Topic 4 AP Exam Practice
Multiple-Choice Questions
Questions 1 to 3 refer to the passage below.
“It has been repeated ad nauseam [to a sickening degree] that the oil industry has brought additional capital for the development and progress of the country. This assertion is an exaggeration. For many years throughout the major period of their existence, oil companies have enjoyed great privileges for development and expansion, including customs and tax exemptions and innumerable prerogatives. . . . Potential wealth of the Nation; miserably underpaid native labor; tax exemptions; economic privileges; governmental tolerance—these are the factors of the boom of the Mexican oil industry. . . . These organizations, whether authorized by the Government or not, are charged with innumerable outrages, abuses, and murders, always on behalf of the companies that employ them. . . .
It was therefore necessary to adopt a definite and legal measure to end this permanent state of affairs in which the country sees its industrial progress held back by those who hold in their hands the power to erect obstacles. . . . It is necessary that all groups of the population be imbued with a full optimism and that each citizen, whether in agricultural, industrial, commercial, transportation, or other pursuits, develop a greater activity from this moment on, in order to create new resources which will reveal that the spirit of our people is capable of saving the nation’s economy by the efforts of its own citizens.”
President Lázaro Cárdenas of Mexico, speech announcing
state control of the Mexican oil industry, 1938
1. According to Cárdenas’s description in the first paragraph, which of the following contributed MOST directly to the activities of foreign oil companies in Mexico?
- (A) Foreign economic imperialism in Latin America
- (B) A combination of inflation and deficit spending
- (C) The spread of laissez faire economic policies
- (D) Spain’s colonial policies in Latin America
2. Based on the passage, which of the following most strongly influenced Cárdenas’s views?
- (A) Free-market capitalism
- (B) The Green Revolution
- (C) Social Darwinism
- (D) Socialism
3. The speech best illustrates which of the following developments in the 1930s?
- (A) Economic crises contributed to the rise of fascist and totalitarian regimes.
- (B) States played a more active role in their economies after the Great Depression.
- (C) Increased exploitation of fossil fuels led to debates about climate change.
- (D) Government used political propaganda to mobilize civilians for total war.
Short-Answer Questions
1. Use the passage to answer all parts of the question that follows.
“To Comrades Kuraev, Bosh, Minkin and other Penza communists
Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak [derogatory term referring to the class of prosperous peasants] volosts [a territorial/administrative unit consisting of a few villages and surrounding land] must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle “with the kulaks.” We need to set an example.
1. You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers.
2. Publish their names.
3. Take away all of their grain.
4. Execute the hostages—in accordance with yesterday’s telegram.
This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let’s choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks.
Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this.
Yours, Lenin
P.S. Use your toughest people for this.”
Telegram, August 11, 1918
2. Answer all parts of the question that follows.