Russia Paper End Of Year Exam

Question 1

What were the social problems in Russia in 1914?

Answer 1

• there was terrible social inequality
• food shortages were very common
• most of the land and wealth belonged to about 1 million of the 125.6 million people

Question 2

What was town life like in Russia in 1914?

Answer 2

• work was difficult to find and the hours were long, pay was low, work was hard and very dangerous
• factory worker lived in the worst part of town often with ten people in one room
• factory owners made huge profits paying low wages and cared very little about the safety of their workers

Question 3

How was Russia ruled in 1914?

Answer 3

• by a tsar, Nicholas II
• book and newspapers were censored to make sure they were not hostile
• the secret police, the Okhrana, looked for opponents of the tsar and exiled them to Siberia

Question 4

What happened during the 1905 revolution?

Answer 4

• there were many strikes against the way things were run
• troops guarding he tsar’s palace fired into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators killing 130 and wounding many more
• a soviet was formed to control the strikes

Question 5

How did the tsar respond to the 1905 revolution?

Answer 5

• he set up a Duma
• he agreed to allow political parties and trade unions
• opposition to the tsar became more obvious

Question 6

Who was Rasputin and why was he unpopular ?

Answer 6

• he was the person famous for “curing” the tsar and tsarina’s son of haemophilia
• he was unpopular in court because he was from a peasant family, and other thought he was a fraud
• despite being unliked the tsar and tsarina kept him safe as he helped their son

Question 7

What were the problems of ruling Russia in 1914?

Answer 7

• communications were difficult due to the size of Russia
• roads were unpaved
• the railways only connected a fraction of the country
• only 55 million of the 125.6 million population spoke Russian

Question 8

What did the tsar do to slip back into his old ways?

Answer 8

• he didn’t want to share power because he thought God had given it to him
• he chose people to be in the Duma that would always side with him
• the Okhrana started openly breaking up political meetings even though they were legal

Question 9

Who was the opposition to the tsar?

Answer 9

• the monarchist: who wanted the tsar to rule alone. They disliked the new government including the Duma
• the constitutionalists: who wanted to keep the tsar but limit his power with a constitution or kind of parliament
• the revolutionaries: who wanted to replace the tsarist system with a fairer one
• the soviets: who wanted reforms to help ordinary workers. They were loyal at first, they just wanted him to see their views but they changed as it became clear he was not interested in their views

Question 10

What were the problems outside Russia?

Answer 10

• There were many alliances between European countries
• one of Russia’s allies was Serbia they wanted independence from Austria- Hungary
• a Serbian assassinated the Austrian heir to the throne
• Austria declared war on Russia and brought Britain and France into the war aswell

Question 11

What happened to Russia during the First World War?

Answer 11

• over 2million men were killed by August 1915
• the tsar took personal command of the army and refused the advise of the cabinet making matters worse
• the war went no better and now only the tsar could be blamed for it
• the tsar left the tsarina as his deputy even though she was unpopular, she only relied on the help of Rasputin

Question 12

What were the effects of the war?

Answer 12

• millions of peasant left farming as the were made to join factories to make war goods. horses were taken too which made farming more difficult, food production dropped
• fertiliser factories switched to war production, food production dropped further
• millions of train factory workers were made to join the war so the production of goods dropped aswell as the quality
• inflation struck

Question 13

What happened on the 23rd of February?

Answer 13

• parades celebrating international women’s day turned into a march demanding equal rights
• by the afternoon people were striking because of bread shortages
• the troops and army could not stop the 150,000 workers
• as the days went past more and more people joined the demonstrations for various reasons

Question 14

What did the army decide on the 26th of February?

Answer 14

• the army were ordered to shoot into the demonstration but refused and changed sides
• unrest turned into revolution which shocked everyone
• the soldiers brought weapons and organised the workers

Question 15

What were the high expectations for the provisional government?

Answer 15

• to pull Russia out of the war
• improving conditions for the workers in towns and cities
• solve the shortages of food and fuel
• re-distribute property especially land and farms more equally

Question 16

What were the problems the provisional government faced?

