The Soviet Union -
Chronology of Political Events

1861

• Emancipation Edict - Czar abolishes serfdom and frees Russian peasants.

1881

• March 1 - Czar Alexander II assassinated with a bomb.

1891-1892

• Famine in Russia; estimated 375,000 to 400,000 fatalities.

1901

• February - Minister of Education Bogolepov assassinated.

1902

• April 2 - Interior Minister Sipiagin assassinated.

1903

• July-August - Second Congress of Russian Social-Democratic Party
• Party splits into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions.

1904

• February 8 - Russo-Japanese War begins with Japanese attack on Port Arthur.
• July 15 - Interior Minister Plehve assassinated with bomb.
• December 20 - Port Arthur surrenders to Japanese.

1905

• January 7-8 - Major industrial strike in St. Petersburg.
• January 9 - Bloody Sunday
• January 10 - Industrial strikes throughout Russia.
• January 18 - Government agrees to convoke Duma.
• June - Riots and massacres in Odessa.
• September - Strike activity.
• October 12-18 - Constitutional-Democratic (Kadet) Party formed.
• October 13 - St. Petersburg central strike committee formed, to be renamed St. Petersburg Soviet.
• October 14 - Strikes paralyze St. Petersburg.
• November 21 - Moscow Soviet formed.
• December 6 - General strike ordered by St. Petersburg Soviet.
• December 8 - Government orders troops in against Moscow insurgents.
• December 18 - Executive Committee of Moscow Soviet capitulates.
  Over 1,000 are believed to have died in the uprising.

1906

• April 27 - Duma (First) opens.
• July 8 - Nicholas dissolves Duma.
• Stolypin appointed Chairman of Council of Ministers.
• August 12 - Attempted assassination of Stolypin.
• August 12 - Stolypin's first agrarian reforms.
• November 9 - Reform of communal landholding.

1907

• February 20 - Second Duma opens.
• June 2 - Second Duma dissolved.
• November 7 - Third Duma opens. Session lasts until 1912.

1911

• September 1 - Stolypin assassinated.

1912

• November 15 - Fourth Duma opens.

1914

• July - Russia mobilizes for war.
• July 19/August 1 - Germany declares war on Russia.
• August - Russia invades East Prussia and Austrian Galicia.

1915

• April 15 - Germany conducts operations in Poland.
• July 9 - Russia begins withdrawal from Poland.
• July 19 - Duma reconvened for six weeks.
• August 22 - Nicholas assumes personal command of army.
• September 3 - Duma prorogued.

1916

• November 1 - Duma reconvenes.
• December 17 - Murder of Rasputin.

1917

• February 14 - Duma reconvenes.
• February 23-24 - Demonstrations in Petrograd for International Women's Day.
• Strike over food shortages.
• February 25 - Demonstrations turn violent.
• February 26 - Volynskii Regiment fires on crowd; 40 killed.
• February 28 - Provisional Committee formed from Duma Council of Elders.
• Moscow experiences disturbances.
• March 2 - Nicholas abdicates.
• March 4 - Provisional Government abolishes Police Department.
• March 5 - Provisional Government dismisses governors and deputies.
• April 21 - Bolshevik demonstrations in Petrograd and Moscow.
• April 28 - Bolsheviks organize Red Guard.
• June 3 - First All-Russian Congress of Soviets opens.
• July 11 - Kerensky becomes Prime Minister.
• August 9 - Elections to Constituent Assembly scheduled.
• October 10 - Bolshevik Central Committee votes in favor of armed seizure of power.
• October 24 - Bolsheviks take over Petrograd in response to government actions.
• October 25 - Lenin declares Provisional Government deposed.
• October 25-26 (Night) - Fall of Winter Palace.
• November 2 - Pro-government troops in Moscow surrender to Bolsheviks following 3 days of fighting.
• November 17 - Bolshevik troops forcibly take 5 million rubles from State Bank.
• December 7 (December 20) - Cheka (secret police) established.

