Khrushchev Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nikita

"Nikita" is also a great Elton John song. (Imagine Elton singing "Yuri, I need you so...?") The other three options are first names of other Soviet leaders (Andropov, Chernenko, and Brezhnev...can you match them up???)

Answer: Kursk Oblast

Stalin was from Georgia, and Cher is from Armenia. (Stalin was a Soviet leader, Cher is not). Khrushchev was born on April 17, 1894, in the village of Kalinovka in the Kursk Oblast, near the border with Ukraine.

Answer: 1918

Khrushchev joined the year after the Revolution, 1918. At that time, Russia was in the midst of a bloody civil war and the disasterous economic policy of Lenin known as "War Communism". Khrushchev's rise was quite rapid, becoming political commissar during the war in the early 1920s.

Answer: Trotsky, Kirov and Bukharin

Khrushchev was appointed to a political post in the Ukraine following his training in the mid 1920s, under the leadership of Kagonovich. Khrushchev's career took off with Stalin's blessing (it was not a good idea to oppose him in the 1930s!) and by 1935 Khrushchev was second in command of the Moscow Communist Party.

Answer: The construction of the Moscow subway system

The subway system was a spectacular success at a time when not much of anything else was in the Soviet Union - the collective farming was a disaster, the results of the first and second five year plans were fudged, and foreign relations with the West were at an all-time low, forcing Stalin into the arms of his bitter enemy Hitler with the signing of the 1939 non-agression pact.

Answer: Head of the Ukrainian Communist Party

Khrushchev was on the front lines for much of the war, including the famous battle of Stalingrad that changed the course of affairs for Germany.

Answer: False

There was a ranking of the Politburo members done in 1953, and Khrushchev was listed fifth most important. There began a frantic power struggle similar to that of 1924 when Lenin died. Malenkov and Beria were seen as Stalin's heirs, Malenkov was defeated by a Khrushchev coalition and Beria was executed.

Answer: His "secret speech" denouncing Stalin

The infamous "secret speech" wasn't secret at all, and launched a new plan to "thaw" relations with the West and to encourage greater political freedoms in the USSR. Thousands of people imprisoned in the Gulags were freed.

Answer: Hungary

The Iron Curtain certainly wasn't going anywhere under Khrushchev. NATO formed in 1949, and in response the Communist Bloc formed the new look, ring-a-ding-ding Warsaw Pact in 1955. The suppression of the Hungarian uprising was one of the first acts of the Warsaw Pact.

Answer: The space race

1957 saw the launch of Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth; and thus began the space race. Isn't it amazing that only 12 short years later the United States would successfully land a man on the moon?

Answer: Khrushchev's tour of the United States

Other than Gorbachev during Perestroika, Khrushchev was the only Soviet leader to visit the US while in power. SALT I came under Brezhnev, the Helsinki Accords were signed in the 1970s, and so many summits have been held in Geneva it would be impossible to count them all.

Answer: The U-2 spy plane & the Sino-Soviet split

In 1960 the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane and revealed that the US had been lying about espionage in the USSR. (Not that the USSR has been telling the truth either...) As well, Khrushchev's policies finally drove Chinese Chairman Mao Tse-Tung over the edge and relations between China and the USSR soured. Mao hated Khrushchev's willingness to work with the West, and saw himself as Stalin's natural Asiatic Socialist heir.

Answer: Peaceful coexistence

"Socialism in one country" was the slogan Stalin used in the late 1920s/early 1930s, and the concept of détente is most closely associated with Brezhnev. Khrushchev advocated "peacefully coexisting"; all the while buliding barricades, sending nuclear arms across the world, and invading foreign countries.

Answer: True

Faced with PR disasters and a crumbling internal structure, a Brezhnev-led Politburo removed Khrushchev from office in 1964. Defeated, lonely, and bitter; he died in 1971 after dictating his memoirs. Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko all died in office. (The last three within two and a half years of each other!)

Answer: False

False - much of what he had written/dictated was in fact classified by the KGB, and it wasn't until Perestroika and Glasnost that we saw much of what Khrushchev had written (in fact, a whole separate volume was published).