Russian Empire
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50 free Russian Empire trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For almost two centuries the Russian Empire stretched from the Baltic to the Pacific, ruled by tsars and empresses whose courts mixed splendour, reform and repression. Its story runs from a new capital raised beside the sea to a revolution that swept the monarchy away. This quiz covers the rulers and their rivals, the wars that redrew the map, the peasants and rebels who pushed back, and the novelists, composers and scientists who made the era famous. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the story behind each answer. Most questions are pitched for a casual history fan, with a handful of tougher ones for readers who know their emperors. It works for a pub quiz, a classroom warm-up or a quick check before an exam.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Peter the Great tax from 1698 to push Russian men toward Western European fashion?
Beards
Beards could stay only if the wearer paid, and he had to carry a copper or silver token showing a nose, mouth and whiskers as his receipt.
Q 02Which territory did Tsar Alexander II's government sell in 1867 for $7.2 million, about two cents an acre?
Alaska
Alaska, then known as Russian America, went to the United States in a deal negotiated by Secretary of State William Seward and the Russian diplomat Eduard de Stoeckl.
Q 03Only two empires in history covered more land than the Russian Empire: the British Empire and which other?
Mongol
Mongol and British rule alone outstripped the tsars' realm, which at its height covered about 22.8 million square kilometres, roughly one-sixth of the world's land.
Q 04Which peasant mystic and faith healer gained sway over Russia's last imperial family before nobles murdered him in 1916?
Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin won the imperial couple's trust as a healer for their ailing only son, and his growing hold over the empress turned conservative noblemen against him.
Q 05Which jeweller's workshop made 50 jewelled Easter eggs for the last two Russian tsars between 1885 and 1917?
Fabergé
Fabergé delivered the first in 1885: a plain white enamel shell that opened to reveal a golden yolk, and inside that a golden hen.
Q 06Which calendar, by 1917 running 13 days behind Western Europe's, did Russia keep in use until 1918?
Julian
Julian dating is why the 'October Revolution' of 1917 fell in November for the rest of Europe. Russia caught up in 1918 by jumping straight from 31 January to 14 February.
Q 07Which member of Russia's last imperial family did the impostor Anna Anderson claim to be for decades?
Anastasia
Anastasia was the tsar's youngest daughter, and rumours of her escape ran for most of the 20th century. DNA tests after Anderson's death showed no match with the family's remains.
Q 08Which chamber, a 1716 gift from Prussia's king to Peter the Great, vanished after German troops looted it in wartime?
Amber Room
The Amber Room held more than six tonnes of the fossil resin. It was last seen in Königsberg, and a replica finished in 2003 took Russian craftsmen decades.
Q 09Which city, founded in 1703 on the site of a captured fortress, became the Russian Empire's capital?
St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg was named for the apostle Peter, and in 1914 the tsar renamed it Petrograd to strip out the German-sounding words Sankt and Burg.
Q 10Which French ruler's army marched into Moscow in September 1812 only to find the city abandoned and soon ablaze?
Napoleon
Napoleon held the scorched city for five weeks, waiting for a peace offer the tsar never sent, then pulled out on 19 October.
Q 11Which German-born empress overthrew her husband, Peter III, in 1762 and ruled Russia for more than 34 years?
Catherine II
Catherine II, remembered as 'the Great', was born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst in the Prussian town of Stettin, into a princely family that had little money.
Q 12Which tsar, forced to abdicate in March 1917, was the last emperor to rule Russia?
Nicholas II
Nicholas II and Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II were both first cousins of Britain's George V, a family tie that did nothing to stop the three empires going to war in 1914.
Q 13Which dynasty ruled Russia for three centuries, from the election of Tsar Michael in 1613 until 1917?
Romanov
Q 21Which Russian physiologist, famous for conditioning dogs to salivate, won a Nobel Prize in 1904?
Pavlov
Pavlov became the first Russian Nobel laureate, and the prize honoured his research on digestion rather than the conditioning studies that made his name.
Q 22Which kingdom, led by Charles XII, lost its main army to Peter the Great at Poltava in 1709?
