Russia / Soviet Union, also Mongolia; key historical events
Also Karl Marx and origins of Communist Movement
See
also Eastern
Europe
See
also Poland
Colour key:
People
Ukraine conflict
Putin era
Chechnyia
Perestroika
era
Soviet era
Russian Revolution
1917
Marx
and start of Communism
Crimean War
Expansion
- E Europe, Asia
Westernisation
Conflict with Sweden 1700-1723
Mongol
Empire
3/4/2017, An Islamist terrorist bomb
exploded on the St Petersburg metro system; a second bomb was defused. 14 were killed and 50 injured. The bomber was
from Kyrgyzstan.
24/11/2015, Turkey shot down a Russian
jet fighter that was taking part in Russia’s pro-Assad campaign in Syria,
against both ISIS and non-ISIS rebels. Turkey said the aircraft had
transgressed into Turkish airspace, and was warned several times. Russia denied
the warnings, and it appeared the jet had at most been in Turkish airspace for
2 or 3 seconds as it (might have) crossed a finger of Turkish territory jutting
into Syria.
27/2/2015, The Russian opposition
politician, Boris
Nemtsov, was assassinated in Moscow; born 9/10/1959 he was aged 55.
In the late 1990s Nemtsov was a close associate of Yeltsin,
who put him in charge of economic reforms, although the economic crash of 1998,
in which many ordinary Russians lost everything, severely dented his
credibility. Nemtsov
was a co-founder of the Union of Rightists, which won 8.6% of the vote, 6
million votes, in the Russian elections of 1999, and became Deputy Speaker of
the Russian Parliament in February 2000, a month after Putin became President. However Nemtsov’s
party was perceived as having confused policies in the face of stronger
leadership by Putin
and in 2003 the Union of Rightists failed to meet the threshold for qualifying
for any seats in the Duma. Outside the political arena, Nemtsov became more critical of Putin,
who in turn attempted to undermine Nemtsov’s business interests. Nemtsov
continued to criticise Putin and government corruption generally,
also censuring Putin’s
involvement in the Ukraine, the shooting down of a Malaysian aircraft, and
Russian annexation of the Crimea, whilst Putin was trying to publically distance
himself from ‘Ukrainian rebel forces’ in eastern Ukraine. Nemtsov had been organising an
anti-Ukraine-war march in Moscow for 1/3/2015 and this march became his silent
memorial procession by tens of thousands of Russians. The Kremlin, in order to
prevent the bridge where Nemtsov had been killed from becoming a memorial to
him, hosted a celebration of the annexation of Crimea there later in March
2015.
1/9/2014, Russian-backed separatists took control of Luhansk Airport, and of
Novalsk, eastern Ukraine.
28/8/2014, Pro-Russian rebels took the Ukrainian town of Novoazovsk.
13/8/2014, The UN estimated that a total of 2,086 people had been
killed in the Ukraine conflict so far, double the toll from 2 weeks earlier.
In mid-August,
Ukrainian forces were making headway against rebel Russian backed forces.
12/8/2014, Nearly 300 Russian lorries laden with ‘aid’ for the rebels in Luhansk,
eastern Ukraine, set off from Moscow.
The Ukrainian Government in Kiev attempted to halt the convoy.
30/7/2014, The EU imposed more sanctions on Russia for its backing of Ukrainian
rebels.
26/7/2014, The death toll in the Ukraine conflict reached 1,129; 799
of them were civilians.
17/7/2014, A Malaysian airliner,
flight MH17, with 298 on board was shot down 30 kilometres west of the
Ukraine-Russia border with no survivors, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala
Lumpur.
13/7/2014, Russia warned of severe
consequences after a Ukranian shell was fired across the border and killed a
Russian.
12/7/2014, Ukraine sent war jets
into Donetsk, and claimed to have killed 500 rebels.
5/7/2014, Pro-Russian rebels abandoned the Ukrainian town of Slavyansk after
heavy fighting.
24/6/2014, Rebels shot down a Ukrainian helicopter, killing 9. The UN estimated that
over 420 had died in the conflict so far.
20/6/2014, Ukrainian President Poroshenko declared a week-long truce.
16/6/2014, Russia cut gas supplies to the Ukraine.
14/6/2014, Pro Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian warplane.
6/6/2014, Putin and Poroshenko called for an end to violence in
the Ukraine.
4/6/2014, US President Obama condemned Russian ‘aggression’ in Ukraine.
