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Policy of "war communism" enunciated
Policy of "war communism" enunciated, with the state taking control of the whole economy; millions of peasants in the Don region starve to death as the army confiscates grain for its own needs and the needs of urban dwellers. -
War with Poland.
The Polish–Soviet War was an armed conflict that pitted Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic over the control of an area equivalent to today's Ukraine and parts of modern-day Belarus. At some points the war also threatened Poland's existence as an independent state. -
Peace treaty with Poland signed.
The treaty ended the Polish-Soviet War. The Soviet-Polish borders established by the treaty remained in force until the Second World War. They were later redrawn during the Yalta Conference and Potsdam Conference. -
Union treaty.
Union treaty formally joins Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasus - which were divided in 1936 into Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan - into the Soviet Union. -
Lenin dies and is replaced by Joseph Stalin.
Soviet Union adopts constitution based on the dictatorship of the proletariat and stipulating the public ownership of land and the means of production; Lenin dies and is replaced by Joseph Stalin. -
Adoption of first Five-Year Plan.
Adoption of first Five-Year Plan, with the state setting goals and priorities for the whole economy, signifies the end of the New Economic Policy.
Collectivisation of agriculture begins; numerous relatively prosperous peasants, or Kulaks, killed; millions of peasant households eliminated and their property confiscated. -
United States recognized the Soviet Union.
On November 16, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt ended almost 16 years of American non-recognition of the Soviet Union following a series of negotiations in Washington, D.C. with the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov. -
Soviet Union admitted to League of Nations
On this day, the League of Nations, the international peacekeeping organization formed at the end of World War I, expels the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in response to the Soviets’ invasion of Finland on October 30 -
Announcement of the discovery of a plot against Stalin's regime.
Announcement of the discovery of a plot against Stalin's regime headed by Leon Trotsky ushers in a large-scale purge in which thousands of alleged dissidents in the armed forces, the Communist Party and the government were sentenced to death or long imprisonment. -
Soviet troops enter Poland
On this day in 1939, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declares that the Polish government has ceased to exist, as the U.S.S.R. exercises the “fine print” of the Hitler-Stalin Non-aggression pact—the invasion and occupation of eastern Poland.
