NewsTracker Answers for week of Dec. 12, 2011

Q: As many as 50,000 people gathered for the biggest anti-government rally in the Russian capital Moscow since the fall of the Soviet Union. Where is Russia?

Circle the area on this map


Q: The demonstrators condemned alleged ballot-rigging in parliamentary elections and demanded a re-run. The protest was held on an island near a Moscow landmark considered the traditional center of power. What is the name of the landmark?

A. Gorky Park

B. Hermitage

C. Kremlin

D. Hague


C. A kremlin is is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. The word usually refers to the Moscow Kremlin which housed the government of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Russia's presidential administration is located in the Moscow Kremlin, but the rest of the government now occupies a building outside it.


Q: Other protests against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his party were held in cities across Russia, including the second largest city . . .

A. Saint Petersburg

B. Kiev

C. Stalingrad

D. Vladivostok


A. Saint Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703 and it served as the Imperial capital of Russia from 1713 to 1728 and from 1732 to 1918. In 1924, the city was renamed Leningrad after communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. The name was changed back to Saint Petersburg in 1991 after the communist Soviet Union crumbled.


Q: Fueled by mobile phone videos and accounts on internet social networking sites, there is a widespread view that Putin's party used wholesale election fraud to hang onto power. Where else have social networking sites been used this year to fuel protests?

A. Egypt

B. Britain

C. United States

D. All of the above


D. Security experts said it appears that a botnet of hijacked PCs were used in an attempt to drown out Twitter chat about the Russian protests. Egypt's fallen government blocked social media sites in a vain attempt to choke off protests. Government leaders in Britain talked about censoring social media after anti-government riots. And, U.S. lawmakers proposed a bill that would allow the government to shut down civilian access to the internet in an emergency.


Q: During the Cold War, Putin worked for the Soviet Union's secret police and spy agency. What was the agency called?

A. Gestapo

B. KGB

C. CIA

D. Stasi


B. Putin joined the KBG in 1975 after graduating from Leningrad State University, and he resigned from the agency in early 1992 after a KGB-supported coup failed to oust Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.