Reading...
Play button
Play button
Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
30 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
Russia covers one eighth of the world's total land area. What is that in square miles?
15,134,000 6,592,000 1,306,000 545,000 |
The correct answer is 6,592,000
At just over six and a half million square miles, Russia is nearly double the size of Canada in second place. |
|
|
2. How many time zones does Russia span?
5 9 7 11 |
9
In March 2010, Russia reduced its time zones from 11 to 9. |
|
|
3. How much of the world's fresh unfrozen water is found within the Russian Federation?
25% 7% 10% 2% |
25%
The (mainly) unspoilt Russian wilderness contains thousands of lakes and rivers including Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake on the planet. It holds more water than all five North American Great Lakes put together. |
|
|
4. How many other countries share a land border with Russia?
22 4 36 14 |
14
Let's go clockwise here, North Korea, Mongolia, China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Norway. |
|
|
5. The Trans-Siberian railway runs from Saint Petersburg in the West to Vladivostok in the East. What does the name Vladivostok mean?
Beautiful port Rule the east End of the railway Winter cold |
Rule the east
The City of Vladivostok was founded as a naval outpost in 1859. The name comes from the Russian "vladet" meaning "to possess" and "vostok" meaning "East". Under Soviet rule it was the home base for the Pacific fleet and was closed to all foreigners |
|
|
6. What is the highest point in Russia?
Mount Elbrus Mount Sokhondo Mount Narodnaya Mount Raskulyin |
Mount Elbrus
Mount Elbrus at 18,510 feet is not only the highest point in Russia, but also Europe's tallest peak. It is situated in the Western Caucasus Mountains near the border with Georgia and is actually a dormant strato-volcano. |
|
|
7. What is the name of the belt of coniferous forest that extends from the Finnish border into northern Siberia?
Tundra Norilsk Steppe Taiga |
Taiga
The Taiga is the world's largest forest region, roughly the size of the continental United States. Tundra is to the north where only mosses, lichens and dwarf willow grow due to the cold and dark winters. The steppe is to the south and is a treeless grassland where Russia grows most of her grains. Norilsk is a city north of the Arctic Circle. |
|
|
8. Which is the longest river in Russia that flows into the Pacific Ocean?
Lena Ob Amur Don |
Amur
The Amur River flows across North East Asia for over 2,700 miles. It forms most of the border between eastern China and the Russian Far East. |
|
|
9. What are Okrugs, Krais, and Oblasts?
Administrative units Russian gangsters Geological features Types of inter-city trains |
Administrative units
Russia is a federation consisting of 83 separate units. Okrugs are autonomous districts, Oblasts are provinces, and Krais are territories. The designation affects the autonomy of the region. |
|
|
10. The longest river in Europe, the Volga, unsurprisingly forms the largest estuary in Europe when it flows into which body of water?
Black Sea Caspian Sea Arctic Ocean Pacific Ocean |
Caspian Sea
The Volga is almost 2,300 miles long and is the most important river in Russia. It is joined by canals that can connect ocean going vessels with the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Azov, White Sea, the Don River, and the Moscow Canal. |
|
|
1. What is the capital city of Russia?
Kiev St. Petersburg Minsk Moscow |
Moscow
|
|
|
2. Situated on the Lena River in the far east of Siberia and the second coldest city in the world, many dissidents were exiled here during the communist era?
Vladivostok Volgograd Yakutsk Kazan |
Yakutsk
|
|
|
3. Known as Sverdlovsk during most of the 20th century, this city was the infamous site of the execution of Czar Nicholas and his family in 1918?
Mumansk St. Petersburg Nizhni Novgorod Yekaterinburg |
Yekaterinburg
|
|
|
4. Formerly known as Leningrad and founded near the mouth of the Neva River in 1703, this city is the second largest in Russia?
Moscow St. Petersburg Kiev Odessa |
St. Petersburg
|
|
|
5. Named from a Sami word meaning 'the edge of the earth' this is the largest city inside the Arctic Circle and Russia's only major ice-free port in the west?
St. Petersburg Murmansk Vladivostok Novosibirsk |
Murmansk
|
|
|
6. Known as 'Stalingrad' during much of the communist era, this city was destroyed during World War II and represented the farthest point of the German advance?
Nizhni Novgorod Moscow Volgograd St. Petersburg |
Volgograd
|
|
|
7. Situated on the Ob River in southern Siberia, this city is a major point on the Trans-Siberian railway and is regarded as the cultural capital of eastern Russia?
Omsk Yekaterinburg Irkutsk Novosibirsk |
Novosibirsk
|
|
|
8. Situated on Russia's Pacific coast, this city has been a major port and naval base and was occupied by Japanese troops after the Russian Revolution until 1922?