25/5/2014, Petro Poroshenko was elected Ukrainian
President.
11/5/2014, The Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence after
referendums.
2/5/2014, Pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian factions clashed in Odessa; 42 people
died.
15/4/2014, Kiev began ‘anti-terrorist’ operations in eastern Ukraine.
7/4/2014, Pro Russian gunmen seized government buildings in eastern Ukraine.
18/3/2014, Russian President Putin signed a Bill to absorb the Crimea into Russia.
16/3/2014, Russia organised a
widely-discredited referendum in the Crimea which proiduced an alleged 97% vote
in favour of the region leaving the Ukraine and (re)joining Russia.
1/3/2014, The Russian Parliament
approved Vladimir Putin’s request to deploy the Russian military in the Crimea.
28/2/2014, Pro-Russian gunmen
seized government buildings in Simferopol, capital of the Crimea. The Crimea
was originally part of Russia until transferred to Ukraine in 1954, and in 2014
still had a large Russian population.
27/2/2014, In Russia, Viktor Yanukoyvitch
insisted he was still legitimate leader of the
Ukraine. The Ukrainian Government had issued a warrant for his arrest on
24/2/2014.
22/2/2014, In the Ukraine,
pro-Russian President
Viktor Yanukoyvitch fled after snipers
killed protestors in central Kiev, and rival Yulia
Tymoshenko was freed.
20/2/2014, 88 died in riots in the
Ukraine.
18/2/2014, In Ukraine, 26 died and hundreds
injured in clashes between pro-government and pro-western factions.
28/1/2014, The Ukrainian Prime
Minister, Mykola
Azarov, resigned as anti-protest laws were
repealed by the government.
25/1/2014, Violent protests in
Ukraine continued between pro-EU and pro-Moscow factions.
22/1/2014, Police in Kiev, Ukraine,
shot dead two anti-government protestors.
21/11/2013,
The Ukrainian
Government moved closer to Russia, sparking popular protests.
24/1/2011, Islamist terrorists from the north Caucasus blew
themselves up in the International Arrivals Hall of Domodedovo Airport, Moscow,
killing dozens of people.
9/6/2010, Ethnic
conflict in Kyrgyzstan between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks.
1/4/2010, Major rioting in Bishkek,
Kyrgyzstan, caused President Bakiyev to flee.
7/1/2009, In a dispute over energy prices, Russia
shut off all gas supplies to Europe.
5/11/2008, On Russian television, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev spoke against NATO missile defences in Poland and the
Czech Republic. Medvedev threatened
to put Russian missiles in the enclave of Kaliningrad and install radio
scramblers to foil NATO’s missile defence system.
2/9/2008, EU leaders began a
mediation initiative with Russia over Georgia.
29/8/2008, Georgia cut all
diplomatic relations with Russia and increased links to the USA.
25/8/2008, Both Russian Houses of parliament voted to recognise as
independent states the breakaway regions of Georgia; South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
27/8/2008, David Milliband, from
the UK, visited Kiev to reinforce the Ukrainian ambitions to align itself with
the West.
15/8/2008, The Russian military expressed anger at a
US-Polish agreement to set up missile defences on Polish territory. The US said it was against rogue states like
Iran. The Russians said it was against them and one general said it made Poland
a target for a nuclear strike.
9/8/2008, Russian ships sailed from Ukrainian ports
to mount a blockade of the Georgian coast.
8/8/2008, Russian forces backed South Ossetian fighters who were seeking
secession from Georgia. 130,000 Georgians fled South Ossetia.
7/8/2008, Intense fighting erupted between Georgia
and Russia. Russia backed the territory
of South Ossetia, a Muslim area that had broken away from Georgia after Georgia
declared independence as the USSR broke up.
The USA backed Georgia.
2/3/2008, Dmitry Medvedev was elected
President of Russia.
21/12/2006, Saparmurat Niyazov, President
of Turkmenistan, died.
24/11/2006, Mr Litvinenko's family released a statement, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of
involvement in his death.
23/11/2006, Russian dissident and former KGB
bodyguard Alexander
Litvinenko died a slow and painful death in
a London hospital after drinking tea laced with Polonium 210. He fell out with Vladimir
Putin in the late 1990s when they worked together in the Russian
security forces. Britain suspected former KGB agent Andrei
Luovoi of administering the
poison and demanded his extradition form Russia. The denial of this extradition
led to the expulsion of four Russian diplomats from Britain.
