Soviet and Russian Government Trivia

1. What was Khrushchev's first name?

From Quiz Khrushchev

Answer: Nikita

"Nikita" is also a great Elton John song. (Imagine Elton singing "Yuri, I need you so...?") The other three options are first names of other Soviet leaders (Andropov, Chernenko, and Brezhnev...can you match them up???)

From Quiz Vladimir Lenin

Answer: Uljanov & Ulyanov & Ulianov

Vladimir Ilich was born to the Ulyanov family on 10th April 1870.

From Quiz Life of Lenin

Answer: Marxist

Russia was a very backward country at the begninning of the 20th century and Lenin believed that Marxism offered the best solution to the country's problems.

From Quiz Josef Stalin - "Man Of Steel"

Answer: Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

Stalin came from Gori, which is now in the Republic of Georgia. He was born on 21st December 1879. In 1910 he adopted the pseudonym Josef Stalin, Stalin meaning "a man of steel." Both his parents were Georgian peasants neither of whom spoke Russian.

From Quiz Joseph Stalin

Answer: Man of Steel

Stalin chose this modest name to let the Russian public what they could expect in the future.

From Quiz The Rise and Fall of Leon Trotsky

Answer: Ukraine

Leon Trotsky entered the world as Lev Davidovich Bronstein on 7 November 1879. That's 25 October if you're still using the old Russian calendar. He was born at Yanovka, a farming settlement in what was called the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire. That area is now in modern Ukraine. The distinction matters because Ukraine was not an independent country at the time. It was just another of the many regions that made up the massive Russian Empire, and Trotsky's childhood unfolded along its multilingual, multicultural southern frontier. His revolutionary career took him almost everywhere except anywhere comfortable. Arrests, exile in Siberia, daring escapes, years in London, Paris, Vienna, New York, and eventually Petrograd all would end up on his lengthy résumé.

From Quiz Tidbits on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Answer: Ulianov & Ulyanov & Uljanov

His birth name was Vlaidimir Ilyich Ulyanov.

From Quiz Stalin Before the Russian Revolution

Answer: Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili

Stalin's father was a drunken cobbler called Vissarion Djugashvili and his mother (who doted on her son) was called Ekaterina Geladze.

From Quiz Khrushchev

Answer: Kursk Oblast

Stalin was from Georgia, and Cher is from Armenia. (Stalin was a Soviet leader, Cher is not). Khrushchev was born on April 17, 1894, in the village of Kalinovka in the Kursk Oblast, near the border with Ukraine.

From Quiz Vladimir Lenin

Answer: Ilya

Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov had a job as Inspector of Popular Schools and was determined on educating his children properly. Alexander was Lenin's elder brother. Dmitri was Lenin's younger brother. Nicholas was the name of the last tsar of the Russian Empire.

From Quiz Life of Lenin

Answer: 1902

It was first presented at a conference in London where the Social Democrats (SDs) had their meetings.

From Quiz Josef Stalin - "Man Of Steel"

Answer: Tbilisi Theological Seminary

Yes, it is true. Stalin initially studied to become a priest. He learnt the Russian language at the Gori church school which he attended between 1888 and 1894.

From Quiz Joseph Stalin

Answer: Koba

Stalin used the code name 'Koba' in the pre-revolutionary days and in his time in exile.

From Quiz The Rise and Fall of Leon Trotsky

Answer: South Russian Workers' Union

While still in his teens, Leon Trotsky got involved with underground revolutionary politics in Nikolayev (now Mykolaiv, Ukraine). In 1897, he helped organize the South Russian Workers' Union. It was a small but passionate socialist group that sought to spread Marxist ideas among industrial workers. It didn't last long. The Tsar's secret police cracked down on the organization within a year. That led to Trotsky being arrested in 1898. He spent more than two years in prison before being exiled to Siberia. While there, he continued studying Marxism, and Lev Davidovich Bronstein adopted the pseudonym "Trotsky". In 1907, Trotsky escaped. It was planned in advance and occurred during his transit to a different remote frozen penal settlement. Trotsky feigned illness to delay his transport, giving him time to coordinate with a local guide. After escaping, he made his way toward the Ural region, where he bought fake documentation and a train ticket. Just another traveler.

From Quiz Tidbits on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Answer: Brother hanged

His brother Aleksandr was hanged in 1887 for participating in a plot to kill the current Czar, Alexander III.

From Quiz Stalin Before the Russian Revolution

Answer: Being present at the public hanging of two criminals

Two Georgian bandits (Sandro Khubuluri and Tato Jioshvili) were hung in Gori on 13 February 1892. Stalin was there because his school had taken all the pupils to witness the execution. The hangings were badly carried out and both men took quite a while to die. Stalin sympathised with the bandits and saw the executions as an example of the oppression of Imperial Russia.

