Unit 13: Paper 3 — History of Europe (HL)
Topic 13.11: The USSR and post-Soviet Russia (1945–2020) Questions
Practice 20 exam-style questions for IB History (2028) Topic 13.11. Review the question stems below, then unlock the full Question Bank to access markschemes, model answers, and AI grading.
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At the 20th Party Congress in February 1956, what did Khrushchev do in his Secret Speech?
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Discuss the view that the USSR's treatment of prisoners of war after 1945 was driven more by security fears than by cruelty.
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To what extent do you agree with the claim that the 1965 Kosygin reforms failed mainly because of bureaucratic resistance from the nomenklatura, rather than because the reforms themselves were flawed?
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Evaluate the claim that shock therapy was a necessary policy that gave Russia no realistic alternative in the early 1990s.
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To what extent do you agree with the claim that the Leningrad Affair and the Doctors' Plot show that Stalin's regime never really changed after 1945?
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To what extent do you agree with the claim that glasnost, rather than perestroika, was the more important cause of the Soviet Union's political crisis by 1991?
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Discuss the view that the First Chechen War (1994-96) was more damaging to Yeltsin's authority than any of his domestic political or economic failures.
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Evaluate the claim that Khrushchev's Secret Speech of 1956 was primarily an act of genuine reform rather than political self-interest.
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Evaluate the claim that Brezhnev's policy of "stability" from 1964 to 1982 was, on balance, more damaging than beneficial for the Soviet Union.
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To what extent do you agree that Khrushchev's fall from power in 1964 was caused by his own policy failures rather than by forces beyond his control?
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Evaluate the claim that Stalin's post-war reconstruction policy (1945-1953) was justified by the USSR's need for security.
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Discuss the view that the Soviet state's treatment of dissidents under Brezhnev, such as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, reveals a regime confident in its own survival rather than one that was fundamentally insecure.
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Evaluate the claim that the failure of the August 1991 coup, rather than Gorbachev's own reforms, was the decisive cause of the final collapse of the Soviet Union.
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Evaluate the claim that Putin's interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014) show a consistent and calculated strategy rather than opportunistic reactions to events.
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Which Soviet dissident, a physicist and human rights campaigner, was sent into internal exile in the city of Gorky in 1980?
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What happened to Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014?
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How was Khrushchev removed from power in October 1964?
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What happened in the Leningrad Affair of 1949-50?
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What triggered Boris Yeltsin's decision to send tanks to shell the Russian parliament building (the White House) in Moscow in October 1993?
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Which event marked the end of the "tandem" period and Putin's return to the presidency?
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