1918

• January 1 - Assassination attempt on Lenin.
• January 6 - Constituent Assembly closed.
• January 8 - Third Congress of Soviets opens.
• February 21-22 - Lenin issues decree authorizing summary execution of opposition.
• March 14 - Soviet Congress ratifies Brest Treaty with Germany.
• May 9 - Worker demonstrators fired on by Bolshevik troops at Kolpino.
• June - Beginning of "War Communism." Industry nationalized and grain forcibly requisitioned. (Ends in March 1921).
• July 16-17 (night) - Nicholas II, family and servants murdered in Ekaterinburg.
• July 21 - Bolsheviks massacre 350 prisoners following revolt at Iaroslavl.
• July - Bolshevik authorities execute 1,115.
• August 30 - Head of Petrograd Cheka assassinated; Assassination attempt on Lenin.
• September 5 - Bolsheviks launch Red Terror; Prisoners and hostages massacred.

1919

• February 6 - Red Army takes Kiev.
• February 17 - Dzerzhinskii, head of Cheka, calls for creation of concentration camps.
• June 30 - Tsaritsyn captured by Wrangel.
• August 31 - Whites capture Kiev.
• September 20 - Kursk captured by Whites.
• October 13-14 - Whites advance against Moscow ends with capture of Orel.
• October 20 - Whites abandon Orel.
• November 17 - Whites abandon Kursk.

1920

• February 7 - Kolchak executed.
• April 25 - Poles invade Ukraine.
• October 20 - Red Army begins final push in Crimea to end war.
• November 14 - Wrangel evacuates army to Constantinople.
• December - Number of concentration camps reported to be 84.

1921

• February - Mass strikes in Petrograd.
• February 9 - Peasant uprising in western Siberia. Government forced to commit 50,000 regular army troops to end rebellion.
• February 28 - Garrison at Kronstadt fortress mutinies.
• March 17 - Red Army captures Kronstadt to end revolt.
• March 23 - Lenin announces policy which will become known as the New Economic Policy (NEP)
  Policy of War Communism ended.
• Spring - Drought strikes grain-growing regions.
• May 17 - Formal revocation of decree nationalizing small-scale industry.
• July 25 - Russian government agrees to accept U.S. offer of aid for famine.
• Summer - Fall - Famine
• October - State Bank created.
• November 10 - Rationing abolished.
• December - Party purges 259,000 from its membership.

1922

• February 6 - Cheka abolished. Renamed State Political Directorate (Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie) (GPU)
• May 25 - Lenin suffers stroke.
• May - Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev informally rule Politburo in "troika" arrangement.
• June-August - Show trial of SR opposition. Death sentences commuted to prison terms.
• December 15 - Lenin suffers another stroke.

1923

• March 10 - Lenin paralyzed.
• April - Twelfth Party Congress reelects Stalin General Secretary.
• October - Number of concentration camps reaches 315.

1924

• January 21 - Lenin dies.

1925

• January 17-20 - Central Committee plenum removes Trotsky as Commissar of War.
• December - Fourteenth Party Congress announces industrialization plan.
• Kamenev and Zinoviev defeated. Kamenev loses position on Politburo.
• Deaths among inmates of concentration camps reported to be 18,350 for the year.

1926

• July 26 - Zinoviev removed from Politburo.
• October - Trotsky expelled from Politburo.

1927

• NEP phased out as an economic policy.
• October - Stalin publicly assures Party that grain procurements going well.
• November - Trotsky and Zinoviev expelled from Central Committee.
• December - Grain Crisis - Fifteenth Party Congress learns of catastrophic drop in grain collections.

1928

• January - February - Stalin's fact-finding trip to Siberia.
• Government implements policy of forced grain requisitions.
• July - Politburo decides to end forced requisitioning.
• October 1 - First Five-Year Plan officially approved.

1929

• January - February - Politburo session confrontation between Stalin and Rykov, Bukharin, and Tomsky.
• February - Introduction of food rationing.
  Trotsky expelled from Russia.
• Spring - First Five-Year Plan formally adopted.
• April - Sixteenth Party Conference adopts more aggressive collectivization policy.
• June - Government begins implementing collectivization.
  Government figures show that over one million households had joined collectives.
• November - Bukharin removed from Politburo.
• December 27 - Stalin calls for dekulakization, the "liquidation of kulaks as a class."