Answer 16

• control, the Petrograd soviet was required for them to pass laws, the Soviet also controlled the workers and army
• the reforms they made( new 8 hour working day, public political meetings were legal, political prisoners were released) they did not help they made it legal to criticise them

Question 17

What were the ‘July days’?

Answer 17

• there was an unplanned uprising, the people were reacting to the war, bread rationing and the provisional government’s lack of reforms
• the P.G acted like the tsar and sent in troops to clear the streets

Question 18

Trotsky in Petrograd

Answer 18

• was chairman of the Petrograd soviet

- also ran its military revolutionary committee

Question 19

How did the Bolsheviks take control?

Answer 19

• Lenin had secretly returned to Petrograd
• a new constituent assembly would be set up
• the council of people’s commissars (cpc) rule until then
• the central executive committee was elected by the soviets to keep the (CPC) in check
• both groups had Bolshevik majorities
• Trotsky timed the events of the to happen when the congress of soviets from many parts of Russia was meeting
• the people who opposed the Bolshevik take over walked out leaving only people who support edit so many people in Russia thought that the whole congress had approved it

Question 20

Why did the Bolsheviks win?

Answer 20

• the P.G failed to disarm the red guard after arming them to deal with kornilov’s revolt
• the P.G did not act in time and misjudged the seriousness of the threat that had been around since the July days
• the takeover was well planned and organised by Trotsky

Question 21

What were the Bolsheviks early decrees?

Answer 21

• capital punishment was abolished
• in towns and the countryside power was given to local soviets
• the peace decree: they said they would pull Russia out of the war at any cost
• the land decree: the land owned by he tsar, other landowners and the church, and gave it to the peasants
• the workers decree: workers would gain control of factories and a new 8 hour working day was introduced

Question 22

What were the reasons for the civil war?

Answer 22

The opposition to the Bolsheviks (reds) were know as the white they were made up of:

• kerensky and his troops wanted to restore the P.G
• kornilov and denikin were monarchists fighting to get the tsar back
• troops from the the allies (Britain, France, Japan and the USA) were angry and Russia for pulling out of the war and were also against communism

Question 23

What was the Bolsheviks response to war?

Answer 23

• they enlarged the red army
• they continued the cheka’s red terror against political opponents
• they introduced war communism and took control of all the food and distributed it to the army first

Question 24

Why did the Bolsheviks win the civil war?

Answer 24

• war communism supplied the red army as efficiently as possible under the circumstances
• they clamped down on resistances unlike the P.G, the Cheka made open resistance very difficult and dangerous
• Trotsky was a good army leader
• Trotsky kept moral between the soldiers high
• they made sure that the troops believed in the Bolshevik ideas they were fighting for
• they were in the centre of the fighting so it was easier to move men around
• the whites did not work together they all had separate motives
• not all of the white soldiers wanted to fight
• the whites did not treat their soldiers well

Question 25

What was war communism and when did it begin?

Answer 25

-May 1918
The main elements were:
-ending the market for food, peasants could no longer sell their own crops they had to let the state take them and only keep a small amount
-the state took control of the industry, they made sure only things for he war were produced
-the state had total control of the banks
-the state cut back on people’s rights and banned strikes using the red terror to destroy opposition

Question 26

What was the NEP?

Answer 26

• it was a more capitalist approach to communism
• money was re-introduced and workers were paid wages again
• the state stopped taking crops from peasants if they grew more then they needed they could sell it for a profit. But they had to pay the state 10% of the profit money
• workers with less then 20 workers were no longer owned by the state
• the factories were working again with experts brought in from other countries

Question 27

When did Lenin die?

Answer 27

1924

Question 28

Who was purged during the purges?

Answer 28

• the politburo
• the communist party
• teachers
• engineers, scientists and industrial workers
• the armed forces
• even the secret police

Question 29

What was a sovkozy?

Answer 29

Large State Farm run by a manager

Question 30

What was a kolkhozy?

Answer 30

A farm run by a committee of peasants

Question 31

What was the cult of Stalin?

Answer 31

• his supporters made Stalin the forefront of life in the Soviet Union
• he was in book and newspapers even towns were named after him