Q 01/05

What does the Russian word 'sovet', the root of 'soviet', mean?

A) Comrade

B) Council

C) Worker

D) Union

Answer · why

B) Council

Council: workers' councils called soviets first sprang up in the 1905 Revolution, and in 1917 they shared power with the Provisional Government.

Q 02/05

The Soviet Union was formed in 1922, soon after the Bolsheviks won which war?

A) The Russian Civil War

B) The Polish–Soviet War

C) The Russo-Japanese War

D) The Crimean War

Answer · why

A) The Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War: victory over the Whites let the Bolsheviks merge the Soviet republics they controlled into a single union state.

Q 03/05

Which founding member of NATO shared a land border with the Soviet Union?

A) Denmark

B) Norway

C) Turkey

D) Finland

Answer · why

B) Norway

Norway: in October 1944 the Red Army fought its way into its occupied border town of Kirkenes, by then a burning ruin.

Q 04/05

Soviet schemes to irrigate cotton in Central Asia shrank which lake to a fraction of its size?

A) Lake Baikal

B) The Caspian Sea

C) The Aral Sea

D) Lake Ladoga

Answer · why

C) The Aral Sea

The Aral Sea: once one of the world's largest lakes, it withered after the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers that fed it were diverted to water the new f...

Q 05/05

Which union republic was demoted in 1956 to an autonomous republic within the Russian SFSR?

A) Moldavian SSR

B) Karelo-Finnish SSR

C) Turkmen SSR

D) Kirghiz SSR

Answer · why

B) Karelo-Finnish SSR

Its population was by then about 80 percent Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, and the decision was taken without consulting residents.