1930

• March 2 - "Dizzy with Success" Pravda article.
• Stalin publicly criticizes officials for "excesses" in collectivization campaign.
• September - Stalin pressures local officials to resume collectivization campaign.
  48 officials of People's Commissariat of Trade executed for "sabotage of food supplies."

1932

• Fall - Famine lasting into 1933 begins. Estimated 5 to 8 million deaths.

1933

• January - Stalin declares First Five-Year Plan a success.

1934

• February - Second Five-Year Plan adopted (for 1933 to 1937).
• December 1 - Kirov assassinated in Smolny.
• December 5 - Military Collegium orders 39 executed in Leningrad; 29 executed in Moscow.
• December 30 - Execution of members of "Moscow Center" and "Leningrad Center" announced.

1935

• January - Political trials of former opposition leaders. Government sentences all to prison.

1936

• August 19 - 24 - "Trial of the sixteen." - First show trial of former opposition leaders.
• August 25 - Zinoviev, Kamenev and other defendants executed.
• September 25 - Yezhov appointed head of NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs).

1937

• January - Show trial in Moscow. 13 sentenced to death.
• Estimated number of victims killed for 1937: 353,000.

1938

• March 2 - Opening of last show trial.
• March 15 - Bukharin and Rykov shot.
• Estimated number of victims killed for 1938: 328,000.

1939

• Eighteenth Party Congress adopts Third Five-Year Plan.
• August 23 - German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact)signed in Moscow
  Germany and Russia agree to divide Poland and Eastern Europe
• September 1 - German forces begin invasion of Poland
• September 3 - Britain and France declare war on Germany
• September 17 - Soviet forces invade Eastern Poland
• September 28 - Poland surrenders and is partitioned between Germany and Russia
• Katyn Forest massacre (September 1939 - May 1940)- NKVD secretly executes an estimated 15,000 captured Polish army officers
• November 30 - Russian forces cross Russo-Finnish frontier:
  Finnish capital, Helsinki, bombed by Red Air Force

1940

• February 11 - Russian forces under Marshall Timoshenko breach Mannerheim Line - Finnish defensive positions
  Russian forces suffer 200,000 killed; Finnish deaths total 25,000
• March 12 - Finland concludes peace agreement with Russia - Finland cedes 10 percent of its territory, but remains independent.
• April 9 - German troops parachute into Norway, securing major airports; German forces put ashore at Oslo, Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen and Kristiansand.
  Danish government surrenders after German troops invade Denmark
• May 10 - German forces move into France and the Low Countries - Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg
• May 19 - British Espeditionary Force (BEF) encircled by Germans in the area around the French port of Dunkirk
• May 26 - Britain begins evacuation of forces from Dunkirk
• May 28 - Belgium surrenders to Germans
• June 3 - British complete evacuation of Dunkirk forces - total of 338,226 British and French troops reach England
• June 11 - Norway surrenders to Germans
• June 14 - Germann forces enter Paris
• June 22 - France capitulates to Germany - Philippe Petain agrees to German demands
  Petain sets up headquarters in Vichy, beginning rule of Vichy government
• July - Yezhov executed.
• August - Trotsky murdered in Mexico.

1941

• June 22 - Operation Barbarossa - German army begins invasion of Russia.
• September 8 - German and Finnish forces surround Leningrad, beginning two-and-a-half year siege
• September 20 - German forces capture Ukrainian capital of Kiev
• December 2 - German forces advance as far as Tula, within 20 miles of Moscow
• December 5 - Soviet forces counter-attack, driving Germans back
  Germans losses reach 100,000

1942

• August 23 - German forces in south begin new offensive
• September 4 - German advance reaches outskirts of Stalingrad, defended by General Vassili Chuikov
• October - German and Russian forces battle in street-fighting in Stalingrad
• November 19 - Red Army, under General Georgi Zhukov, launches assault, trapping German 6th Army in Stalingrad

