History and Politics

Soviet Era and Independent Kazakhstan

25 practice questions, each with the answer and an explanation.

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Random questions from this topic, one at a time. You see the answer and the explanation straight after each one.

All 25 questions

  1. In which year did Kazakhstan become a full union republic, the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic?
  2. What was the Turksib, opened in 1930?
  3. Roughly how many Kazakhs died in the famine of 1930 to 1933, following forced collectivisation?
  4. What was ALZHIR, a camp in the Akmola region during the Stalin era?
  5. Which people did Soviet authorities deport from the Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in 1937?
  6. Which campaign, launched in 1954 under Nikita Khrushchev, ploughed millions of hectares of steppe in northern Kazakhstan for wheat?
  7. Which cosmodrome in Kazakhstan launched the first satellite in 1957 and the first human spaceflight with Yuri Gagarin in 1961?
  8. On which date in 1949 did the Soviet Union test its first atomic bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site?
  9. Which events of December 1986 in Almaty saw young people protest the replacement of the leader of the republic by an outsider?
  10. On which date in 1991 did Kazakhstan declare independence, the last Soviet republic to do so?
  11. In which city did eleven former Soviet republics sign the declaration of 21 December 1991 that expanded the Commonwealth of Independent States?
  12. On which date in 1993 did Kazakhstan introduce its own currency, the tenge, leaving the rouble zone?
  13. On which date was Kazakhstan's 1995 constitution adopted by referendum?
  14. From which city, the largest in the country, did Kazakhstan move its capital in 1997?
  15. Under which Soviet name was Astana known from 1961 to 1992, a name that refers to the Virgin Lands Campaign?
  16. What did Kazakhstan do with the Soviet nuclear weapons left on its territory after 1991?
  17. In which year did Kazakhstan join the United Nations?
  18. Kazakhstan is a founding member of which economic union, which began on 1 January 2015 with Russia and Belarus?
  19. Which organisation, set up in 2001 from the Shanghai Five group, counts Kazakhstan, China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as founders?
  20. What is the form of government of Kazakhstan according to its constitution?
  21. Which language does the constitution name as the state language, with Russian used officially in state bodies on an equal basis?
  22. What was the theme of the specialised Expo 2017 held in Astana?
  23. Which summit did Astana host in December 2010, the first of its kind in eleven years?
  24. Which university, founded in Astana in 2010 with the support of international partners, teaches in English?
  25. Which element at the centre of Kazakhstan's state emblem depicts the crown of a yurt?

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