Lesson 1H.2.1

1H.2.1 The Soviet Union, 1917–1964 Quiz: AQA History, Unit 8

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson 1H.2.1, The Soviet Union, 1917–1964: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA History (7042), Unit 8: 1H Tsarist and Communist Russia, 1855–1964, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. Which treaty of March 1918 took Russia out of the First World War, at the cost of large territorial losses?

    • The Treaty of Rapallo
    • The Treaty of Riga
    • The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
    • The Treaty of Versailles

  2. Which secret police organisation, created in December 1917 by Lenin's government, was used to suppress opponents?

    • The Duma Guard
    • The Cheka
    • The NKVD
    • The Okhrana

  3. Which policy of 1921 allowed limited private trade and small private enterprise, replacing War Communism?

    • The Five Year Plan, which set rapid industrial targets and collectivised farms under Stalin from 1928
    • The New Economic Policy
    • The Decree on Land, which abolished private landholding and gave all estates to the village soviets in 1917
    • The Kulak Campaign, which removed the richer peasants and confiscated their grain to feed the cities

  4. Which sailors' revolt of March 1921, put down by the Red Army, was a major challenge to Bolshevik rule?

    • The Lena massacre
    • The Tambov rising
    • The Kronstadt rising
    • The Kiev uprising

  5. Which post did Stalin take in 1922, giving him control of party appointments and a key base of power?

    • General Secretary of the Communist Party
    • Chairman of the Cheka
    • Commissar for Foreign Affairs
    • President of the Soviet of Nationalities

  6. Which plan of 1928 set targets for industrial growth and was the first step in Stalin's economic transformation?

    • The Marshall Plan, which gave American aid to Western Europe to rebuild economies after the Second World War
    • The Dawes Plan, which restructured German war reparations and gave Germany a large foreign loan in 1924
    • The Young Plan, which reduced the total German reparations bill and set a new payment schedule in 1929
    • The First Five Year Plan

  7. Which policy of the early 1930s forced peasants into collective farms and led to a catastrophic famine in 1932 to 1933?

    • Privatisation
    • Collectivisation
    • Nationalisation
    • Decolonisation

  8. Which murder of 1934 gave Stalin the pretext for a wider purge of the Communist Party?

    • The murder of Lenin
    • The assassination of Sergei Kirov
    • The assassination of Trotsky
    • The killing of Tsar Nicholas II

  9. Which 1936 to 1938 series of trials of former Bolsheviks led to the execution of many of Lenin's old comrades?

    • The Tokyo trials
    • The Moscow show trials
    • The Nuremberg trials
    • The Doctors' Plot trials

  10. Which pact of August 1939 between Germany and the Soviet Union divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence?

    • The Locarno Pact
    • The Tripartite Pact
    • The Anglo-Soviet Treaty
    • The Nazi-Soviet Pact

  11. Which German invasion of June 1941 brought the Soviet Union into the Second World War against Germany?

    • Operation Torch
    • Operation Overlord
    • Operation Barbarossa
    • Operation Sea Lion

  12. Which battle of 1942 to 1943 on the Volga marked the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front?

    • Moscow
    • Leningrad
    • Kursk
    • Stalingrad

  13. Which Soviet leader, who died in March 1953, had ruled the Soviet Union as a dictator since the late 1920s?

    • Joseph Stalin
    • Georgy Malenkov
    • Lavrentiy Beria
    • Nikita Khrushchev

  14. Which speech of February 1956 by Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes and launched de-Stalinisation?

    • The Cuban Address, which Khrushchev gave in 1962 to announce the removal of the missiles from the island
    • The Hungarian Declaration, which Khrushchev issued in 1956 to announce the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Budapest
    • The Speech on the Virgin Lands, which set out the agricultural plan for the grain harvests of Kazakhstan in 1954
    • The Secret Speech to the 20th Party Congress

  15. Which 1954 campaign opened up large areas of Kazakhstan and Siberia to grain cultivation, one of Khrushchev's major agricultural policies?

    • The Five Year Plan of 1928
    • The Virgin Lands scheme
    • The Dawes scheme
    • The Kulak scheme

  16. Which 1962 crisis, in which the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba, brought the superpowers closest to nuclear war?

    • The Berlin Crisis, which ended with the building of the Berlin Wall and the closure of the sector border in 1961
    • The Korean War, which ended in an armistice along the 38th parallel after three years of fighting in 1953
    • The Suez Crisis, which ended with British and French withdrawal from Egypt under US and Soviet pressure in 1956
    • The Cuban Missile Crisis

  17. How many years separated the October Revolution of 1917 and the death of Lenin in 1924?

    • 9 years
    • 7 years
    • 5 years
    • 11 years

  18. How many years separated the death of Stalin in 1953 and the removal of Khrushchev in 1964?

    • 9 years
    • 11 years
    • 13 years
    • 15 years

  19. How many years separated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918 and the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939?

    • 17 years
    • 29 years
    • 21 years
    • 25 years

  20. Which statement best assesses the Soviet economy under Stalin, as described in the spec's theme of economic change?

    • Rapid industrialisation was achieved at a heavy human cost, with forced labour and famine, as well as reliance on central planning
    • The Soviet economy relied entirely on private enterprise and free markets, which Stalin never tried to replace
    • The economy produced consumer goods in abundance for the whole population, which was the chief aim of the plans
    • The economy grew slowly with no state planning or industrial targets, which left the country dependent on private firms

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