1E.1 Communist government in the USSR, 1917–85 Quiz: Pearson Edexcel History, Unit 5

The 20 questions

1. Which 1921 Tenth Party Congress measure banned internal political groups within the Communist Party?

   • War Communism
   • The Red Terror
   • New Economic Policy
   • Ban on factions

2. Which position, assumed by Stalin in 1922, allowed him to control key party appointments?

   • General Secretary
   • Premier
   • Commissar for Nationalities
   • Chairman of Sovnarkom

3. What was the primary method used during Stalin's Great Purge in the 1930s?

   • Mass executions
   • Economic boycotts
   • Forced deportation
   • Military demobilisation

4. Who led the NKVD secret police at the height of the Great Purge in 1937–38?

   • Genrikh Yagoda
   • Yuri Andropov
   • Lavrentiy Beria
   • Nikolai Yezhov

5. What did Nikita Khrushchev primarily denounce in his 1956 Secret Speech?

   • State atheism
   • Cult of personality
   • Military spending
   • Collectivisation policy

6. Which Soviet leader presided over the period of 'stability' and growing political stagnation from 1964 to 1982?

   • Yuri Andropov
   • Konstantin Chernenko
   • Leonid Brezhnev
   • Nikita Khrushchev

7. Which leader took power in March 1985, initiating major political and economic reforms?

   • Yuri Andropov
   • Leonid Brezhnev
   • Konstantin Chernenko
   • Mikhail Gorbachev

8. Which organ held supreme executive and policymaking power within the Soviet Communist Party?

   • Supreme Soviet
   • Politburo
   • Sovnarkom
   • Central Committee

9. Which organisation carried out state terror and executions against class enemies under Lenin?

   • KGB
   • NKVD
   • Cheka
   • Red Guards

10. Which event occurred first among these milestones in Soviet history?

    • Brezhnev Doctrine
    • Khrushchev's Secret Speech
    • Lenin's death
    • The Great Purge

11. What system of governance was restored immediately after Stalin's death in 1953?

    • Collective leadership
    • Military junta
    • Presidential republic
    • One-man dictatorship

12. What was a key feature of the 1936 Stalin Constitution?

    • Permitted opposition parties
    • Abolished the Politburo
    • Ended Soviet federalism
    • Guaranteed party supremacy

13. What main group presented the strongest resistance to Khrushchev's political reforms?

    • Red Army soldiers
    • Party bureaucracy
    • Foreign diplomats
    • Industrial workers

14. Who was primarily targeted by the political purges overseen by Yagoda and Yezhov?

    • Orthodox priests
    • Foreign diplomats
    • Party and army officials
    • Collective farmers

15. What was the primary purpose of the Soviet nomenklatura system?

    • Military conscription lists
    • Economic central planning
    • Key party appointments
    • Agricultural collectivisation

16. Which two major reform policies did Mikhail Gorbachev introduce in the late 1980s?

    • Five-year plans and Gosplan
    • NEP and war communism
    • Collectivisation and dekulakisation
    • Glasnost and perestroika

17. What principle required Soviet party members to strictly obey decisions once voted on?

    • Democratic centralism
    • Socialist realism
    • Command economy
    • Collective leadership

18. Which term describes the era of political stability and economic stagnation under Leonid Brezhnev?

    • Era of Stagnation
    • Perestroika
    • De-Stalinisation
    • The Great Terror

19. Which 1956 speech by Khrushchev initiated the official Soviet policy of de-Stalinisation?

    • The April Theses
    • The Secret Treaty
    • The Secret Speech
    • The Peace Decree

20. Which three reform concepts formed the core of Mikhail Gorbachev's modernisation programme?

    • Gosplan, Sovnarkhoz, Kolkhoz
    • Nomenklatura, Apparat, Politburo
    • Dekulakisation, Stakhanovism, Collectivisation
    • Glasnost, perestroika, demokratizatsiya

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