21/11/2006, The Kremlin dismissed as 'sheer nonsense'
claims that the Russian government was involved in the poisoning of Litvinenko.
17/11/2006, Litvinenko’s condition deteriorated and he was transferred to University College
Hospital in central London.
1/11/2006, Mr Litvinenko met Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun at the Millennium hotel in London's Mayfair. Mr Litvinenko was admitted to a hospital in north
London several hours later, complaining of feeling sick.
7/10/2006, Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was
shot dead in her Moscow apartment on October 7. Mr
Litvinenko began to investigate her murder.
3/9/2004, The Beslan siege
ended violently. Terrorists fired rocket propelled grenades at the Russians and
Russian Special Forces (Spetznaz) moved in. The school was blown up by the
terrorists.
2/9/2004, Negotiations
between the Russian authorities and the terrorists at Beslan failed, however
use of force to rescue the hostages was ruled out. 26 women and children were
released.
1/9/2004, Chechen gunmen seized Middle
School No. 1 in the town of Beslan, in Ossetia, near Chechnya, holding more
than 1,000 teachers parents and pupils hostage, on the first day of the new
school year. Explosives had previously been hidden under the floorboards during
renovation work carried on during the summer holidays. Russian troops stormed
the school, and there was a shootout and a deadly fire, as mines were set
off. 330 people, half of them children,
died in the chaos.
9/5/2004, Akhmad
Kadyrov, President of Chechnya, was killed by a
landmine placed under a VIP stage during a WW2 memorial parade in Grozny.
14/3/2004, Presidential elections in Russia. Vladimir Putin easily won a second term.
5/6/2003, A female suicide bomber
killed 16 Russian soldiers at Mozdok, a staging post for troops in Chechnya.
23/10/2002. Fifty Chechen armed gunmen and women took over a theatre in
Moscow, demanding that Moscow withdraw its forces from Chechnya. The audience
of 850 was held as hostage. On 26/10/2002 Russian special forces pumped noxious
gas into the theatre then stormed it. Most of the terrorists were killed whilst
unconscious from the gas. However, whereas the Chechens had only shot two
hostages, some 130 of them were killed by the gas, and a similar number
required hospital treatment. Criticism of the operation was deflected by Putin,
who asked how Russia could be expected to support the West’s ‘War on Terror’ if
they did not back Russia when dealing with Islamic terrorism in its own country.
16/7/2001, China and Russia signed a treaty of friendship.
10/1/2001, Authorities in Moscow banned the Salvation
Army, seeing it as a threat to the Russian State.
20/8/2000. The Russian navy said
there was almost no hope of finding survivors from the nuclear submarine Kursk. She sank on 12/8/2000, and all
118 crew died. Recovery of the wreck, minus its stern, was on 8/10/2001.
6/2/2000, The city of Grozny, Chechnya,
fell to Russian troops.
31/12/1999, Boris
Yeltsin resigned as
President of Russia and was replaced by Vladimir
Putin. Putin, 47, was elected President on 26/3/2000.
26/8/1999, Russia began the Second Chechen
War following the invasion of Dagestan.
12/5/1997 The Russian-Chechen peace treaty
was signed.
27/5/1996, Russian President Boris Yeltsin
met Chechnya rebels for the first time and negotiated a ceasefire.
28/2/1996. Russia
became a member of the Council of Europe.
9/1/1996. Chechen insurgents seized 3,000
civilian hostages.
30/6/1995. Military accord to end fighting
in Chechnya.
26/3/1996, The
International Monetary Fund approved a US$ 10.2 billion loan to Russia for
economic reforms.
19/1/1995. Russian troops seized
the Presidential palace in Grozny, Chechnya.
11/12/1994, Boris
Yeltsin ordered
troops into Chechnya.
29/11/1994. Russian aircraft bombed the Chechen capital,
Grozny.
22/6/1994. Russia joined NATO’s ‘partnership for peace.
27/5/1994, Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia.
28/12/1993. The Russian
government announced that nearly 50% of the economy had been privatised.
14/12/1993. The Russian elections produced a move to the
Right. Around 50% voted for Conservative-Nationalist parties with Vladimir Zhirinovsky (Liberal Democrat)
emerging as overall leader. Yeltsin
remained President of Russia. The Baltic States feared revenge from Zhirinovsky for their precipitating the
collapse of the old USSR.
1/12/1993. Georgian and Abkhaz representatives met in Geneva
to sign an accord to end their conflict.
18/11/1993, The Georgian President extended the country’s state
of emergency indefinitely.
