Fiendishly/not so difficult political quiz

Submitted by AWL on 6 April, 2020 - 7:01 Author: John Cunningham

In these troubled and isolating times here’s a chance to have a bit of fun and demonstrate to all and sundry that you are a real smart-arse. Most of these questions are not that difficult, there are a few stinkers however. Try and resist the temptation to look everything up on Google. Use the quiz as you see fit. I hope some of the answers at least will prove interesting. The full answers will be posted in ten days from when they are made available online.

Deaths, assassinations etc.
1. Gavril Princip assassinated Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. To which secret organisation did Princip and his collaborators belong.
2. Where was Martin Luther King assassinated?
3. Who was shot in the Café du Croissant?
4. Who died after he was run over by a laundry van in Paris?
5. Who mysteriously disappeared on 28 Sept. 1920 and was never seen again.

Who or what were/was:
6. Laika, Belka and Strelka?
7. The ‘Lenin Boys’?
8. ‘Trotsky’s curse’?
9. The ‘overall brigade’?
10. The ‘I won’t work(s)’?

Animal connections (and one fish)
11. Who had a cat called ‘Mimi’?
12. This one-time member of the ILP and MP for Maryhill, Glasgow (1929-31) once worked as a lion tamer and on a trip to Russia cured Lenin’s dog of an illness.
13. Which European head of state, between the wars, loved to strut around on a white horse despite having spent most of his life in the navy?
14. Once described by Hugh Dalton as ‘Nye Bevan’s dog’ this Labour MP had a dog called ‘Paddy’.
15. What was the name of the fisherman who used to help Trotsky fish in the Sea of Mamara during his exile in Turkey?

What links…
16. Stalin; Laventi Beria; the criminal Dzhaba Ioselini?
17. Artem Mikoyan (Soviet aircraft designer); Charles Aznavour (pianist and chanteur); apricots.
18. Floreal; Brumaire; Thermidor?
19. Zinaida, Nina, Lyova, Sergei.
20. A man with one eye; the words ‘This is the continental congress of the working class’; Chicago.

Trade Union leaders and trade unionists.
21. Which TUC big wig once wrote ‘The ABC of Chairmanship’.
22. What was the affectionate nickname for the famous female labour organiser in the USA, once described as ‘The most dangerous woman in America’?
23. Which prominent Bolshevik was once a member of the engineering union (ASE) and worked in a factory in Wembley?
14. Which trade union, one of the smallest in the TUC, was once affectionately known as the ‘Bakers’ Dozen’? (NB: ‘The Bakers’ Union’ is NOT the answer!)
15. Before becoming the big cheese in the AFL Samuel Gompers was the leader of which American trade union?

Nomme de guerres
16. Whose party name was Foster?
17. Not a nom de guerre more a ‘cover’ but who became ‘Fraulein Lübeck’ in 1887?
18. Michel Raptis is probably better known as…?
19. By what name was the early American Communist ‘Lewis Corey’ better known?
20. Who wrote, for a time, under the name of ‘Friedrich Oswald’?

Squares and spaces: the following are/were often associated with gatherings/rallies and demonstrations by the left and/or the trade union movement (and others). Name the city where they are located:
21. Taksim Square.
22. Maidan Square.
23. The Modern Circus.
24. Syntagma Square.
25. It’s in America and more often associated with boxing.

Oddballs, nutjobs and wierdos.
26. Who once wrote (as part of a pamphlet in 1968) ‘We must appeal to the beings of other planets, when they come here, to intervene and collaborate with earth’s inhabitants in suppressing poverty’.
27. This former member of the German Communist Party developed the ‘orgone box’ which among various supposed properties enhanced your sex life if you sat in it.
28. It would be unfair to locate this individual within any of the three categories above but this former Trotskyist made an avant-garde film called Meshes of the Afternoon and developed a keen interest in Voodoo.
29. This Soviet scientist once advertised for women volunteers to attempt to procreate with Orang-U-Tans.
30. This idiot seriously believed that the Titanic had been sunk by a Bolshevik submarine!

Films
31. Which African film director (Xala, 1975 is one of his best known films) once worked as a docker in Marseille?
32. In the film The Assassination of Trotsky (1972) who plays Trotsky? (spoiler alert – it’s shit)
33. In the novel Doctor Zhivago one of the main characters has an English Bulldog called Jack. This is absent in the film. Name of character and actor please?
34. In Ken Loach’s film Land and Freedom what is the name of the American volunteer who turns up at the end of the film having left the POUM militia and joined the (Stalinist directed) government forces.
35. Which French film director, a ‘fellow traveller’ of the Popular Front, made the film La Regle du Jeu?

Names and titles
36. Who was the ‘Red Count’?
37. Who was the ‘Junius’ which gave Rosa Luxemberg’s pamphlet its title?
38. Memoirs of a Revolutionary was written by?
39. Human Landscapes from my Country is an epic poem by?
40. ‘War is the continuation of politics by other means’. Name the author of this famous and much-used quote.

Music
41. In Dimitri Shoshtakovich’s Canata Opus 119 which anti-Tsarist rebel is taken to be executed.
42. ‘Risen from Ruins’ was the national anthem of which country?
43. Why is someone ‘…headed for the station that’s in Buchanan Street’?
44. Whose anti-Vietnam war song started with: ‘Give me an F, give me a U, give me a C…’etc? He also has a long-term interest in Florence Nightingale?
45. Which pit disaster was the inspiration for the composition often referred to as ‘The Miners’ Hymn’?

Prisons and prisoners
46. What is a ‘zek’?
47. What is a ‘58-er’?
48. What is a ‘49-er’?
49. Who was ‘Convict 9653’?
50. Whose front page article, headed ‘J’accuse!’ was a major turning point in eventually obtaining the release of Alfred Dreyfus, the French army officer who was a victim of anti-semitism?

