The name of the period of political and military tension between the US and the Soviet Union, which lasted from the end of WWII to 1991
What is the Cold War?
The long chain of mountains that run north-south through central Russia--to some extend providing a geographical division between Europe and Asia.
What are the Ural Mountains?
What USSR stands for
What is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
The longest river in Europe
What is the Volga River?
The capital city of Russia
What is Moscow?
This ideology shaped much of the history of Eastern Europe during the 20th century, and is experiencing a resurgence in many progressive quarters of our country today
What is Communism?
The Russian expanse of land east of the Urals consisting of a vast coniferous forest.
What is Siberia?
The name of the first Soviet satellite launched during the Space Race with the United States
What is Sputnik?
The river that starts in the Black Forest of Germany, and which empties into the Black Sea
What is the Danube River?
The capital city of Ukraine
What is Kiev?
The name of the dynasty which ruled Russia from the early 17th through the early 20th century
Who were the Romanovs?
The mountains that run from Slovakia to Montenegro- an extension of a mountain range in Western Europe.
What are the Dinaric Alps?
The name given to the line of buffer states between the countries of Western Europe and the Communist Bloc. To cross it was to enter Communist territory.
What is the Iron Curtain?
What is the Caspian Sea?
The name of the most famous Cathedral in Moscow, featuring colorful onion-shaped domes, characteristic of Eastern Orthodox churches.
What is St. Basil Cathedral?
The name of the rebellion led by Vladimir Lenin in November of 1917, which resulted in the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
What was the Bolshevik Revolution?
The chain of mountains that run east from the Czech Republic through Slovakia and Ukraine, curving south into central Romania.
Built in 1916 from Moscow to Vladivostok, connecting remote parts of Russia, with parts still being added today.
What is the Trans-Siberian Railway?
One of the two rivers in Europe, which flow north, and empty into the Baltic Sea (name one of two possibilities)
What are the Oder or Vistula Rivers?
The monarch who ruled during the "golden age" of Russia
Who was Catherine the Great?
Name given to the horrendous forced-labor camps of Soviet Russia
What were the Gulags?
The three main biomes of Russia: one covered in permafrost; one covered by large forests of evergreens and hardwoods; and one that is a vast temperate grassland
What are the tundra, taiga, and the steppe?
One of the three nomadic peoples who roam the Russian tundra, herding reindeer. (You may name one of three possibilities)
What are the Sami, Evenki, or Nenets people?
The river which flows south from Russia through Belarus and Ukraine to empty into the Black Sea
What is the Dneiper River? (NEE-per)
The first Tsar of Russia
Who was Ivan the Terrible (or Ivan IV)?