From Quiz Khrushchev

Answer: 1918

Khrushchev joined the year after the Revolution, 1918. At that time, Russia was in the midst of a bloody civil war and the disasterous economic policy of Lenin known as "War Communism". Khrushchev's rise was quite rapid, becoming political commissar during the war in the early 1920s.

From Quiz Vladimir Lenin

Answer: Simbirsk

Simbirsk is in south-east Russia lying on the Volga river. Myshkin is located in the Yaroslavl Oblast, which lies to the northeast of the Moscow Oblast. The city of Putchezh, also in the Ivanovo Oblast, is a port on the west side of the Volga. Krasnoarmeisk lies very close to Moscow and is a centre for scientific research.

From Quiz Life of Lenin

Answer: Split of Mensheviks and Bolsheviks

A few of the Social Democrats disagreed with Lenin's proposed amendments to Marxist theory. Marxism held that history is a science, subject to laws and therefore to determinism (or inevitability). Marx had said that feudalism was followed by capitalism, which in turn would be superseded by socialism. However, Lenin wanted to bypass capitalism.

From Quiz Josef Stalin - "Man Of Steel"

Answer: December, 1911

Josef Stalin escaped from exile in Vologda on 29th February, 1912.

From Quiz Joseph Stalin

Answer: General Secretary

Before Stalin the post of General Secretary was not highly regarded, but Stalin quickly showed how important it could be networking with the grass roots and by appointing his men to posts throughout the party. (In his will, Lenin recommended that he be removed - but the Poltiburo left him in place, with disastrous results for most of them).

From Quiz The Rise and Fall of Leon Trotsky

Answer: Bolshevik

After escaping exile, Trotsky spent the next decade touring Vienna, Paris, Switzerland, Spain, and the United States while writing, organizing, and generally arguing for revolutionary socialism. He tried to bring the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks together, refusing to commit fully to either version of socialism. The events of 1917 changed everything. Trotsky returned to Russia after the February Revolution and quickly found that his positions had moved much closer to Lenin's than to any other socialist faction. Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks, and his own organization, the Mezhraiontsy (Inter-District Group), merged with the party in August 1917. After just a couple months, he had become one of the party's leading figures, serving as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and playing a major role in planning and directing the October Revolution. Revolutionary politics, as it turns out, can be tricky. Trotsky has spent almost as much time criticizing Lenin over the years as agreeing with him.

From Quiz Tidbits on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Answer: Law

From Quiz Stalin Before the Russian Revolution

Answer: A priest

Stalin's mother worked hard, and relied on the kindness of family and friends, in order to afford to send him to the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tiflis. Although he was an extremely bright student, he was expelled for missing his exams in 1899.

From Quiz Khrushchev

Answer: Trotsky, Kirov and Bukharin

Khrushchev was appointed to a political post in the Ukraine following his training in the mid 1920s, under the leadership of Kagonovich. Khrushchev's career took off with Stalin's blessing (it was not a good idea to oppose him in the 1930s!) and by 1935 Khrushchev was second in command of the Moscow Communist Party.

From Quiz Vladimir Lenin

Answer: New Economic Policy

The return of a free market brought on by the NEP led to the emergence of "nepmen" who soon controlled the majority of retail trade in Russia. The NEP brought on a recovery of the economy in both rural and urban areas.

From Quiz Josef Stalin - "Man Of Steel"

Answer: 1922

Stalin understood that "cadres are everything"; if you control the personnel, you control the organization. He shrewdly used his new position to consolidate power in exactly this way--by controlling all appointments, setting agendas, and moving around Party staff.

From Quiz Joseph Stalin

Answer: He did not recommend anyone as his successor

Lenin critisised Trotsky and Stalin specifically and recommended that Stalin be removed from his position as General Secretary. No one individual was preferred.

From Quiz The Rise and Fall of Leon Trotsky

Answer: Foreign Affairs

Lenin was quick to fill the top posts in the new Soviet government after the October Revolution, and Trotsky became the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. It suited him. He was a talented writer and speaker. The catch was that the position meant having to negotiate peace with Germany. All the while the Russians were fighting each other, they were still combatants in the First World War. Trotsky led the Soviet delegation at the peace talks in Brest-Litovsk and tried to delay the whole thing with his curious policy of "neither war nor peace". This was his way of saying that Russia would unilaterally stop fighting without signing a treaty. Since things don't actually work that way in real life, Germany simply resumed its offensive, forcing the Bolsheviks to accept even harsher terms. In protest of the treaty, Trotsky resigned and was made commissar and chairman of the Supreme Military Council of Russia.

From Quiz Tidbits on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Answer: Nadezhda

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