Sweden
Sweden's king fled into exile in the Turkish-held town of Bender while the rest of his men surrendered, and after peace came in 1721 Peter took the title of emperor.
Q 23Which region did Russia annex from its Tatar khans in 1783 and make the base of its Black Sea Fleet?
Crimea
Crimea had been a khanate since 1441. Its annexation followed a decade of Russian intervention, and the naval base of Sevastopol was founded there the same year.
Romanov rule began when an assembly of the land, the Zemsky Sobor, elected 16-year-old Michael as a compromise candidate for the vacant throne.
Q 14Which group of more than 23 million people did Tsar Alexander II free with his emancipation edict of 1861?
Serfs
Serfs were peasants bound to a landlord's estate. Freedom came with a bill: they had to pay for their plots in redemption payments that the government cancelled only in 1907.
Q 15Which blood disorder did Alexei, heir to Russia's last tsar, inherit through his great-grandmother Queen Victoria?
Haemophilia
Haemophilia stops blood from clotting properly. Victoria passed the mutation through two of her daughters to the royal families of Spain, Germany and Russia.
Q 16Which rising Asian power destroyed Russia's Baltic Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905?
Japan
Japan intercepted the fleet at the end of a seven-month, 18,000-nautical-mile voyage from the Baltic Sea that was meant to rescue Russia's Pacific squadron.
Q 17Which railway, begun in 1891, links Moscow with the Pacific port of Vladivostok across eight time zones?
Trans-Siberian
Trans-Siberian track runs for 9,289 kilometres, the longest railway line in the world, and the heir to the throne inaugurated construction at its Pacific end.
Q 18Which novelist's War and Peace follows aristocratic Russian families through the French invasion of 1812?
Tolstoy
Tolstoy had seen war himself: he served as a young artillery officer and lived through an 11-month siege more than a decade before the novel appeared.
Q 19Which composer scored real cannon fire into his 1812 Overture, marking Russia's defence against the French invasion?
Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky had little love for the piece himself, telling his patron it would be very loud and noisy and that he had written it without warmth.
Q 20Which Russian chemist arranged the elements into a periodic table and predicted three that nobody had yet found?
Mendeleev
Mendeleev left gaps in his table and described what should fill them; gallium, scandium and germanium were later discovered and matched his forecasts.
Q 24Which creature, drawn with two heads beneath three crowns, was the centrepiece of the Russian Empire's coat of arms?
An eagle
An eagle with two heads was a Byzantine emblem, taken up by Moscow's rulers in the 15th century after Ivan III married into the Byzantine imperial family.
Q 25What name is given to 22 January 1905, when troops fired on Father Gapon's marchers heading for the Winter Palace?
Bloody Sunday
Bloody Sunday began as a march to hand the tsar a petition. The shootings provoked outrage and mass strikes, and are counted as the start of the 1905 Revolution.
Q 26Which elected parliament did Russia's tsar promise in the October Manifesto after the upheavals of 1905?
Duma
The Duma first met in spring 1906 with lawmaking powers the tsar had promised under pressure, and four were elected before the monarchy fell in 1917.
Q 27Which self-governing horsemen of the Don and Dnieper frontier served the tsars as cavalry in return for privileges?
Cossacks
Cossacks began in part as runaway peasants who fled to the devastated lands along the lower Dnieper and Don, where they founded communities that ran their own affairs.
Q 28Which poet, often called the founder of modern Russian literature, died after an 1837 duel with a French officer?
Pushkin
Pushkin faced Georges d'Anthès, his wife's rumoured admirer and her sister's husband, and died two days after being shot in the duel.
Q 29Which Russian novelist faced a firing squad in 1849 before his death sentence was commuted at the last moment?
Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky had joined the Petrashevsky Circle, which discussed banned books; instead of death he served four years of hard labour in a prison camp at Omsk.
Q 30Which country vanished from the map in 1795 after Russia, Prussia and Austria divided its land between them?
Poland
Poland lost its sovereignty for 123 years after successive partitions between 1772 and 1795, and was restored as a state only after World War I.