The Questions to Consider will be part of the midterm and final exams in the course. You should study these questions using your textbook, but you are also encouraged to use any other sources, such as Wikipedia. A good answer to a question to consider should be about a long paragraph. Check out an example.
Unit 1 Introduction and Themes in Russian history
- What are the main geographical features of Russia?
Unit 2 Reaction and Modernization under Alexander III and Nicholas II
- What were some of the characteristic features of Russia's industrialization of the 1890s?
- How did Russian industrialization affect Russia's social structure and economic base?
Unit 3 A Silver Age of Russian Culture
- What were some of the characteristics of the Russian Silver Age?
- How did the Silver Age differ from the earlier Golden Age?
- How did Lenin adapt Marxism to fit the Russian situation?
- Why did Marxism appeal to Russian intellectuals?
- Was the 1905 Revolution a revolution?
- Was Stolypin's policy a workable solution to Russia's peasant problem?
- Was the tsarist government capable of leading a more effective war effort?
- Why was the Russian military effort, especially in the first month of the war, such a disaster?
- Why were the Bolsheviks able to win the Civil War?
- Why did the Provisional Government fail in 1917?
- Why was Stalin able to consolidate political power in Russia in the 1920s?
- Why did Lenin advocate the introduction of the New Economic Policy?
- Why did Stalin initiate the five-year plans and collectivization of agriculture?
- Did Stalin's foreign policy enable Hitler to launch World War II?
- Was the Soviet Union prepared for Hitler's attack in 1941?
- Why was Russia able to eventually beat back the German attack and reach Berlin in May 1945?
- How did the Cold War begin?
- Did Russia win the duel with the United States over Cuba in 1962?
- What were some of the features of the “Thaw” that began in Russia after Stalin's death?
- How much intellectual and artistic freedom existed in Russia by the 1960s?
- Why did Gorbachev embark on a reform program in 1985?
- What factors led to the end of the Cold War?
- What have been some of the causes of the wars between Russia and Chechnya?
- What have been some of the main features of the Putin administration?
Unit 15 Whither Russia in the Twenty-First Century?
- Was Russia an advanced, modernized country by 2016?
Unit 16 A New Russian Culture?
- What have been some of the developing features of Russian culture since 1990?