timeline

• Pre-1917 key events

  • 1903 Social Democrats split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
  • 1905 Bloody Sunday
  • 1906 state Duma set up; October Manifesto
  • 1914 Russia mobilised to support Serbia against Austria-Hungary
  • 1914 Battle of Tannenberg – 300,000 killed
  • 1915 All Russian Union of Zemvsta and Cities – manage the war, chaired by Prince Lvov
  • 1915 State Duma's 'Progressive Bloc' – civilian government handle war effort rejected by Tsar
  • 1915 Tsar appoints himself as Commander-in-Chief
  • 1916 Rasputin is executed by Prince Yusupov
• 1919 key events

  • Urban population from 3.6 million to 1.4 million
  • Comintern introduced
• 1920 key events

  • GOELRO – organise production and distribution of electricity
  • Tambov Revolt – peasant army against requisitioning and famine
• 1921 key events

  • Population from 170.9 million to 130.9 million
  • Ban on factions
  • Treaty of Riga – Polish and Baltic states' independence, end Russo-Polish war
  • NEP introduced
  • Kronstadt Rising – sailors of naval base against Red terror and one party dictatorship; 15,000 imprisoned
  • End of Tambov Revolt
• 1922 key events

  • USSR was formed
  • OGPU
  • Treaty of Rapallo – Germany and Russia out of isolation
  • Stalin as General Secretary
  • Industrial production levels 20% of 1913 ind. production levels
• 1923 key events

  • Nomenklatura system – list of loyal Party supporters considered for promotion
  • Lenin's 3rd stroke
• 1924 key events

  • Lenin death and funeral
  • Suppress Testament
  • Zinoviev Letter – RW forgery letter calling for trade deals and British revolution; to reduce Labour votes, aimed at an anti-socialist British opposition
  • Socialism in One Country
  • The Left fights – Trotsky criticise Kamenev and Zinoviev for not backing Lenin 1917
  • Triumvirate
• 1925 key events

  • Duumvirate with Bukharin; criticised for joining the Right; now support NEP; abandoned the Left
• 1926 key events

  • Treaty of Berlin – trustful cooperation between the people of USSR and Germany; remain neutral and avoid economic boycotts against each other; large financial credits from German banks
  • Formation of United Opposition
• 1927 key events

  • Expelled Left Opposition – Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky
  • Great Turn – 15th Party Congress agree to end NEP
  • Party of Congress criticize Stalin's control of China – chose to support GDP's bourgeoise revolution over CCP's proletarian revolution because Trotsky supported them; funded GDP's revolution financially and militarily; they massacred CCP members and violently suppressed the worker revolts
• 1928 key events

  • Grain procurement crisis – food shortages from hoarding grain, Urals-Siberian method
  • Shakhty trial – managers, technicians of coal mine questioned rapid industrialisation; to warn others not to criticise
  • Bukharin criticises Stalin's "Urals-Siberian" method – outvoted
  • First FYP
• 1929 key events

  • The Right expelled and isolated by Politburo
  • 5% land voluntarily collectivised
  • Acceleration of collectivisation
  • Comintern used to attack social democratic parties (social facists) – they diluted the appeal of Communism to working class
  • Aggressive foreign policy – attack Bukharin and feared international power bases
  • 25,000ers to spy in the collective farms
  • Stalin as new leader of USSR
  • Declared war against kulaks – 150,000 deported to Siberia; 15% identified as kulak shot by OGPU
• 1930 key events

  • 1926-30 urban population from 17 to 33% – collectivisation and FYP increased urbanisation; larger workforce
  • Return to traditional education – technical subjects and practical skills
  • 50% households collectivised
  • Temporary return to voluntary collectivisation
  • Only 20% households collectivised
• 1931 key events

  • Launch of MTS
  • Drought in Ukraine
  • Wage differentials – rewarded workers of long hours
  • Negotiation of the Berlin Treaty continuation
• 1932 key events

