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25 Biggest Cities of the Soviet Union

Can you name the 25 most populous cities in the Soviet Union in 1989?
Quiz by wasserwand
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Last updated: December 10, 2019
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First submittedSeptember 19, 2015
Times taken58,310
Average score48.0%
Rating4.91
5:00
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Population
City
8,967,332
Moscow
5,023,500
Leningrad
(St. Petersburg)
2,587,945
Kiev (Kyiv)
2,079,000
Tashkent
1,607,000
Minsk
1,593,970
Kharkov (Kharkiv)
1,438,133
Gorky
(Nizhny Novgorod)
1,436,516
Novosibirsk
1,364,621
Sverdlovsk
(Yekaterinburg)
Population
City
1,259,692
Tbilisi
1,254,460
Kuybyshev
(Samara)
1,178,000
Dnipropetrovsk
(Dnipro)
1,150,055
Baku
1,148,418
Omsk
1,141,777
Chelyabinsk
1,115,371
Odessa
1,109,100
Donetsk
Population
City
1,100,372
Yerevan
1,094,378
Kazan
1,090,944
Perm
1,082,052
Ufa
1,071,900
Alma-Ata
(Almaty)
1,022,578
Volgograd
1,019,305
Rostov-on-Don
915,106
Riga
+18
Level 71
Aug 17, 2016
Cool idea.
+3
Level 76
Sep 6, 2016
Thanks :)
+22
Level 77
Sep 18, 2019
that's "cool idea, Comrade" to you
+21
Level 73
Sep 19, 2019
Don't you mean хорошая идея, товарищ
+9
Level 68
Jun 16, 2020
"cool idea" to Us
+11
Level 81
May 8, 2018
Accept Stalingrad for Volgograd?
+8
Level 76
Sep 23, 2018
The cities' current names and names in 1989 are accepted. Volgograd was named Stalingrad between 1925 and 1961 and it was named Zarizyn before that.
+21
Level 70
Oct 20, 2019
JetPunk in general has a habit of accepting all labels provided that their reference is correct, within reason. I think the standard would be to accept Stalingrad since a number of people might think of it that way and it's clearly referring to the right place (even with a slightly anachronistic label). I tried Stalingrad first and, though I knew it was now Volgagrad, didn't try that since I assumed Stalingrad would have triggered it in a JetPunk quiz. Just a thought.
+2
Level 82
Nov 22, 2019
Zarizyn is the German name at the time
+1
Level 66
Nov 29, 2023
No, it's a Tatar name from 'sari su' - 'yellow/beautiful river'. But it sounded like a Russian word 'tsaritsa' - a tsarina, female monarch, so it became 'Tsaritsyn'
+5
Level 66
Aug 11, 2018
Interesting changes: Leningrad - St Petersburg, Kuybyshev - Samara, Gorky - Nizhny Novogrod, Sverdlovsk - Yekaterinburg and Alma Ata - Almaty.
+5
Level 75
Mar 2, 2022
I was passing through Keene, New York (pop. app. 1,000) in 2013 and stopped at the library, which I was interested to see was built the year before Maxim Gorky wrote his most famous novel (Mother) while in Keene. I doubt he wrote any portion of it in the library, but still, I asked the librarian if there was anything there commemorating Gorky's time there. She asked if I had checked the shelves under "G."
+4
Level 82
Sep 19, 2019
Cool quiz. Missed four. One in Ukraine, one in Tatarstan, and two in Siberia.
+3
Level 77
Sep 19, 2019
Great one!
+3
Level 38
Sep 23, 2019
Very nice quiz! Did not figure out 1 :(
+5
Level 66
Mar 8, 2020
not even moscow?
+3
Level 43
Mar 5, 2022
Reread the sentence.
+9
Level 38
Oct 20, 2019
Bald and Bankrupt would like to know your location...
+6
Level 82
Feb 16, 2020
He helps a lot with the geography of this region.
+5
Level 64
Oct 20, 2019
Accept 'Dnepopetrovsk' for 'Dnipopetrovsk'? (As in the Russian spelling)
+17
Level ∞
Oct 20, 2019
Okay. But I'd type Dnipro personally.
+4
Level 82
Feb 16, 2020
Fun quiz. Much easier than trying to get a similar number of Russian cities. The other SSRs add a few more globally well known cities to the list.
+3
Level 66
Mar 8, 2020
got 9, still below average (12) but I am pretty proud of that :) recognised 5 more, but realistically could have only gotten 2 of those myself.
+3
Level 89
Mar 21, 2020
8 of these became capitals of independent countries within a few years.
+2
Level 73
Apr 29, 2020
lol I legit forgot to put Moscow and clicked give up when I thought I put all the ones I know. Should've double checked...
+6
Level 59
Dec 3, 2020
Maybe you could put a column next to each city for which SSR it comes from? I think it would be pretty cool considering you would expect it to all be in the RSSR, but some of the largest cities were in Ukraine, Belarus, etc.
+2
Level 59
Jul 21, 2021
Firs try. Easy. Get ot of here.
+1
Level 39
Nov 19, 2021
21/25
+2
Level 59
Dec 22, 2021
Novosibirsk is officially the hardest word for me to spell, as I spent like 1 minute trying to spell it and never got it
+2
Level 44
Mar 1, 2022
Not as hard as Nizhny Novgorod lol although that's mainly just remembering lol
+2
Level 60
Nov 29, 2023
Nizhny is easier for me.
+3
Level 67
Mar 1, 2022
Kharkov will probably be higher soon
+1
Level 68
Mar 1, 2022
Yeah, got it on my second try (first was months ago) for the obvious reasons :(
+20
Level 53
Mar 1, 2022
💙💛
+8
Level 67
Mar 2, 2022
💙💛
+6
Level 59
May 16, 2022
No.
+4
Level 65
Jun 8, 2023
Yes.
+2
Level 50
Nov 28, 2023
🇵🇸
+4
Level 55
Mar 1, 2022
really cool, a version with the map?
+8
Level 37
Mar 4, 2022
Slava Ukraini
+12
Level 59
May 16, 2022
Let's refrain from starting a Jetpunk comment section war. Politics generally isn't a thing to bring up in public because of controversy.
+1
Level 68
Jan 19, 2023
If only could spell Tbilisi I would have gotten 25/25 :')
+1
Level 81
Mar 6, 2023
I will be extremely nitpicky, but I believe Kyiv should be written in smaller font, like the other new names.
+3
Level 59
Mar 10, 2023
Technically that change is just a change in interpretation of how to write the city name with the latin alphabet, not a change in the actual spelling if its name.

More specifically, it’s changing from being based off of the Russian name (Киев) to the Ukrainian name (Київ)

+1
Level 50
Nov 29, 2023
Is it just me, or did other comrades try Chernobyl?