1917-1990

By LPearson

  • The February Revolution begins with strikes, demonstrations, and mutinies in Petrograd

  • Czar Nicholas II abdicates and includes his son. The following day, Nicholas' brother, Mikhail announced his refusal to accept the throne. Provisional Government formed

  • Lenin returns from exile and arrives in Petrograd via a sealed train

  • The July Days begin in Petrograd with spontaneous protests against the Provisional Government; after the Bolsheviks unsuccessfully try to direct these protests into a coup, Lenin is forced into hiding

  • Alexander Kerensky becomes Prime Minister of the Provisional Government

  • The Kornilov Affair, a failed coup by General Lavr Kornilov, commander of the Russian Army

  • The October Revolution - the Bolsheviks take over Petrograd

  • The Winter Palace, the last holdout of the Provisional Government, is taken by the Bolsheviks; the Council of People's Commissars (abbreviated as Sovnarkom), led by Lenin, is now in control of Russia

  • The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, between Germany and Russia, is signed and takes Russia out of World War I

  • The Bolshevik Party changes its name to the Communist Party

  • Russian civil war begins

  • Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed

  • Russian civil war ends

  • Stalin is appointed General Secretary

  • The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) established

  • Lenin dies; Stalin will become his successor

  • The 1924 Soviet Constitution came into effect.

  • The Thirteenth Party Congress, led by Stalin, Comintern chairman Grigory Zinoviev and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev, denounced Trotsky and his faction, the Left Opposition.

  • The Bukharan People's Soviet Republic was incorporated into the Uzbek SSR.

  • Trotsky was forced to resign his military offices.

  • Tikhon died. The Communist government would not allow elections to the patriarchate to be held; Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy became the Patriarchal locum tenens according to his will.

  • The Uzbek SSR joined the Soviet Union.

  • Trotsky was expelled from the Politburo.

  • The Fourteenth Party Congress endorsed the leadership of Stalin and his rightist ally Nikolai Bukharin, soundly defeating the New Opposition faction of Kamenev and Zinoviev.

  • Sergius affirmed the loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Soviet government.

  • Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Communist Party.

  • The Fifteenth Party Congress expelled the remainder of the United Opposition from the Party.

  • First Five Year Plan: Stalin announced the beginning of state industrialisation of the Soviet economy.

  • Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo.

  • The Gulag was officially established.

  • Collectivisation in the USSR: The Central Executive Committee and the Sovnarkom issued the Decree about the Protection of Socialist Property, under which any theft of public property was punishable by death.

  • A decree by the Central Executive Committee and the Sovnarkom established a passport system in the Soviet Union.

  • First Five-Year Plan: It was announced that the plan had been fulfilled.

  • Elections to the Central Committee at the Seventeenth Party Congress revealed Sergey Kirov, the chief of the Leningrad Party, to be the most popular member.

  • Kirov was murdered by Leonid Nikolaev, possibly at the behest of Stalin.

  • Moscow Trials: The Trial of the Sixteen, in which Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev were the primary defendants, began.

  • Moscow Trials: The defendants in the Trial of the Sixteen were executed.

  • The Stalin Constitution came into effect. The Central Executive Committee was renamed the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.

  • Moscow Trials: The Second Trial began.

  • Moscow Trials: The Second Trial ended. Of seventeen defendants, all but four were sentenced to death.

  • Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization: Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a Marshal of the Soviet Union and hero of the Russian Civil War, was arrested.

  • Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization: Tukhachevsky was executed, with eight other military leaders.

  • Peter of Krutitsy was executed in solitary confinement.

  • Trial of the Twenty One: The third Moscow Trial, at which Bukharin was the primary defendant, began.

  • Trial of the Twenty One: The defendants were executed.

  • Soviet invasion of Poland (1939): The Red Army invaded Poland.

  • Shelling of Mainila: The Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila and blamed the Finns for invented casualties.

  • Winter War: The Soviet army attacked Finland.

  • Winter War: The Soviet Union established the Finnish Democratic Republic in the border town of Terijoki.

  • Winter War: The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed, ending the war at great cost to Finland and anticipating the evacuation of Finnish Karelia.

  • The Red Army occupied Lithuania.

  • The Red Army occupied Estonia and Latvia.

  • Soviet occupation of Bessarabia: Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were occupied by the Soviet Union.

  • The Lithuanian SSR was accepted into the Soviet Union.

  • The Latvian SSR was annexed by the Soviet Union.

  • Trotsky is assassinated by Ramon Mercador on Stalin's orders.

  • Operation Barbarossa: Three million Axis soldiers invaded the Soviet Union.

  • Continuation War: The Soviet Union launched a major air offensive against Finnish targets.

  • Battle of Moscow: Three German armies began an advance on Moscow.

  • Battle of Moscow: The Soviet army launched a counterattack from Kalinin.

  • Battle of Moscow: The Soviet counteroffensive ended between sixty and one-hundred fifty miles from Moscow.

  • The Red Army crossed into Poland.

  • Sergius died.

  • Soviet occupation of Romania: The Red Army captured Bucharest.

  • Continuation War: The Moscow Armistice was signed, ending the war at roughly the prewar borders.

  • The Soviet Union captured Warsaw.

  • The Soviet Union captured Budapest.