50) In which Union Republic was Russification most intense?
A) Kazakhstan
B) Belarus
C) Ukraine
D) Georgia
E) Uzbekistan
51) Most average Russians living in the city live in what kind of housing?
A) in a dacha in the country
B) in a single-family home in the suburbs
C) in a high rise apartment
D) in a boarding house
E) in a duplex
52) What is the shape of the land-use zones in the Russian Domain?
A) square
B) triangular
C) linear
D) circular
E) hexagonal
53) What type of work do most Arctic residents undertake?
A) raising cattle
B) farming and agriculture
C) working in the energy and natural resource economy
D) science and research
E) small service businesses such as cafes and retail stores
54) What was the policy of the former Soviet Union (USSR) regarding religion within its
borders?
A) The USSR established Russian Orthodox Christianity as the official state religion.
B) The USSR permitted freedom of religion for Christians, but not for Jews or Muslims.
C) The USSR was tolerant of all religious practices.
D) The USSR discouraged all religion and even persecuted religious practice.
E) The USSR had no policy regarding religion.
55) What language group dominates in the Russian Domain?
A) Slavic
B) Altaic
C) Eskimo–Aleut
D) Finno-Ugric
E) Tibetan
56) The Russian Empire had its origins as a small principality in the vicinity of which Russian
city?
A) Chernobyl
B) Kiev
C) St. Petersburg
D) Volgograd
E) Moscow
57) Who were the Cossacks of the Russian Domain?
A) Slavic-speaking, semi-nomadic Christians
B) descendants of Mongolian horsemen and women
C) Swedish warriors
D) Estonian pastoralists
E) Ukrainian hunters
58) In what part of Russia are Finno-Ugric speaking peoples primarily located?
A) Eastern
B) Southern
C) Western
D) Northern
E) Central
59) Which of the following statements best reflects religion in the post-Soviet era?
A) There has been a religious revival.
B) Religious persecution has worsened.
C) Roman Catholicism has become the dominant religion in the region.
D) There has been a sharp increase in the number of Jewish people living in the region.
E) Russia has become a theocracy.
60) What was socialist realism of the Soviet era in the Russian Domain?
A) a writing style that is similar to today‘s “reality TV“
B) an acting style in the Soviet domain
C) a musical style that emphasized traditional melodies, combined with classical instrumentation
D) an art style devoted to the realistic depiction of workers challenging nature or struggling
against capitalism
E) a holistic approach to the arts in the former Soviet Union
61) In what Russian region has Islamic fundamentalism increased its presence?
A) Siberian region
B) Caucus region
C) Western region
D) Arctic region
E) the border between Russia and Finland
62) Who were the original founders of Russia?
A) northward moving hunters from Ukraine
B) eastward moving pastoralists from Estonia
C) westward moving Mongolians on horseback
D) Chinese nomadic farmers
E) southward moving warriors from Sweden
63) The conquest of Siberia
A) was primarily carried out by Cossacks.
B) began in earnest in the late 1300s.
C) was complete when Russia defeated Japan in the Russo–Japanese War.
D) was initiated for security reasons.
E) involved war with China.
64) What is the language of the Volga Tatars of the Russian Domain?
A) Kurdish
B) Turkish
C) Finnish
D) Chinese
E) Slavic
65) Approximately what percentage of Russian citizens claim a Russian linguistic identity?
A) 50%
B) 65%
C) 80%
D) 95%
E) 100%
66) Where were most of Russia’s major territorial gains in the nineteenth century?
A) Eastern Europe
B) Central Asia
C) Northern Europe
D) the Pacific region of Asia
E) the Baltic Republics
67) In the Russian Domain, what non-Christian religion has the greatest number of believers?
A) Hinduism
B) Islam
C) Buddhism
D) Judaism
E) Animism
68) Which two countries were the primary rivals in the Cold War?
A) China and the Soviet Union
B) the United States and the Soviet Union
C) Germany and the Soviet Union
D) Russia and the Ukraine
E) the United States and Russia
69) What has become of democracy in Russia in the post-Soviet era?
A) There has been a steady growth in democracy and civil liberties.
B) There was a general flowering of democracy followed by a reduction of civil liberties since
2002.
C) There was a brief decline in democracy, followed by a steady blossoming of civil liberties
since 2000.
D) There have been no steps toward democracy.
E) There has been a steady decline in democracy since the Soviet Union broke up.
70) What was the term that Winston Churchill gave to the boundary between Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union?
A) the Metal Screen
B) the Iron Curtain
C) the Cold War
D) the Black Shutters
E) the Bamboo Curtain
71) What was the Russian policy enacted during the 1980s that meant for “greater openness”?
A) the Iron Curtain
B) Glasnost
C) Perestroika
D) Exclave
E) Cossack
72) Who was the main architect of the Soviet Union?
A) Tsar Nicholas II
B) Stalin
C) Trotsky
D) Mikhail Gorbachev
E) Lenin
73) Glasnost
A) was initiated in the aftermath of Stalin’s death.
B) called for greater openness and political participation.
C) was followed by the bloody suppression of independence movements in the Baltic region.
D) was denounced by Gorbachev.
E) was a policy of the Bolsheviks.
74) Who were the Bolsheviks?
A) the last ruling dynasty of the Russian Empire
B) the earliest settlers of Russia, who came from Sweden
C) the title given to bureaucrats who ran the former Soviet Union
D) the militia group that overthrew the former Soviet Union
E) a faction of Russian communism representing interests of industrial workers, who established
the former Soviet Union
75) What is perestroika?
