Chernobyl. Moscow kept silent for two days, until radiation alarms at monitoring stations in Sweden forced it to admit to the world that a reactor had blown up.
Q 14Where did Gorbachev and Reagan hold their October 1986 summit that nearly abolished ballistic missiles?
Reykjavík
Reykjavík. The talks broke down at the last minute with nothing signed, yet the ground gained there became, little more than a year later, a treaty scrapping a whole class of nuclear missiles.
Q 15Which US programme did Gorbachev insist be confined to the laboratory, sinking his 1986 arms deal with Reagan?
The Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed Star Wars, was Reagan's plan for a shield against nuclear missiles. It was never built: in 1993 the United States dropped the plan in favour of defences against shorter-range missiles.
Q 16In which city did Reagan and Gorbachev sign the INF Treaty on 8 December 1987?
Washington
Washington. At the signing Reagan brought out his favourite Russian proverb, 'trust, but verify'; 'You repeat that at every meeting,' Gorbachev shot back, and the room laughed.
Q 17Which US president quit Gorbachev and Reagan's INF Treaty, accusing Russia of violations?
Donald Trump
Donald Trump announced the pull-out in 2018 and the treaty died the next year. It had been the first to destroy a whole class of nuclear missiles, with each side's inspectors watching on the spot.
Q 18Reagan's 1987 challenge 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' was delivered at which Berlin landmark?
The Brandenburg Gate
The Brandenburg Gate stood just behind the Wall. The State Department and the National Security Council both tried to cut the line from the draft as too provocative; Reagan insisted it stay in.
Q 19Gorbachev withdrew the Red Army from which nine-year war?
The war in Afghanistan
The war in Afghanistan. The pull-out ended on 15 February 1989, when the commander, General Boris Gromov, walked back across the border bridge into Soviet territory behind the last of his troops.
Q 20Gorbachev's policy of letting Eastern Bloc states go their own way was jokingly named after which singer?
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra. A Soviet spokesman joked on American television that Moscow now had the Sinatra Doctrine: like the singer of 'My Way', every Eastern Bloc country could do it its own way.
Armenia. The quake killed at least 25,000 people around the town of Spitak; Gorbachev broke off a visit to New York to fly home, and Western rescue teams were let in.
Q 24Which West German chancellor pushed for rapid reunification against Gorbachev's wish for a gradual process?
Helmut Kohl
Helmut Kohl. Less than three weeks after the Wall opened he announced a ten-point plan for unity; within a year Germany was one country inside NATO, and Gorbachev had gone along with it.
Q 25In January 1991 Soviet troops stormed the television tower in which capital, killing unarmed civilians?
Vilnius
Vilnius. The raid killed 14 people but failed to reverse the independence Lithuania had declared in March 1990.
Q 26Where was Gorbachev on holiday when hardliners launched their coup in August 1991?
A dacha at Foros, Crimea
A dacha at Foros, Crimea. The plotters cut his phone lines, flew in to demand that he hand over power and, when he refused, told the country he was too ill to govern.
Q 27Which vice president was named as acting leader by the August 1991 coup plotters?
Gennady Yanayev
Gennady Yanayev declared himself acting president, but when he faced the cameras at the plotters' press conference his hands shook visibly as he claimed Gorbachev was merely resting.
Q 28Who climbed onto a tank to defy the 1991 coup against Gorbachev?
Yeltsin
Yeltsin, elected Russia's president two months earlier, denounced the takeover from the top of the tank. The plotters had failed to arrest him, the army split, and the coup collapsed in three days.
Q 29In 1987 a West German teenager landed a light plane beside which landmark, giving Gorbachev grounds to sack his defence minister?
Red Square
Red Square. Mathias Rust, 18, flew a rented Cessna from Helsinki straight through Soviet air defences and set it down by the Kremlin; Gorbachev used the fiasco to clear out generals who opposed his reforms.
Q 30Gorbachev abandoned which doctrine, named after a predecessor, that had justified invading Czechoslovakia in 1968?
The Brezhnev Doctrine
The Brezhnev Doctrine held that Moscow could send troops into any ally that strayed from the socialist path. When Eastern Europe's regimes fell in 1989, Gorbachev left the tanks in their barracks.