Yakutsk Murmansk Novosibirsk Vladivostok |
Vladivostok
|
|
|
9. Founded originally on the Volga River by Mongol invaders and nowadays capital of the Tatarstan Republic, this city was a source of trouble for a succession of Russian administrations until finally subdued in 1774?
Kazan Yakutsk Nizhni Novgorod Noril'sk |
Kazan
|
|
|
10. Known as 'Gorky' during the communist era and long a centre of trade and commerce, this city is located at the confluence of the Volga and Oka Rivers and is one of the largest cities in Russia?
Novosibirsk Rostov Chelyabinsk Nizhni Novgorod |
Nizhni Novgorod
|
|
|
1. St Petersburg was founded in 1703 by Peter the Great on land which he had recently conquered from which European power?
Poland Turkey Hungary Sweden |
Sweden
At the beginning of the 18th Century Russia had no Baltic coastline and was hemmed in by Poland and Sweden. Peter the Great was obsessed with gaining access to the sea and with modernising Russia. He also despised his capital of Moscow. The city was founded during the course of the Great Northern War between Sweden and Russia and its allies, Poland, Denmark and Saxony. The war would see the decline of Sweden as a major European power and the emergence of Russia as a major player. |
|
|
2. Which river flows through St Petersburg?
Amur Volga Neva Ob |
Neva
St Petersburg is situated close to the mouth of the Neva which flows into the Gulf of Finland. |
|
|
3. Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 outside a church in St Petersburg which has since become known as the Church of the Spilled Blood. What is its correct title?
Smolny Cathedral Church of the Resurrection of Christ St Isaacs Cathedral Church of Our Lady of Vladimir |
Church of the Resurrection of Christ
The church is modelled on St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow with plenty of that cathedral's trademark "onion" domes. |
|
|
4. Which Russian empress commissioned the Winter Palace?
Anna Catherine I Elizabeth Catherine II |
Elizabeth
The building was designed by the Italian architect Rastrelli and completed in 1762. Elizabeth herself never resided in the Winter Palace, dying the same year it was completed. |
|
|
5. Which empress began the Hermitage collection?
Catherine I Catherine II Elizabeth Anna |
Catherine II
Originally begun as Catherine the Great's private art collection (hence the name), the Hermitage Museum is now home to thousands of works of art and fills the whole of the neighbouring Winter Palace as well as the original Hermitage building. |
|
|
By what name was St Petersburg known between 1914 and 1924?
|
Petrograd
With the outbreak of the First World War, St Petersburg was considered too German sounding for the Russian capital and the name was Russified to Petrograd. After Lenin's death in 1924 the Bolshevik government renamed the city Leningrad in his honour. In 1991, after the fall of communism, the city reverted to its original name. |
|
|
7. Which historical personage was assassinated at the Yusupov Palace in St Petersburg?
Sergei Kirov Pyotr Stolypin Nicholas II Grigory Rasputin |
Grigory Rasputin
All four of these personages were assassinated but only the infamous Rasputin was murdered at the Yusupov Palace. Many people in pre-revolutionary Russian society were alarmed at the influence Rasputin appeared to have over the Russian royal family. In 1916 a group of nobles, headed by Prince Felix Yusupov, decided to do away with Rasputin. He was invited to the Yusupov Palace and given cakes and wine laced with poison but when that failed to do the trick they shot him and dumped his body in the river Neva, where he died...by drowning. |
|
|
8. A statue of which tsar sits atop the column in St Petersburg built to commemorate Russia's victory over Napoleon?
Alexander I Paul Peter III Alexander II |
Alexander I
Alexander I was emperor from 1801-1825. Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 but was beaten back by the sheer size of Russia and its brutal winter. |
|
|
9. In 1998 the remains of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and their children were buried within St Petesburg. In which church?
Church of the Resurrection of Christ Smolny Cathedral Peter and Paul Cathedral Our Lady of Vladimir Church |
Peter and Paul Cathedral
Nicholas, Alexandra and their children had been killed by the Bolsheviks eighty years previously in Yekaterinburg. The Peter and Paul Cathedral, within the Peter and Paul Fortress, is the final resting place of most of the Romanov emperors. |
|
|
10. In 1941 the city of Leningrad (as St Petersburg was then called) was besieged by German forces. How long did this siege last?
700 days 1000 days 500 days 900 days |
: 900 days
The siege lasted from the 8th of September, 1941 until the 27th of January, 1944. It is thought that as many as 800,000 Leningraders perished during the siege. The city became the first to be awarded the title Hero City. |
