Russia and Central Asia Flashcards
________is the largest country on earth, spanning the continents of Europe and Asia.
Russia
________ is the capitol of Russia.
Moscow
______ is considered the cultural epicenter of Russia.
St. Petersburg
Most of Russia has a ________ climate.
Subarctic
True or False
Russia is known for it tropical forests.
False
True or False
Uzbekistan’s, Turkmenistan’s, and Afghanistan’s vegetation is predominantly desert.
True
True or False
Natural Gas is the primary resource from economic activity in Afghanistan.
False
True or False
Russia comprised of many different ethnic groups.
True
The __________ __________, which most geographers consider the border between Europe and Asia, run through Russia’s western portion.
Ural Mountain
The primary religion in Russia is ___________ ___________.
Eastern Orthodox
The area called_______ reaches from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Siberia
_______ remain two major exports from the Central Asia region.
Oil and cotton
In 1812, the French emperor, ________ invaded Russia and successfully captured Moscow.
Napoleon Bonaparte
The Ukrainian__________ power plant had a meltdown in 1986 resulting in deaths of 32 people and causing radiation contamination to spread over millions of acres of land where many thousands of people had to be evacuated.
Chernobyl
True or False
Russia’s population is double the population of the United States.
False
True or False
Northern Siberia is mostly tundra, a frozen treeless area.
True
True or False
Sweden lost the Great Northern War, which was fought between the countries of Sweden and Russia.
True
True or False
The Aral Sea is shrinking because the main feeding rivers, the Amu and Syr, have been largely diverted fro irrigation purposes.
True
The large-scale movement of Siberian people began only after the completion of the ___________ in 1905.
Trans-Siberian Railroad
During the Cold War, in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded _______________.
Afghanistan
The tribe called the Rus founded the state that became Russia at the city of ___________.
Kiev
During the 1200s,_____________ invaded parts of Russia and ruled these areas for several decades.
Mongols
The USSR was governed according to____________ ideas.
communist
The Soviet Union survived until economic and political problems made the government end in________.
1991
True or False
The diverse population in Russia resulted from centuries of geographic growth and political change.
True
True or False
The Soviet Union did not allow religious practice for nearly 20 years.
False
True or False
Practicing Muslims make up between 50 and 55 percent of the population in Russia.
False
True or False
Imperialists are political leaders who want to take over other countries to make their own country larger and more powerful.
True
When the Bolsheviks gained control of the country in 1922, the new nation was called ______________.
the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
As a response to Soviet invasion and religious restrictions, the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan created a government using the teachings of ___________.
Islam
In 1917, the people of Russia became so tired of fighting and dying in World War I that they overthrew their king,___________________.
Tsar Nicholas II
A year after the new Russian Provisional Government promised democratic elections and equal rights for all, it was overthrown by radical_________ led by Vladimir Lenin.
Bolsheviks
_____________, the leader of Russia following Lenin’s death, completed Lenin’s process of creating a totalitarian state.
Joseph Stalin
Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, Afghanistan fell into civil war and from this emerged an intolerant, extreme Islamic movement called the ___________.
Taliban
True or False
Lenin based his ideas on the theories of communism put forward by Karl Marx in the mid-1800s.
True
True or False
By the 1980s, relations between the United States and the USSR has gone from bad to worse as nuclear arsenals on both sides grew during the Cold War.
True
True or False
The USSR and most of the rest of Central Asia based their economies on the principles of market capitalism .
False
True or False
The Russian Federation adopted its constitution in 2003.
False
In 1999, Russian Prime Minister___________ _________, later made president, oversaw the invasion of Chechnya after a Chechen terrorist attack within Russia.
Vladimir Putin
Central Asia’s five former Soviet republics- _________,_______,_________,__________ and _________- have each established similar forms of government modeled on the system Russia created.
Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Turkmenistan Tajikistan Uzbekistan
_______ has an average life expectancy of 49 and a literacy rate of less than 30 percent.
Afghanistan
Throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s, Russia, Afghanistan, and Great Britain were involved in a tense dispute over boundaries known as ___________.
The Great Game
With an extremely conservative Islamic government in control, Afghanistan became a headquarters for al-Qaeda and its leader, _______________.
Osama bin Laden
___________ became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan in 2004.
Hamid Karzai
True or False
Afghanistan had access to many major bodies of water, such as oceans or seas.
False
True or False
One of the few crops that grow well on Afghanistan’s limited farmland is the opium poppy which is used to produce several drugs.
True
True or False
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives launched a successful attack on the World Trade Center, in New York City, and the Pentagon, near Washington, D.C., using civilian aircraft as weapons.
True
True or False
Dependence on foreign aid in Afghanistan has created a culture of compassion that makes economic development thrive.
False
Afghanistan was first formed in the middle of the 1700s, when a leader, ________ ________ ________, united the Pashtun peoples.
Ahmad Shan Durrani
In response to the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington D.C., U.S. and British forces began air strikes against targets in Afghanistan and began providing support for local resistance group called the ____________ ____________.
Northern Alliance
