Timeline: USSR

From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to to Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika
by David Johnson |
1900s | 1920s | 1940s | 1960s | 1980s | 1990s | Next Timeline |
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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 |
1918 | Bolsheviks assassinate czar |
1918-1921 | Red Terror: Lenin purges Communist Party, socializes economy; 5 million die of famine |
1921 | Lenin inaugurates New Economic Policy, allows limited free-market measures |
1922 | Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Transcaucasia (present-day Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan) form Union of Soviet Socialist Republics |
1924-1929 | Joseph Stalin consolidates power; inaugurates first Five-Year Plan, collectivizes agriculture, industrializes; famine returns |
1936 | Millions die in Stalin's Great Purge (through 1953) |
1941 | Germany invades Russia |
1945 | World War II ends; Russia occupies Eastern Europe, establishes puppet governments, Cold War takes shape |
1949 | Soviets explode atomic device |
1953 | Stalin dies; Nikita Khrushchev becomes first secretary of Communist Party |
1956 | Khrushchev denounces Stalin |
1961 | Soviets launch world's first manned space flight |
1962 | Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev withdraws missiles from Cuba |
1964 | Leonid Brezhnev helps engineer Khrushchev's fall from power, becomes first secretary of Communist Party |
1969 | Major border clashes with China |
1972 | Détente: President Richard Nixon visits USSR, signs arms control treaties with Chairman Brezhnev |
1978-1982 | Soviets invade Afghanistan |
1985-1991 | General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev attempts to improve faltering economy with glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) |
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