Key figures

Question 1

Okrhana

Answer 1

The tsarist secret police, whose special task was to hunt down subversives who challenged the tsarist regime

Question 2

Liberal ideas

Answer 2

Notions that called for limitations on the power of rulers and greater freedom of the people

Question 3

Capital

Answer 3

The essential financial recourse which provides the means for investment and expansion

Question 4

Agrarian economy

Answer 4

A system in which food is produced on the land by arable and dairy farming

Question 5

Dark Masses

Answer 5

Used contemptuously in the imperial court and government circles to describe the peasants, who made up 4/5 of the population

Question 6

Slavophiles

Answer 6

Those who regarded Western values as corrupting and urged that the nation should preserve itself as ‘holy Russia’

Question 7

Autocratic

Answer 7

The absolute rule of one person

Question 8

Representative government

Answer 8

A form of rule in which ordinary people choose their government and have the power to replace it if it does not serve their interests

Question 9

Sergei Witte (1849-1915)

Answer 9

Minister of finance 1893-1903 and chief minister 1906-6

Question 10

Peter Stolypin (1862-1911)

Answer 10

A political conservative but a progressive in agricultural matters, chief minister 1906-11

Question 11

Revolutionaries

Answer 11

Those who believed that Russia could not progress unless the tsarist system was destroyed

Question 12

Reformers

Answer 12

Strong critics of the tsarist system who believed it could be changed for the better by pressure from without and reform from within

Question 13

Social Democrats

Answer 13

The all Russian Social Democrats workers party

Question 14

Class struggle

Answer 14

A continuing conflict at those who possess economic and political power and those who do not

Question 15

Proletariat

Answer 15

The exploited industrial workers who would triumph in the last great class struggle

Question 16

Bourgeoisie

Answer 16

The owners if the capital, the boss class, who exploited workers but who would be overthrown by them in the revolution to come

Question 17

Duma

Answer 17

The Russian parliament which existed from 1906-1017

Question 18

Constitutional Monarchy

Answer 18

A system of government in which the king or emperor rules but governs only through elected representatives who decisions he cannot countermand

Question 19

Soviet

Answer 19

Russian word for council made up of elected representatives

Question 20

Inflation rate

Answer 20

A measure of the decline in the value of money over a period of time. More money being needed for the same quantity of goods

Question 21

Martial law

Answer 21

The placing of the population under direct military authority

Question 22

Dual Authority

Answer 22

Lenin first coined this term to describe the balance of power between the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government

Question 23

Constituent Assembly

Answer 23

A full gathering of the elected representatives of the Russian people

Question 24

Prince Lvov

Answer 24

Prominent landowner and progressive reformer, he headed the provisional government between March to July 1917

Question 25

Lev Kamenev

Answer 25

Returned from exile to hold key positions under Lenin between 1917 and 1924. He became a victim of Stalin’s purges and was executed in 1936

Question 26

General Kornilov

Answer 26

Distinguished by his bravery as a soldier, he was a fierce Russian patriot who hated Russia’s revolutionaries

Question 27

Grigor Zinoviev

Answer 27

A close colleague of Lenin since the formation of the Bolshevik party. Also executed during Stalin’s purges.

Question 28

Red Guards

Answer 28

A force of some 10,000, largely made up of elderly men

Question 29

Commissars

Answer 29

Russian for ministers

Question 30

Left Communists

Answer 30

Those Bolsheviks who were convinced that their first task was to consolidate the October Revolution by driving the German imperialist armies from Russia

Question 31

Admiral Alexander Kolchak

Answer 31

Former commander of the Russian Balkan fleet. Proclaimed himself as ‘Supreme ruler of the Russian state’ during the civil war.

Question 32

Cheka

Answer 32

Secret police force established by Lenin. Fought counter revolution, sabotage and speculation.

Question 33

Patronage

Answer 33

The right to appoint individuals to official posts in the party and government

Question 34

Bureaucratisation

Answer 34

The growth in power of the secretariat; which was able to make decisions and operate policies without reference to ordinary party members

Question 35

Gosplan

Answer 35

The government body responsible for national economic planning

Question 36

Collectivisation

Answer 36

The taking over by Soviet state of land and property previously owned by the peasants, accompanied by the requirement that the peasants now live and work communally

Question 37

Second Revolution

Answer 37

The modernisation of the Soviet economy by means of state direction and central control

Question 38

De-Stalinisation

Answer 38

The movement which begun in 1956, to expose Stalin’s crimes and mistakes made against the party

Question 39

Cult of personality

Answer 39

The projection through constant propaganda of an individual as a heroic figure above ordinary politics and therefore entitled to unlimited authority

Question 40

Command economy

Answer 40

A system where all main areas of the economic activity are under central government control and direction