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History of Russia Quiz

Can you name these people, places, and things from Russian history?
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: December 22, 2019
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First submittedJune 30, 2014
Times taken27,023
Average score75.0%
Rating4.38
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Hint
Answer
Peninsula seized in 2014
Crimea
Country invaded in 2008
Georgia
De-facto leader since 2000
Vladimir Putin
First democratically-elected President
Boris Yeltsin
Country invaded in 1979
Afghanistan
Satellite that launched the space race
Sputnik
Pact between the USSR and
its allies in 1955
Warsaw Pact
Dictator who killed millions
but won WWII
Joseph Stalin
Siberian prison system during the
reign of the above
Gulag
First communist leader
V.I. Lenin
Hint
Answer
Communist faction that seized
power in 1917
Bolshevik
Last tsarist dynasty
Romanov
Author of "War & Peace"
Leo Tolstoy
Group that was liberated in 1861
Serfs
Conqueror who invaded
Russia in 1812
Napoleon
"Great" female empress
Catherine the Great
Tsar who moved the capital
Peter the Great
First tsar
Ivan the Terrible
Group that conquered Russia
in the 1200's
Mongols
Ancient fortified area of Moscow
Kremlin
+5
Level 92
Jul 17, 2014
Almost missed the First Tsar question because I recently learned that the first person ever to have the title was Simeon I of Bulgaria, and the last person ever to bear the title is Simeon II of Bulgaria.
+3
Level 44
Aug 6, 2014
It's the same as asking for the first king of England, and you saying there had been an earlier king in another country. True but irrevelent.
+4
Level 92
Feb 27, 2015
I don't disagree with you. Just funny how the mind gets stuck on something sometimes, and takes a while to get past.
+1
Level 33
Sep 18, 2016
I believe what he actually means is the first tsar of russia as a whole country. By all means there have been tsars before ivan the terrible, nevertheless their title was tsar of moscow, not russia.
+1
Level 59
Aug 9, 2017
Before Ivan the Terrible, the title of the ruler was Grand Prince of Moscow - Moscow was a Grand Duchy. Ivan was the first monarch with the specific title of Tsar, which he adopted in 1547, 13 years after his reign started.
+1
Level 51
Aug 6, 2014
It's kind of an exaggeration to say that Stalin won World War II.
+3
Level 31
Aug 29, 2016
Stalin won WW2 just as much as Churchill or Roosevelt. Without the USSR then the Allies wouldn't have stood a chance. Maybe with Trotsky or another leader then the USSR might have looked different, maybe less industrialised or with a smaller military. It might not have stood up to Germany. This is all speculation, but if you did have to pin down the "Winner of WW2" one one man, ridiculous as that would be, Stalin would be a good contender.
+11
Level 75
Aug 9, 2017
The Soviets were far more instrumental in defeating the Germans than the Brits, Americans, or any of the other Allies.
+4
Level 75
Jul 1, 2020
The Soviet Union lost almost as much as every other country in World War II combined. About 11 million out of 25 million. Two thirds of casualties occurred on the Eastern Front between the Soviet Union and Germany+allies. The Soviets reached Berlin first, losing more casualties in the siege than the US has lost in all wars combined. So yes, the Soviet Union won World War 2.
+1
Level 62
Dec 26, 2022
The Soviets took the most losses, but they wouldn't have been able to keep fighting without the American Lend Lease act that gave them the supplies to do so. The Soviets suffered huge production and supply issues to the point that more than half of all the equipment they used in the field was American made. Stalin and Khrushchev both stated that the USSR would have lost had it not been for the lend lease act.
+3
Level 69
Sep 12, 2017
Compare the positions of the countries at the beginning and at the end of the WWII. Who gained the most? USSR and USA. So Stalin definitely has won the WWII
+1
Level 51
Mar 8, 2024
According to AJP Taylor for most of the war the Russians were fighting four fifths of German army and never less than three quarters.

It's uncomfortable for the US and UK to acknowledge their debt to a monster like Stalin but nevertheless it's a reality.

