-
Period: to
Lenin
-
February Revolution
By 1917, most Russians had lost faith in the leadership ability of the Tsarist regime. On March 8, 1917, demonstrators clamoring for bread took to the streets of Petrograd. Supported by 90,000 men and women on strike, the protesters clashed with police, refusing to leave the streets. On March 10, the strike spread among Petrograd’s workers, and irate mobs of workers destroyed police stations. Several factories elected deputies to the Petrograd Soviet (“council) of workers. -
Tsar Nicholas II abdicated
The Emperor renounced the throne of the Russian Empire on behalf of himself and his son, in favor of his brother. The rule of the 300 year-old House of Romanov ended with the Grand Duke's decision. After that, power in Russia has passed to the Russian Provisional Government, signaling the victory for the February Revolution. -
Lenin returned to Russia
After the outbreak of the February Revolution, German authorities allowed Lenin to cross Germany en route from Switzerland to Sweden in a sealed railway car. He returned to Petrograd and publishes April Theses condemning the Provisional Government for its incapacity to call an end to the "imperialist" war that Russia found itself in and calls for further revolution in Russia. -
October Revolution
Bolsheviks overthrowed provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky, with workers and sailors capturing government buildings and the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, and eventually taking over Moscow. -
Period: to
Russian civil war
The Russian Civil War raged from 1918 until the start of 1921. During this time, the Bolsheviks faced massive opposition to their rule in the form of the White Armies, led by former officers of the Tsarist state, and also from intervention by the forces of foreign countries. -
Period: to
War communism
The economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the Central Powers that ended Russia's participation in World War I. Russia ceded large tracts of land to Germany; Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan proclaim their independence from Russia. -
Nicholas II's death
Nicholas II,. the Tsar, abdicated on behalf of himself and his son after the start of Februar Revolution. With his family he was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and executed in July 1918. Family was were murdered by Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg. Historians have long speculated as to whether Nicholas II’s daughter, Anastasia, might have survived the shooting but in 2007, a DNA analysis conclusively identified her body. -
Period: to
NEP
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921.It was an economic system that included "a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control,", while socialized state enterprises would operate on "a profit basis" The NEP represented a more market-oriented economic policy (deemed necessary after the Russian Civil War of 1918 to 1922) to foster the economy of the country, which had suffered severely since 1914. -
Lenin's death
Lenin dies of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 54. Upon Lenin’s death in early 1924, his body was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum near the Moscow Kremlin. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor. -
Constitution of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union adopts constitution based on the dictatorship of the proletariat and stipulating the public ownership of land and the means of production -
Period: to
First five-year plan
The Soviet Union entered a series of five-year plans which began in 1928 under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Stalin launched it to improve the Soviet Union's domestic policy. The policies were centered around rapid industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. Stalin desired to remove and replace any policies created under the New Economic Policy. -
Five-year plans
The state (Gosplan) has set economic goals and priorities. It signifies the end of the New Economic Policy. The plan was implemented in 1928 and took effect until 1932. The main feature of the first Five-Year Plan called for the rapid industrialization of the Soviet economy, while the Soviet Union's economy was primarily based on agriculture. -
Leon Trotsky
In the struggle for power following Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s death, however, Joseph Stalin emerged as victor, while Trotsky was removed from all positions of power and later exiled (1929). He remained the leader of an anti-Stalinist opposition abroad until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. -
Period: to
Rule of Stalin
-
Collectivisation
Te Soviet Union implemented the collectivization of its agricultural sector. The policy aimed to integrate individual landholdings and labour into collectively-controlled and state-controlled farms: Kolkhozy and Sovkhozy accordingly. The Soviet leadership confidently expected that the replacement of individual peasant farms by collective ones would immediately increase the food supply for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for processing industry, and agricultural exports. -
Gulags
The Gulag (Main Administration of Camps) was the government agency in charge of the Soviet forced-labour camp system set up under Vladimir Lenin and reached its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the early 1950s -
Holodomor
The Holodomor was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. It is also known as the Terror-Famine and Famine-Genocide in Ukraine. It was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–33, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country. During the Holodomor, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. -
Soviet Union admitted to League of Nation
General meeting of the League of Nations adopted a resolution on the admission of the USSR into the League and the inclusion of its representative to its Board as a permanent member. -
Kirov's death
Sergey Kirov, a leader of the Russian Revolution and a high-ranking member of the Politburo, is shot to death at his Leningrad office by Communist Party member Leonid Nikolayev, likely at the instigation of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. -
Period: to
Great Purge
The Great Purge, also known as the “Great Terror,” was a brutal political campaign led by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to eliminate dissenting members of the Communist Party and anyone else he considered a threat. Although estimates vary, most experts believe at least 750,000 people were executed during the Great Purge, which took place between about 1936 and 1938. More than a million other people were sent to forced labor camps, known as Gulags. -
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
The Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union was a neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed by foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov. The treaty included a secret protocol which defined the borders of Soviet and German spheres of influence across the territories of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. -
Time Magazine's 'Person Of The Year
Joseph Stalin was named a Time Magazine's 'Person Of The Year