4/10/1993. Russian rebels surrendered at Moscow ‘White House’.
Troops loyal to President
Yeltsin opened fire on rebels in the White House who wanted a return to old-style Communism.
146 people died in the conflict; Yeltsin
pardoned the ringleaders.
28/9/1993. Abkhaz rebels took the Georgian Black Sea port and
resort city of Sukhumi. Georgian President Eduard Sheverdnadze accused
Moscow of helping the rebels.
21/9/1993, In
Russia, President
Yeltsin suspended the Constitution and scrapped Parliament.
14/8/1993. Armenia launched a big offensive inside Azerbaijan
near the Iranian border. Azerbaijan was also contending with another separatist
movement, also near the Iranian border, at Lenkoran.
13/7/1993. (1) Rolls Royce opened its first showroom in Russia.
(2) Tajik rebels, helped by
Afghani guerrillas from across the border in Afghanistan, attacked Russian
troops in Tajikistan who were there to prop up the local government clinging to
power against Muslim fundamentalists.
6/7/1993. Georgia
steeped up resistance to Abkhazian rebels, who were seeking their own
Muslim state, around the Black Sea resort of Sukhumi.
4/4/1993. Armenian forces now occupied a tenth of Azerbaijan.
Armenia laid claim to the enclave of Nagorny-Karabakh and was occupying
territory separating the enclave from Armenia.
3/1/1993. President Bush
of the USA and Yeltsin of the USSR
signed the START II (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) Treaty.
30/12/1992. All Soviet troops have left Mongolia.
18/8/1992. After five days of fighting, Georgian forces took
control of the separatist Abkhazian capital, Sukhumi.
21/4/1992, Vladimir
Romanov, the Pretender to the Russian throne, died aged 74.
31/1/1992. Boris Yeltsin, leader
of Russia, made a speech at the UN calling for America and Russia to develop a
joint ‘star wars’ shield against missiles from rogue nations.
25/12/1991, Above the
Kremlin, Moscow, the old Soviet flag was lowered and the new Russian flag was
raised.
20/12/1991, President Boris Yeltsin
said he wanted Russia to join NATO.
16/12/1991. Kazakhstan became
independent from the former USSR.
12/12/1991, The Russian Parliament voted to replace the USSR with a
looser confederation to be known as the CIS or Confederation of Independent
States.
8/12/1991. The leaders
of the republics of Russia, Byelorussia (Belarus), and Ukraine formed a
commonwealth of independent states (CIS), after the dissolution of the USSR,
see 5/9/1991.
1/12/1991. The Ukraine
voted in a referendum to leave the USSR.
6/9/1991, Leningrad reverted to the name St Petersburg.
5/9/1991. The USSR ceased to exist as the Congress of People’s
Deputies voted to give the republics their independence.
21/8/1991. The
Soviet hardline coup collapsed and Gorbachev was restored as President. On 25/8/1991 Gorbachev resigned as
leader of the Communist party, and the Party prepared to dissolve, ending 70
years of Communist supremacy.
20/8/1991, Estonia voted
for independence,
19/8/1991. Soviet
hardliners toppled President
Gorbachev.
28/6/1991 The Warsaw
Pact was disbanded.
23/6/1991, The International Monetary Fund agreed to offer associate
membership to Russia.
13/6/1991. First
free Presidential election in the USSR. Boris Yeltsin
was elected President.
12/6/1991, The citizens
of Leningrad voted 55% to 43% to return to the name St Petersburg.
3/6/1991. Soviet troops
sealed off the centre of Vilnius, Lithuania.
20/5/1991, The
USSR passed a law allowing people to leave the country free of all restrictions.
9/4/1991. Georgia voted to secede from the USSR.
17/3/1991, Russia held an election to decide whether to remain as
the USSR or break up into Republics.
3/3/1991. Estonia and Latvia voted to secede from the USSR.
25/2/1991. Warsaw Pact military
alliance dissolved.
19/2/1991, In the USSR, Boris Yeltsin, Russian President, called on Mikhail
Gorbachev, Soviet President, to resign. Yeltsin accused Gorbachev of
dictatorship.
11/2/1991,The Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev sent a letter to all Warsaw Pact
government leaders proposing the disbandment of the military pact on 1/4/1991.
The Pact was formed one week after a re0armed West Germany joined NATO in 1955.
10/2/1991. In a poll in
Lithuania, in which 85% of the
electorate voted, 90% were in favour of independence from Moscow. Only 6% voted
against independence. The Soviet president, Mikhail
Gorbachev, declared the
poll illegal.
