Communism

Question 1

What does the word “Bolshevik” mean in English?

Answer 1

Majority

Question 2

What does the word “Soviet” mean in English?

Answer 2

Council

Question 3

Describe the Bolsheviks.

Answer 3

The Bolsheviks were a radical, far-left, and revolutionary Marxist faction in Russia.

Question 4

Who founded the Bolshevik faction in Russia?

Answer 4

Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov

Question 5

When did the Bolsheviks take power in Russia?

Answer 5

November of 1917

Question 6

What were Soviets?

Answer 6

Political organizations and governmental bodies of the late Russian Empire primarily associated with the Russian Revolution.

Question 7

What was the Communist International? (3 answers)

Answer 7

1. An international organization that advocated world communism.
2. Also known as the third international.
3. Resolved to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish an international soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state.

Question 8

What years was the Comintern active?

Answer 8

1919-1943

Question 9

Why was the Comintern dissolved?

Answer 9

Stalin dissolved the Comintern to avoid antagonizing the Soviet Union’s allies in WW II.

Question 10

What is the bourgeoisie according to Marxist philosophy?

Answer 10

The social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society.

Question 11

Define proletariat.

Answer 11

The class of wage-earners in an economic society whose only possession of significant material value is their labor-power.

Question 12

What is the Marxist view of the proletariat?

Answer 12

Marxism sees the proletariat as oppressed by capitalism and the wage system, giving all proletarians common economic and political interests across national boundaries.

Question 13

Who was Leon Trotsky

Answer 13

1. A Soviet revolutionary, Marxist theorist, and politician.
2. Originator of a strain of Marxist thought known as Trotskyism.
3. A Vital leading figure in the Red victory in the Russian Civil War.
4. Exiled after the rise of Stalin and assassinated by a Soviet agent years later.

Question 14

What was the defining feature of Trotskyism?

Answer 14

Favored permanent revolution to Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country.

Question 15

What is permanent revolution?

Answer 15

The strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society.

Question 16

What was Trotsky’s view of permanent revolution?

Answer 16

It is possible for a country to pass directly from a semi-feudal society to one dominated by the proletariat without an interceding period of bourgeoisie dominance.

Question 17

Politburo

Answer 17

The principal policy making committee of a communist party.

Question 18

Apparatchik

Answer 18

A full time professional functionary of the communist party of the Soviet Union.

Question 19

What was the Warsaw Pact

Answer 19

The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty signed in Poland between Soviet Union and seven other countries.

Question 20

Which countries participated in the Warsaw Pact?

Answer 20

Albania
Bulgaria
Czechoslovakia
East Germany
Hungary
Poland
Romania
Soviet Union

Question 21

Define agit-prop. (3 answers)

Answer 21

1. Political propaganda that is spread to the general public through popular media such as literature, plays, pamphlets, films, and other art forms with an explicitly political message.
2. Often refers to communist propaganda used in Soviet Russia.
3. The word is a portmanteau of the words “agitation” and “propaganda”.