Soviet Union History

Question 1

What was the Russian Revolution?

Answer 1

The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government and the establishment of the USSR following two successive revolutions and a bloody civil war.

Question 2

How did the February Revolution begin?

Answer 2

After serious military losses in WWI, the Russian Army begun to mutiny. Army leaders and high ranking officials were convinced that if Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, the domestic unrest would subside. Nicholas agreed and stepped down, ushering in a new government led by the Russian Duma (parliament) which became the Russian Provisional Government.

Question 2

How did the February Revolution begin?

Answer 2

After serious military losses in WWI, the Russian Army begun to mutiny. Army leaders and high ranking officials were convinced that if Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, the domestic unrest would subside. Nicholas agreed and stepped down, ushering in a new government led by the Russian Duma (parliament) which became the Russian Provisional Government.

Question 3

Who did this Russian Provisional Government cater to?

Answer 3

the interests of prominent capitalists, as well as the Russian nobility and aristocracy.

Question 4

What caused the popularization of the Bolshevik movement during the existence of this provisional government?

Answer 4

Catering to the proletariat, the usage of the slogan “peace, land and bread” which promised to cease war with Germany, give land to the peasantry, and end the famine caused by Russia’s involvement in WWI.

Question 5

What actions did the Provisional Government take that provoked the October Revolution?

Answer 5

The continuation of Russia’s participatory engagement with WWI despite it’s radical unpopularity, which presented the Bolsheviks a justification to advance the revolution.

Question 6

Who were the Red Guards?

Answer 6

The Bolsheviks merged various workers’ militias loyal to them (such as factory workers, peasants and partially of soldiers and sailors for “protection of the soviet power”) into Red Guards, which would be capable of revolution.

Question 7

What was the October Revolution?

Answer 7

The volatile situation in Russia reached its climax with the October Revolution, which was a Bolshevik armed insurrection by workers and soldiers in Petrograd that successfully overthrew the Provisional Government, transferring all its authority to the Bolsheviks.

Question 8

Why did the Bolsheviks relocate the national capitol to Moscow?

Answer 8

Because of pressure from German military advancements and offenses.

Question 9

What was the title of the government that the Bolsheviks had initially established?

Answer 9

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR)

Question 10

What was the fundamental objective of this government?

Answer 10

the process of reorganizing the former empire into the world’s first socialist state, to practice soviet democracy on a national and international scale.

Question 11

What was the objective of Cheka, the secret police that the Bolsheviks established?

Answer 11

a revolutionary security service to weed out, execute, or punish those considered to be “enemies of the people” in campaigns called the red terror, consciously modeled on those of the French Revolution.

Question 12

What was the Red Terror?

Answer 12

a campaign of political repression and executions carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka. The Red Terror was modeled on the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, and sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power.

Question 13

What was the Russian Civil War?

Answer 13

A Russian Civil War that was oriented towards tearing Russia apart for three years – between 1918 and 1921. The civil war occurred because after November 1917, many groups had formed that opposed Lenin’s Bolsheviks. These groups included monarchists, militarists, and, for a short time, foreign nations.

Question 14

Who were the participants of the Civil War?

Answer 14

The white guard and red guard

Question 15

Who were the participants of the Civil War?

Answer 15

The white guard and red guard

Question 16

Who were the White Army?

Answer 16

independence movements, monarchists, liberals, and other socialist factions opposed to the Bolsheviks.

Question 17

Who was Leon Trotsky?

Answer 17

The man responsible for training and transitioning the Red Guard into the Red Army; the official military militia organized under the RSFSR and after 1923, the USSR.

Question 17

Who was Leon Trotsky?

Answer 17

The man responsible for training and transitioning the Red Guard into the Red Army; the official military militia organized under the RSFSR and after 1923, the USSR.

Question 18

When did the Civil War and Revolution end?

Answer 18

in 1923, when the last anti-bolshevik opposition forces collapsed.

Question 19

What independent republics began an integration with the RSFSR?

Answer 19

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus

Question 20

What was the New Economic Policy?

Answer 20

was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include “a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control,” while socialized state enterprises would operate on “a profit basis.”

Question 21

When did Lenin die?

Answer 21

1924

Question 22

How did Lenin die?

Answer 22

Lenin suffered a concatenation of strokes as a reverberation of a failed assassination attempt made in 1918. In January 21st, 1924, he suffered a fatal stroke.

Question 23

When was Stalin appointed Leader of the USSR?

Answer 23

After Lenin’s death in 1924

Question 24

What was the first Five Year Plan?

Answer 24

A conglomeration of objectives and economics ambitions that were required to be fulfilled by the newly established Command Economy of Joseph Stalin. The policies were centered around rapid industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture, accompanied with the near complete elimination of private industry that had allowed under the NEP.

Question 25

How did the party leadership mobilize support for industrialization?

Answer 25

The usage of propaganda

Question 26

What was the collectivization process?

Answer 26

The aspiration that was outlined in the Five Year Plan to eradicate the private ownership of means of production in the agrarian and agricultural sector and to collectivize farmland.

Question 27

What was the purpose of the collectivization process?

Answer 27

To full realize and implement a compete collective ownership of the means of production, in addition to the apprehension that the collectivization of the agricultural sector would ameliorate the crisis of agricultural distribution and enhance the access of raw materials that the soviets acquired for the purpose of fueling mass industrialization with the proper materials.

Question 28

What was the Holodomor?

Answer 28

a man-made famine that emerged in 32’-33’ as a reactionary ramification of the collectivization of agriculture and the projects of the five year plan. estimated deaths average approximately 5-10 million individuals died due to starvation and famine-related diseases

Question 29

Provide an explanation of cannibalism being a feature of the Holodomor.

Answer 29

Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was “not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you.” The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did.

The Soviet regime printed posters declaring: “To eat your own children is a barbarian act.”: 225  More than 2,500 people were convicted of cannibalism during the Holodomor.

Question 30

What were the consequences of the collectivization process?

Answer 30

Mass shortages of the food supply and the realization of a famine in Ukraine.

Question 31

Who did Stalin blame for the famine?

Answer 31

The kulaks who maintained the previous private ownership of the farms. Allegedly, not all the grain of the collectivized farms had been accumulated and sent to the government, ostensibly, there existed kulaks who were hoarding grains to feed themselves and their families.

Question 32

What was dekulakization?

Answer 32

the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of kulaks (prosperous peasants) and their families.

Question 33

What was dekulakization?

Answer 33

the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of kulaks (prosperous peasants) and their families.

Question 34

How many kulaks were sent to the gulag?

Answer 34

perhaps some 5 million people

Question 35

What was the gulag

Answer 35

The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps established during Joseph Stalin’s long reign as dictator of the Soviet Union.

Question 36

What was the Decree about the Protection of Socialist Property?

Answer 36

punishment for theft of kolkhoz or cooperative property was the death sentence, which “under extenuating circumstances” could be replaced by at least ten years of incarceration.

Question 37

What was Article 107 of the USSR criminal code?

Answer 37

the legal means by which the government acquired grain; this act punished the kulaks decision to pick up individual grains from the collective fields after harvesting, resulting in execution or incarceration in the gulag labor system for 10 years.

Question 38

What was the maxim by Marx that was greatly relevant to the USSR?

Answer 38

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Question 39

What was the relationship between forced labor and industrialization?

Answer 39

The communists exploited forced labor to effectuate their mass industrialization aspirations.

Question 40

Why were the russians susceptible to communism so heavily?

Answer 40

Because they were the last major empire to endure secularization