Q 01/05

What was Lenin's real surname?

A) Dzhugashvili

B) Bronstein

C) Ulyanov

D) Skryabin

Answer · why

C) Ulyanov

Ulyanov. He was 31 when he adopted the name Lenin, in 1901, as cover for his underground party work.

Q 02/05

In which Volga city, later renamed after his family, was Lenin born?

A) Samara

B) Kazan

C) Simbirsk

D) Nizhny Novgorod

Answer · why

C) Simbirsk

Simbirsk. The town took its new name in 1924, months after his death, and kept it when Leningrad went back to being St Petersburg in 1991.

Q 03/05

Thanks to his father's rise as a schools official, the young Lenin legally belonged to which class of tsarist society?

A) The merchants

B) The nobility

C) The peasantry

D) The clergy

Answer · why

B) The nobility

The nobility. His father Ilya, director of the province's public schools, reached a civil-service rank that made the family hereditary nobles: on pape...

Q 04/05

What happened to Lenin's elder brother Aleksandr in May 1887?

A) He emigrated to Switzerland

B) He died of typhoid at university

C) He was executed for plotting to kill the tsar

D) He was exiled to Siberia for life

Answer · why

C) He was executed for plotting to kill the tsar

He was executed for plotting to kill the tsar. Aleksandr, a 21-year-old student, had made the bombs; he was hanged with four comrades, and the loss tu...

Q 05/05

From where was Lenin expelled in December 1887 for taking part in a student demonstration?

A) Kazan University

B) Kiev University

C) Saint Petersburg University

D) Moscow University

Answer · why

A) Kazan University

Kazan University. He was thrown out in his first term as a law student, yet in 1891 he took the degree anyway by sitting the exams as an external cand...