+1
Level 20
Aug 6, 2014
6/20... Terrible, even for an Australian.
+3
Level 88
Aug 7, 2014
Thanks for giving us Tolstoy instead of Dostoyevsky (Dostoevsky) for a famous Russian author....much easier to spell!
+3
Level 88
Oct 12, 2015
or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
+2
Level 75
Aug 9, 2017
Thanks to him for giving me gulag - amazing book.
+1
Level 75
Aug 9, 2017
I went to Cavendish, Vermont a few years ago (since I was more or less in the neighbourhood), just out of curiosity, to see where Solzhenitsyn had spent nearly two decades in exile. When I went to the gas station to check if there was anything to see, my query caused a bit of a stir, highlighted (for me) by the question: "You mean that Russian guy?" The next day I was at the library in Keene, New York - built in the year before Gorky wrote his most famous novel (Mother) while staying in the tiny community. I asked the librarian if there was anything commemorating his time there. The librarian had never heard of him but did ask if I had checked the shelves under "G".
+1
Level 71
Aug 8, 2014
A great quiz, and something a bit different. Thank you very much
+5
Level 32
Aug 13, 2014
Some of these questions show a strong political slant. Reading news from non-American sources would help with inaccurate words like "seized" and "invaded."
+13
Level 82
Aug 17, 2014
You mean reading news from Russian propaganda mills? What would you call what happened in Georgia? They were just coming to pay a neighborly visit? In tanks? The Russian air force were dropping fruit baskets on Tbilisi and it was only the biased American media that reported it was bombs?
+3
Level 57
Jul 20, 2016
I notice you didn't complain about it saying Stalin won WWII though, which is quite slanted toward the Soviet side ;)
+2
Level 57
Jul 20, 2016
Also, propaganda is propaganda, positive or negative, regardless of what country it comes from. And let's be honest here, no country's media is entirely unbiased.
+6
Level 66
Aug 9, 2017
You would prefer "liberated by Russian soldiers who all independently chose to vacation in Crimea that summer," maybe?
+3
Level 70
Dec 16, 2018
While I also see the strong political slant, I argue that "invaded" is technically correct even when Russia was in a defensive war against Georgia. Just like Americans and Russians invaded Germany in 1945, but nobody claims that USA started WW2, right? Invaded is a neutral term.
+2
Level 82
Feb 16, 2019
true. Though calling any of these invasions defensive wars is silly. Russia-proper was never threatened at all during the 2008 conflict, and the Russian separatists in South Ossetia (Georgia) provoked the Georgian response.
+1
Level 52
Mar 18, 2024
Russia became the largest empire in the world by always being victimized by its smaller neighbors, sure...
+2
Level 68
Jan 31, 2015
Good one, but still think there should be some more truth in it. Looks like the history of Russia is only "invading" and "seizing" someone. I wonder how would we describe the American history then, in their police of "America to Americans". And I didn't even mention The UK...
+3
Level 72
Aug 31, 2015
Every empire history is about invading and seizing. That is how empires are being built.
+5
Level 65
Aug 9, 2017
Russia has been built on assertion of power via invasions. It's not anti-Russian; it's just the truth. Even today, Putin uses invasions to divide countries that are straying too far to the West to keep them in his sphere of influence (see Georgia and Ukraine). While the US is imperialistic in its own right, it's invasions are less about hegemony.
+1
Level 63
Aug 9, 2017
Or the stupid Italians, invading Abyssinia?
+4
Level 31
Aug 29, 2016
The Serfs were hardly liberated. They may have called it that at the time, but they were pretty much still slaves up to the Revolution. A matter of opinion of course.
+2
Level 63
Aug 9, 2017
Then, after the revolution, they became the people Stalin starved.
+2
Level 56
Dec 5, 2016
Why don't accept 'peasants'?
+2
Level 63
Aug 9, 2017
I accept people as they are, rich and poor alike.
+1
Level 70
Aug 25, 2018
I don't believe all serfs were poor, and it's asking for the official name anyway
+3
Level 78
Aug 27, 2021
Serfdom was a legal status. Peasant is not synonymous.
+4
Level 75
Aug 9, 2017
For gulag would you accept Glavnoye Upravleniye ispravitelno-trudovyh Lagerey? (Just kidding, but saw that on Wikipedia while looking up Solzhinetsyn, and I'd forgotten the word gulag is a Russian acronym.)
+1
Level 68
Aug 9, 2017
I tried terfs and turfs... I feel stupid =(
+2
Level 85
Aug 9, 2017
Easy to confuse, especially if you'd just had a Surf 'n' Turf dinner.
+1
Level 56
Aug 10, 2017
I tried smerf and smurfs.
+2
Level 83
Aug 10, 2017
Apparently the original title for War and Peace was "War, What is it Good For?"
+1
Level 12
Dec 2, 2017
Hunt for Red October=Communist Propaganda
+1
Level 52
Dec 9, 2020
Nah, 7 + 4 = Communist Propaganda.
+1
Level 72
Jan 26, 2018
Could you accept "bolchevik" for us French-speaking quizzers?
+1
Level 71
Aug 25, 2018
Poor phrasing "Conqueror who invaded Russia in 1812" Napoleon was not a 'conqueror' but an 'invader'.
+4
Level 86
Aug 27, 2018
Just because he couldn't conquer Russia doesn't mean he was not a conqueror. Ask the Holy Roman Empire.
+1
Level 82
Feb 16, 2019
Exactly. He was an extremely successful conqueror. That only changed when he tried and failed to conquer Russia.
+4
Level 95
Aug 27, 2018
Romanoff should be accepeted for Romanov
+1
Level 70
Jun 11, 2020
Russia invaded Georgia? Georgia was the one who attacked Russia... of course Russia defended its own territory.

Learn some history, or at least try to be a bit more objective.

+1
Level 76
Dec 5, 2021
Abkhazia was invaded by both. :)))
+2
Level 70
Oct 5, 2023
"Russia"
+2
Level 64
Jul 26, 2022
An empress is always female.