1943

• January 31 - General Freidrich von Paulus, and 90,000 6th Army troops, surrender at Stalingrad
• February - Soviet forces re-capture Kharkov
• March 14 - German counter-attack re-captures Kharkov
• July 4 - Battle of Kursk
  Operation Citadel begins - Germans launch attack to capture city of Kursk
• July 12 - Soviet 5th Tank Army confronts 600 tanks of 4th Panzer Army
• July 13 - Hitler calls off Operation Citadel
• August 17 - Final fighting around Kursk
  4th Panzer Army, with the loss of over 300 tanks, retreats
• August 23 - Soviet forces re-capture Kharkov
• November 6 - Kiev re-captured from Germans

1944

• January 27 - Russian forces relieve Leningrad, after two-and-a-half year siege.
• May 9 - Red Army recaptures Sevastopol, in the Crimea
• June 6 - D-Day - Allied forces land begin landings on beaches at Normandy, France
• July 1 - City of Minsk falls to Russians
• July 28 - Soviets re-capture Brest-Litovsk
  Russians now had recovered all territory lost to German forces since the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941
• August 1 - Soviets advance into Poland
• August 23 - Soviet forces re-capture Kharkov

1945

• April 21 - Soviet tanks enter Berlin
• April 29 - Hitler commits suicide
• May 2 - Berlin falls to Russian army.
• May 7 - Germany surrenders
• August 6 - B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, drops atomic bomb on Japanese city of Hiroshima
  75,000 believed to have died immediately, 200,000 deaths total in next five years
• August 10 - B-29 bomber, Bock's Car, drops second atomic bomb on Japanese city of Nagasaki
  40,000 estimated killed immediately, 70,000 by end of year
• September 2 - Japan surrenders

1946

• Christmas Day - Nuclear reactor designed by Igor Kurchatov goes critical.

1949

• August 29 - First Lightning - Russia successfully tests atomic bomb (Joe I) at Semipalatinsk site.

1953

• March 1-2 - Stalin suffers severe brain hemorrhage.
• March 5 - Stalin dies.
• June 26 - Nikita Khruschev orders Beria arrested
• August 12 - Soviet Union successfully tests hydrogen bomb at test-site in Kazakhstan
• December - Beria executed

1957

• October - Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, first artificial earth satellite

1960

• May 1 - American U-2 spy plane shot down over Russia while conducting high-altitude reconnaissance of Soviet military installations
  pilot Gary Powers captured
• "U-2 incident" leads to cancellation of Eisenhower-Khruschev summit meeting two weeks later

1961

• April 12 - Yuri Gagarin, in Vostok 1 craft, completes one revolution around the earth and becomes the first man in space

1962

• October - Cuban missile crisis
  U.S. institutes naval blockade of Cuba following discovery that Soviet missiles were being installed at Cuban bases
• Khrushev agrees to withdraw missiles from Cuba in return for U.S. removal of missiles in Turkey

1963

• June 16-19 - Valentina Tereshkova, in Vostok 6 craft, completes 48 revolutions around the earth and becomes the first woman in space
• July 2 - Khrushchev proposes ban on atmospheric nuclear tests, as well as tests in outer space and under water
• August - Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty
  U.S.S.R. and U.S. agree to end above-ground testing of nuclear weapons
• November 22 - President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas

1964

• October - Khruschev ousted from power
• October 16 - China tests first nuclear device at Lop Nor test site
• Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev succeeds Khruschev as first secretary

1970

• Khruschev dies

1979

• June - President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) Treaty, to reduce the number of missiles and curbing development

1982

• Brezhnev dies

1985

• March - Mikhail Gorbachev elected general secretary
• November - Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan meet at Geneva summit

1987

• December 8 - Arms control treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) (START) between the Soviet Union and the United States signed in Washington, D.C.
  treaty removed one-fifth of existing nuclear weapons

1988

• June - Party Congress decides to replace Supreme Soviet with a Congress of People's Deputies

1989

• May - Congress of People's Deputies elects 450-member parliament with Gorbachev as president
• November 9 - Berlin Wall comes down.

1991

• August 19 - Attempted coup by hard-line communists
  Gorbachev placed under house arrest in the Crimea
• Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic, rallies opposition, and coup collapses
• December 31 - USSR dissolved