North Africa
51. This Egyptian (1914-1973) writer and activist joined the International Federation of Independent Artists (organised by Andre Breton) and was associated with al-Tatawwur (Evolution) the first Egyptian socialist newspaper to be published in Arabic. Who is he?
52. This FLN leader became Algeria’s first President after winning independence from the French. Who is he?
53. Born in Cairo in 1931, this French-Egyptian wrote many economic studies of colonialism and was once heavily influenced by Maoism. Many of his last essays, on issues such as globalisation, were published in Monthly Review. He is generally credited with coining the term ‘Eurocentrism’. He died in 2018.
54. Known as ‘The Lion of the Desert’ he was one of main leaders of the anti-colonial war sometimes referred to as the ‘Second Italian-Libyan war’ of 1923-1932. He was captured by the Italians in 1931 and hanged.
55. What are the connections between: the city of Algiers; Le Corbusier; Sheffield’s Hyde Park and Park Hill flats complex (at a stretch you could also include the film Battle of Algiers).

Publications
56. Who was the editor of the Vienna Pravda?
57. Later in life this American wrote for Readers’ Digest but before 1917 he edited the The Masses and then The Liberartor.
58. Which Irish provincial newspaper once issued a ‘warning’ to the Tsar of Russia (‘The xxxxx xxxxx is watching you!’) thus, in time, becoming a byword for pretensions of grandeur.
59. To which US newspaper did Marx and Engels regularly contribute?
60. Malcolm Muggeridge was working for which newspaper when he toured the Soviet Union in the late 1920s/early 30s and reported on the famine in the Ukraine.

Events
61. When did the insurgents known as ‘Decemberists’ mount their challenge to the Tsar?
62. Who was Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko standing next to when he delivered his ‘best worst’ poem?
63. Nine days.
64. Ten days.
65. 1906 in Finland.

Treaties, agreements, talks.
66. Who headed the Russian contingent at the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations before Trotsky took over?
67. What was decided at the Peace of Riga on 21 June, 1921?
68. In the words of the old socialist song where and when did a ‘Russian’ and a ‘Prussian’ sit ‘working out the party line’?
69. These talks, which began on 6 Feb. 1989 in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, are usually referred to by an item of furniture. What is it?
70. In 1956 Nikita Khruschev sat in a Soviet naval vessel just off Portsmouth having discussions with representatives of the British government. What was the involvement of Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb in the proceedings?

Which country do you associate with the following
71. The Knights of Labor.
72. The Iron Guard.
73. The Molly Maguires.
74. The Forest Brothers.
75. The Convention People’s Party.

Marx and Engels
76. Why was Marx visited by the police when Jenny pawned the family cutlery?
77. Marx once worked briefly for a railway company. His employment didn’t last very long – why?
78. For much of its early existence the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow was run by who?
79. Which apparently innocent arboreal activity prompted the young Marx to write one of his earliest radical (but not yet ‘Marxist’) essays.
80. Engels worked for which textile company in Manchester?

China/Vietnam
81. Which university in Moscow was named after the provisional first President of the Republic of China? He died in 1925.
82. Name the ‘Gang of Four’?
83. At which battle (it ended on 7 May 1954) did the Viet Minh achieve a decisive victory over the French colonial forces?
84. 6 December 1945 – a letter appeared in the Manchester Guardian (it had also been sent to Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary) expressing anger about British military policy in S. E. Asia. It was signed ‘British other ranks’. What was this ‘policy’ that so angered them?
85. ‘Hanoi, An-Loc, ………..!’ – complete this often chanted slogan from the days of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign

South America/Central America
86. Where was the ‘Tupamara’ (MLN-T) based?
87. Where was the so-called ‘Sendero Luminoso’ based?
88. Who was the leader of the main Trotskyist group (POR) in Bolivia with strong roots in the miners’ union? Died 2009.
89. Which Communist Party newspaper is named after a boat?
90. Born in Guyana he is probably best known for his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. After spending a couple of years in London he then moved to Africa. He eventually returned to Guyana where he was killed by a government agent.

Miscellaneous
91. Who was arrested in Turkey for his left-wing politics, served his sentence and on release, by chance – on the streets of Istanbul – encountered the judge who had sentenced on him. He attacked the judge and killed him (probably accidentally though the circumstances were never cleared up). He was arrested and put on trial but escaped to France where he later received the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film festival. He died from gastric cancer in 1984 and is buried in Paris.
92. Where in the Soviet Union would you find a special use for the word ‘zone’:
a) It is the restricted area around the Chernobyl Reactor (now in Ukraine).
b) It is the mysterious location for the journey made by Andrei Tarkovsky’s main protagonist in his film Stalker.
c) It is the area between the perimeter fence and the main buildings in a labour camp in the GULAG. Anyone caught in the ‘zone’ was automatically shot.
93. In which country, between 1939 – 1991, was The Tribune: The People’s Paper published?
94. Where, at one time, could you find the ‘Death Strip’.
95. Who was the famous fund raiser for the British Communist Party whose fund-raising appeals – often quite amusing (and occasionally bizarre) – adorned the front page of the Morning Star for years.
96. Which one-time ‘fellow traveller’ of the left in the USA wrote the novel Studs Lonigan?
97. What do the following Labour MPs have in common:
Eric Lilley (Barnsley Central)
Eliot Morley (Scunthorpe)
Jim Devine (Livingstone)
Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough)
Denis McShane (Rotherham)
David Chaytor (Bury North)
98. Who was named after the French writers Eugene Sue and Victor Hugo?
100. Who was the main Soviet prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials?

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