| A | B |
|---|
| Cheka | the Communist secret police |
| Red Guard | group that helped overthrow the provisional government |
| soviets | councils of workers and soldiers set up by revolutionary socialists |
| Whites | group that remained loyal to the czar |
| collective | large farm owned and operated by peasants as a group |
| command economy | economy in which the government makes all basic economic decisions |
| Great Purge | Stalin's reign of terror |
| kulak | a wealthy peasant |
| atheism | belief that there is no god |
| Alexandra Kollenstoi | campaigned for women's rights |
| Osip Mandelstam | a Jewish poet persecuted by the Communists for criticizing Stalin |
| socialist realism | elevating socialism by showing Soviet life in a positive light |
| totalitarian state | a government that regulates every aspect of its citizens' lives |
| Nicholas and Alexandra | the last of the Romanov dynasty |
| Gregory Rasputin | self-proclaimed "holy-man" who advised czarina Alexandra |
| Bolsheviks | a radical socialist group led by Lenin |
| Leon Trotsky | a Marxist revolutionary who assisted Lenin |
| proletariat | working class |
| commissar | Communist party officials assigned to the army to teach Communist party principles |
| USSR | Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or Soviet Union |
| NEP | New Economic Policy under Lenin |
| Comintern | also known as the Communist International; it aided revolutionary groups around the world and urged colonial peoples to rise up against imperialist powers |
| Pravda | the Communist party newspaper |
| Anna Akhmatova | one of Russia's greatest poets who could not publish her works because she had violated state guidelines |
| Mikhail Sholokhov | Soviet writer whose work made it past the censors; he later won a Nobel Prize |
