Stalin’s Soviet Union quiz: 8 questions

The Secretariat controlled party appointments. Stalin could place local secretaries in office, and those secretaries chose delegates to party congresses. Through these appointments he built majorities long before his rivals recognized the danger.

Mass revolts met collectivization, and Stalin made a tactical retreat. He blamed overzealous local officials; within weeks, millions of peasants left the collective farms. The retreat was temporary: in autumn 1930 collectivization resumed through taxes and quotas.

The two sites had complementary resources: Magnitogorsk had iron ore but poor coal, while Kuznetsk had rich coal. Trains carried ore east and coal west, traveling about 2,000 km each way, so that both cities could make steel. Security and planning were the reasons given for this costly link.

Socialist realism asked artists to show the optimistic future promised by the party, using positive heroes and clear messages. Stalin had given writers a particular role in 1932: they were “engineers of human souls”.

Concerned about a falling birth rate, the state reversed the revolution’s family policy. Births rose in 1937, then fell again as illegal abortions spread. Women meanwhile continued to work full time.

In the crisis of summer 1942, before the turning point at Stalingrad, the order prohibited retreat without permission. It also created penal battalions and blocking detachments behind the front.

Named for Andrei Zhdanov, the campaign began with a resolution against the journals Zvezda and Leningrad. Akhmatova and Zoshchenko were driven from literary life, and the campaign spread beyond literature to music, theater and science.

Khrushchev placed personal blame on Stalin and dated the crimes from 1934. That account protected the party and also collectivization and industrialization, policies Khrushchev and his colleagues had themselves helped carry out.