Quiz: The April Theses

All 15 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. What would a return to a parliamentary republic be, according to Thesis 5? The aim of the Constituent Assembly, which Lenin supports The necessary next stage Acceptable if the Bolsheviks won a majority A step backward from the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies
2. What limit does Thesis 5 put on officials’ salaries? Twice the pay of a private soldier at the front The average wage of a competent worker None; salaries are to be abolished entirely The salary paid to a deputy of the State Duma
3. What word did Plekhanov apply to Lenin’s speech? Blasphemous Utopian Delirious Treasonable
4. How does Lenin describe Russia’s condition in April 1917? A country already sliding into open civil war The freest of all the belligerent countries A military dictatorship under a republican disguise Under the occupation of Allied capital and troops
5. Why, according to Thesis 1, is the war still a predatory imperialist war? Because Germany has refused all peace offers Because the Soviet has voted the government new war credits Because the Lvov government is capitalist Because the Tsar’s generals still command the army
6. What one-word demand closes Thesis 1? Armistice Demobilisation Fraternisation Mutiny
7. Which of these party tasks appears in Thesis 9? Moving the centre to Moscow Expelling Kamenev Changing the name of the party Merging with the Mensheviks
8. What does Thesis 4 call the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies? An organ of the bourgeoisie A rival to be dissolved The only possible form of revolutionary government A temporary strike committee of the Petrograd workers
9. Which is not one of the conditions for supporting a revolutionary war? That all annexations be renounced in deeds That the Constituent Assembly first approve the war That all power pass to the proletariat and the poorest peasants That there be a complete break with all interests of capital
10. What does Thesis 7 propose for the banks? Taxation of their profits for the war Their transfer to the Provisional Government Their abolition and the replacement of money by labour notes Immediate merger into one national bank under Soviet control
11. Why, according to Thesis 2, did the first stage of the revolution give power to the bourgeoisie? Because the Allies demanded a government that would continue the war Because the army went over to the Duma and handed power to its committee Because the proletariat was poorly organised and not class-conscious enough Because the peasants voted for the liberals in the Soviet elections
12. To whom did Lenin hand the written text of his theses? Plekhanov Tsereteli Kerensky Chkheidze
13. What does Thesis 3 call the “demand” that the Provisional Government cease being imperialistic? Premature A useful first step The party’s chief slogan Illusion-breeding
14. What position does Thesis 4 say the Bolsheviks hold in most Soviets? A narrow but secure working majority A minority, and a small one Half the seats, in a bloc with the Mensheviks No seats at all, having boycotted the elections
15. Why does Lenin say he reported “without sufficient preparation”? He had only arrived the night before His notes had been seized at the Finnish frontier He had been ill throughout the long journey from Zurich He had been given only ten minutes by the chairman

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