  • Completion of Dnieprostroi Dam
  • End of 1ST FYP – coal 64 million tonnes, oil 21.4 million tonnes, steel 5.9 million tonnes
  • Holodomor – 6-8 million died
  • 1932-34 10 million deported as kulaks
  • Union of Soviet Writers and Artists
  • Ryutin imprisoned – criticised Stalin and collectivisation; assassinate and execute Stalin; Kamenev and Zinoviev executed for not reporting
  • Stalin's wife commits suicide
  • 1929-32 Soviet-German cooperation
  • Non-aggression pact with Fracne
  • Non-aggression pact wth Poland
• 1933 key events

  • 75,000 MTS tractors – 1 for every 40 farms by 1940
  • 2nd FYP
  • Establishment of Stalin cult
  • Party purge – over 570,000 Ryunites
  • Hitler became Chancellor
  • Japan and Germany pull out of League of Nations
• 1934 key events

  • End of food rationing – private plots in kolkhozes
  • 1922-34 OGPU
  • NKVD
  • USSR invited to League of Nations
  • 1st Kirov murdered by Nikolayev
  • 2nd Yagoda replaced by Yezhov
• 1935 key events

  • End of food rationing; abandon quota system
  • Ban pilgrimages to Mecca
  • Zinoviev & Kamenev arrested
  • Mutual assistance pact with France and Czechoslovakia
  • 12+ year olds can be punished as adults
• 1936 key events

  • Emphasis on armaments
  • Easier for women to enter training programmes
  • Japan and Germany signed Anti-Comintern Pact + 1937 Italy – threatened joint action against Comintern interference in their countries
  • Illegal abortion, ban contraception, tax breaks to mothers of 6+ kids, divorce more expensive, adultery is a crime
  • Spanish Civil War – fascist-supported nationalists aimed to overthrow the socialist Republic
  • Trial of 16 – Kamenev, Trotsky, Zinoviev
• 1941 key events

  • 100% collectivised homes but still less grain production than under NEP
  • State ownership
  • 400,000 Volga Germans deported to Siberia and Central Asia; Koreans deported to Central Asia
  • 1936-41 increase of Red Army from 1 to 5 million
  • 40,000 Churches destroyed
  • 1917-41 literacy rate from 65 to 94% in towns and 86% in countryside
  • 22nd Hitler invades – Russia far from prepared
• • Stage 2 of Great Patriotic War – stabilisation of USSR
  • USSR out-produce German war industries


  1942
• Germans surrender at Stalingrad

  February 1942
• • Battle of Prokhorovka – Soviet success
  • Kurk offensive called off by Hitler


  July 1942
• 
  

  • Tehran summit – Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill


  November 1943
• • Stage 3 of Great Patriotic War – defeat of Germans
  • Britain and America's mass bombing campaigns – damaged Germany's war effort
  • Graves from Katyn Forest Massacre discovered


  1943
• End of Leningrad seige


  January 1943
• Beginning of Eastern European victories for USSR


  August 1943
• • Stalin promise USSR be leading industrial power by 1960
  • Mining, electrical and steel production were half of 1940 levels
  • 1945-53 High Stalinism
  • Provisional government in Lublin by pro-Moscow communists
  • Eastern Germany became Soviet zone of occupation


  1945
• • Red Army reached Berlin – final battle
  • Hitler commit suicide


  April 1945
• • Red Army won
  • Germans surrender


  May 1945
• • Driest
  • 1946-7 famine in Ukraine and Central Russia – 1.5 million dead
  • Marshal Zhukov sent to Odessa
  • MGB, MVD


  1946
• Long Telegram

  February 1946
• • Launch of 4TH FYP
  • Iron Curtain speech


  March 1946
• Zhdanov appointed to lead cultural policy


  April 1946
• Pro-Soviet governments gained power in Hungary via salami tactics


  1947
• Truman Doctrine


  March 1947
• • Marshall Plan
  • Ban marriage to foreigners


  June 1947
• • Incomes back to 1938 levels
  • Ban on food grown on private plots of kolkhozniks
  • 1948-49 Berlin Blockade
  • Pro-Soviet government gained power in Czechoslovakia


  1948
• Deutschmark currency


  June 1948
• Zhdanov died from heart attack


  August 1948