Russia, 1917-91: from Lenin to Yeltsin | Edexcel A-Level History (9HI0)

Russia, 1917-91: from Lenin to Yeltsin

160 questions
16 subtopics
Paper 1: the breadth study, one route of eight
Paper 1

A Paper 1 breadth study of the Soviet Union from the Bolshevik seizure of power to its dissolution, covering how the party ruled, how the command economy was built and repeatedly reformed, how control was exercised through police, propaganda and culture, and how social provision developed.

The historical interpretations section asks why the USSR collapsed in 1991.

Sample questions from Russia, 1917-91: from Lenin to Yeltsin

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

Establishing Communist Party control, 1917–24

What did the 1921 Party Congress ban to strengthen central control?

Show the answer
Factions within the Communist Party (the resolution 'On Party Unity').
Government, 1953–85

Who was Alexei Kosygin?

Show the answer
Soviet Premier from 1964 to 1980, who shared power with Brezhnev in the collective leadership and sponsored the limited economic reform of 1965.
Industry and agriculture in the Stalin era

What was Gosplan?

Show the answer
The State Planning Committee, set up in 1921, which drew up the output targets of the Five-Year Plans and allocated resources across the economy.
Media, propaganda and religion

What role did propaganda play in Soviet society?

Show the answer
It saturated public space through posters, film, parades and the press, presenting the party as the source of all progress and defining what could be publicly said.
The state and cultural change

What was RAPP?

Show the answer
The Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, which dominated literature during the First Five-Year Plan until all rival groups were dissolved in 1932 in favour of a single Union of Writers.
Women and the family

How did women's working lives change under Stalin?

Show the answer
Millions entered industry during the Five-Year Plans, so that women became a majority of some workforces, while remaining responsible for the household as well.
Economic weakness and the failure of reform

What effect did the fall in oil prices have?

Show the answer
Oil and gas exports had funded grain imports and consumer subsidies through the 1970s; the price collapse of the mid-1980s removed the revenue holding the system together.
The nationalist resurgence of the late 1980s

What were the Baltic popular fronts?

Show the answer
Mass movements in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from 1988 that began by demanding autonomy and moved rapidly to demanding independence.

The 16 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Establishing Communist Party control, 1917–24	Recall questions on the closing of the Constituent Assembly, the ban on factions, the nomenklatura, and how power moved from the soviets to the Politburo.	10
Stalin in power, 1928–53	Recall questions on the defeat of Trotsky and Bukharin, the Kirov murder, the show trials, the scale of the Great Terror, and the purge of the Red Army.	10
Government, 1953–85	Recall questions on the succession struggle, the Secret Speech, Khrushchev's reorganisations, his removal in 1964, and stability of cadres under Brezhnev.	10
Towards a command economy, 1917–28	Recall questions on nationalisation, War Communism and the 1921 famine, the Kronstadt mutiny, the New Economic Policy, and the scissors crisis.	10
Industry and agriculture in the Stalin era	Recall questions on the Five-Year Plans and Magnitogorsk, Stakhanovism, forced collectivisation, the famine of 1932 to 1933, and post-war recovery.	10
Changes in industry and agriculture, 1953-85	Recall questions on the turn to consumer goods, the Virgin Lands scheme, the chemicals programme, private plots, and the grain imports of the 1970s.	10
Media, propaganda and religion	Recall questions on Glavlit and state ownership of the press, the attack on the churches, Stalin's wartime concession, and the personality cults.	10
The secret police	Recall questions on the Cheka and its successors, Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria, the Yezhovshchina, and Andropov's treatment of dissidents.	10
The state and cultural change	Recall questions on Proletkult and the avant-garde, Socialist Realism, the Zhdanovshchina, the Thaw, and samizdat.	10
Social security	Recall questions on full employment and the khrushchyovki housing programme, free healthcare and education, the Brezhnev social contract, and elite privilege.	10
Women and the family	Recall questions on the legal rights of 1917, the double burden, the conservative turn of the 1930s, wartime losses, and the gap between town and countryside.	10
Education and young people	Recall questions on the Likbez literacy campaign, the expansion of schooling, the Stalinist curriculum, the Komsomol and Pioneers, and privileged access.	10
Economic weakness and the failure of reform	Recall questions on stalled growth and lagging technology, the defence burden, the oil price collapse, Afghanistan, Chernobyl, and the second economy.	10
Gorbachev's failure to reform party and government	Recall questions on perestroika and glasnost, the contested elections of 1989, the repeal of Article 6, and why the party obstructed him.	10
The nationalist resurgence of the late 1980s	Recall questions on the Baltic popular fronts and the Baltic Way, Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian sovereignty, Vilnius, and the new Union Treaty.	10
Gorbachev, Yeltsin and the collapse of the USSR	Recall questions on Yeltsin's rival power base, the August coup and why it failed, the Belovezha Accords, and how far Gorbachev was responsible.	10

Russia, 1917-91: from Lenin to Yeltsin is 160 of the 6,832 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £9

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.