A) greater openness, a policy in the 1980s that encouraged several republics to demand
independence
B) restructuring of the planned centralized economy, an early move toward a freer market
C) a policy of education improvement, in the last days of the former Soviet Union
D) the Russian word for railroad
E) improvement of the Russian environment
76) One of Putin’s early political moves was to crack down on dissidents in the Russian republic
of
A) Belarus.
B) Latvia.
C) Moldova.
D) Chechnya.
E) Siberia.
77) Which of the following countries is NOT a member of the Eurasian Economic Union?
A) Belarus
B) Kazakhstan
C) Estonia
D) Armenia
E) Russia
78) What have many of Russia’s internal autonomous areas been requesting?
A) greater connections with Moscow and the rest of Russia
B) greater autonomy
C) greater connections with China and Mongolia to the south
D) great transportation linkages to the ice-free ports of the Arctic Ocean
E) greater unity among themselves
79) Which of the following is NOT a condition of the “Russian Federation Treaty”?
A) more localized political control for Russia’s internal autonomous republics and lesser
administrative units
B) more stringent environmental regulations and standards
C) greater economic freedom for Russia’s internal autonomous republics and lesser
administrative units
D) greater freedom for Russia’s internal autonomous republics and lesser administrative units
E) weakening of Moscow’s centralized authority to collect taxes
80) Which of the following is TRUE of Russia?
A) It has allowed Chechnya to achieve independence.
B) It fought several major land battles against China along their common border in the 1990s.
C) It no longer has a seat on the UN Security Council.
D) Russia has ongoing territorial disputes with Japan.
E) It will allow all its territories to secede in 2015, if they wish to do so.
81) The doctrine of communism was based on the writings of
A) Vladimir Lenin.
B) Vladimir Putin.
C) Joseph Stalin.
D) Karl Marx.
E) Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
82) What is NOT a reason for the ongoing crisis in Ukraine?
A) Ukraine is politically unstable.
B) Ukraine has regional and cultural divisions.
C) Russia’s geopolitical ambitions and illegal presence in Crimea create tension.
D) Ukraine gave its nuclear weapons to Western powers.
E) economic civil war between European western Ukraine and Soviet eastern Ukraine
83) Which of the following is TRUE of the Russian mafia?
A) The Russian mafia has also gone global, implicated in huge money-laundering schemes
involving Russian and foreign banks.
B) The new democratic government established crackdowns on the mafia’s operations.
C) Most mafia members were either imprisoned or forced to flee the country.
D) The mafia operations that had been urban based under the Soviet system were now forced to
operate in the rural areas.
E) There was no effect.
84) What happened to the economy in the Russian Domain after the demise of the former Soviet
Union (USSR)?
A) After a decade of political and economic instability, Russia has made impressive progress in
the 21st century.
B) steady economic growth that continues today
C) unprecedented economic decline, followed by explosive growth in 2000-2001 that has
improved the economies of all countries in the region
D) unprecedented economic growth throughout the region
E) There has been no change in Russia’s economy since the demise of the Soviet Union.
85) What is the primary destination for Russian petroleum products?
A) countries in the Russian Domain
B) Eastern Europe
C) Western Europe
D) United States
E) China
86) Putin abruptly canceled the construction of the South Stream Gas Pipeline. He now wants to
export the natural gas to
A) Kazakhstan.
B) Afghanistan.
C) East Asia.
D) Pakistan.
E) the United States.
87) Russia is the world’s largest gas exporter and has ________% of the world’s natural gas
reserves.
A) 5
B) 18
C) 26
D) 42
E) 55
88) Russia has worked to maintain economic ties to former Soviet republics by creating a
counterbalance to the European Union called
A) the Russian Coalition for Trade (RCT).
B) the Soviet Trade Agreement (STA).
C) the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
D) the Former Soviet Trade System (FSTS).
E) the Russian Economic Union (REU).
89) By 2003, approximately what portion of Russian farmland had been privatized?
A) 10%
B) 30%
C) 50%
D) 90%
E) all of it
90) Discuss some of the challenges facing the Russian Domain in dealing with the legacy of the
Soviet Nuclear program.
91) Discuss what is being done to improve the environmental safety of the area around
Chernobyl.
92) Describe and explain the overall population distribution in the Russian Region.
93) Since the breakdown of the Soviet Union, how has the process of Russification been reversed
in many of the countries that were once part of the Soviet Union?
94) Discuss the recent settlement and development trends inside Russian cities. How has the
Russian city changed since the fall of the Soviet Union?
95) Describe and explain the changing environment of Arctic Russia. What impact will climate
change have on the region?
96) Where is the Crimean Peninsula, and how has the breakup of the Soviet Union changed its
identity?
97) How did the Soviet Union deal with the various minority groups within its borders? How
successful were these policies?
98) Briefly discuss some of the challenges to women since the breakdown of the Soviet Union,
including human trafficking and Internet brides?
99) Briefly discuss the efforts at privatization of the Russian economy after the breakdown of the
Soviet Union.
100) How did the breakup of the Soviet Union affect the operations of the Russian mafia? How
expansive are that mafia’s operations in Russia and the world today?
101) Briefly discuss some post-Soviet Union challenges facing Russia, including alcoholism and
corruption.