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1917 |
- Bolshevik Revolution: Czar Nicholas abdicates; Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, take control; Russian Soviet Socialist Republic established; capital moves to Moscow
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1918 |
- Bolsheviks assassinate czar
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1918-1921 |
- Red Terror: Lenin purges Communist Party, socializes economy; 5 million die of famine
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1921 |
- Lenin inaugurates New Economic Policy, allows limited free-market measures
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1922 |
- Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Transcaucasia (present-day Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan) form Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
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1924-1929 |
- Joseph Stalin consolidates power; inaugurates first Five-Year Plan, collectivizes agriculture, industrializes; famine returns
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1936 |
- Millions die in Stalin's Great Purge (through 1953)
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1941 |
- Germany invades Russia
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1945 |
- World War II ends; Russia occupies Eastern Europe, establishes puppet governments, Cold War takes shape
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1949 |
- Soviets explode atomic device
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1953 |
- Stalin dies; Nikita Khrushchev becomes first secretary of Communist Party
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1956 |
- Khrushchev denounces Stalin
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1961 |
- Soviets launch world's first manned space flight
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1962 |
- Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev withdraws missiles from Cuba
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1964 |
- Leonid Brezhnev helps engineer Khrushchev's fall from power, becomes first secretary of Communist Party
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1969 |
- Major border clashes with China
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1972 |
- Détente: President Richard Nixon visits USSR, signs arms control treaties with Chairman Brezhnev
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1978-1982 |
- Soviets invade Afghanistan
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1985-1991 |
- General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev attempts to improve faltering economy with glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring)
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