24/1/1991. Soviet
troops opened fire on traffic outside Vilnius, 1 person was killed.
20/1/1991. A crowd of over 100,000 protested in Moscow against military violence
in the Baltic Republics.
13/1/1991. (+16,686) Soviet troops fired on crowds in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania; 13
died. The EC threatened to halt aid to Russia unless troops withdrew. Estonia
and Latvia also made moves for independence. On 20/1/1991 Soviet ‘Black Beret’
elite troops stormed Riga, killing 4 and injuring 9. Lithuania had lost its
independence to Russia in 1939 under a pact between Hitler and Stalin.
2/1/1991, Soviet troops seized the Communist Party
headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania, sparking massive protests.
12/12/1990, US President George Bush agreed to send US$ 1,000 million food aid to the Soviet Union.
21/11/1990. A
declaration of the end of the Cold War was signed in Paris.
23/8/1990, Armenia declared
independence from the USSR.
27/7/1990 Belarus
declared its ‘sovereignty’, a step towards independence from the USSR.
14/7/1990. Boris Yeltsin left the Communist Party.
29/6/1990. Lithuania
announced it would suspend its declaration of independence for 100 days.
12/6/1990, Russia emerged as an independent state, from the former
USSR.
3/6/1990. Kirgizstan suffered violence between ethnic Kirgiz
(50% of the population) and ethnic Uzbeks (30%). The trouble began when 10,000
Uzbeks protested at plans by 1,500 Kirgiz to seize farmland near the city of
Osh to build houses.
8/5/1990, Estonia affirmed its independence, reviving its 1938
Constitution.
4/5/1990. The Latvian Parliament voted for independence from the
USSR.
20/4/1990, President Mikhail Gorbachev cut of 85% of
Lithuania’s gas supplies, in retaliation for Lithuania declaring independence.
The European Union hesitated to help Lithuania, fearing to destabilise Gorbachev.
12/4/1990. The Soviet Union finally admitted it had massacred
up to 15,000 Polish officers at Katyn in 1940. See 26/4/1943.
13/3/1990. The Soviet Congress voted to abolish the political
monopoly of the Communist Party.
11/3/1990. Lithuania declared
itself independent from the USSR. On 16/3/1990 President
Gorbachev issued an ulltimatum to rescind this declaration.
28/2/1990. The USSR passed a bill allowing individuals to privately
own land for the first time since the 1920s.
7/2/1990. The Soviet
Communist Party voted to end its monopoly of power.
27/1/1990. The city of Tirasopol in the Moldavian SSR briefly
declared independence.
19/1/1990. Soviet
troops fired on an Azerbaijani crowd, killing many people. Thousands of
Armenians fled Azerbaijan.
13/1/1990,(1) The break up of the USSR began as the Baltic States of
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania prepared for secession. In Lithuania, 200,000
demonstrated for independence.
(2) President Gorbachev told Lithuania that all Soviet republics will get the
right to secede.
(3) 24 people died in riots in
Baku, Azerbaijan.
4/1/1990. Soviet President Gorbachev told
Lithuania’s Communists that they were free to leave the Soviet Communist Party.
19/12/1989. Lithuania called for independence from the USSR.
18/12/1989, The EEC signed a 10-year trade pact with the USSR.
14/12/1989, Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov
died.
10/12/1989, In
Mongolia, Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj announced
the establishment of a democratic movement within the country.
3/12/1989. The East German leader Egon
Krenz and the politbureau resigned. A
USSR-USA summit was held in Malta. The Cold war was declared over at 12.55pm that day.
1/12/1989. The Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II met in Rome,
ending 70 years of hostility between the Roman Catholic Church and the Soviet
Union.
4/11/1989, See 7/10/1989. Pro-democracy rallies sparked by Gorbachev’s visit to
East Germany resulted a a million-strong protest in East Germany.
7/10/1989. On
a visit to East Germany, Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev urged the East German government
to introduce reforms. See 4/11/1989.
31/8/1989. The Soviet Republic of Moldavia’s
Parliament voted to make Moldavian, not Russian, the official language.
23/8/1989, 2 million
Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians formed an uninterrupted 600 kilometre
human chain to demand independence from Moscow. Hungary removed all border
restrictions with Austria.
17/7/1989. Soviet miners went on strike.
15/7/1989, Georgians and Abkhazians clashed in the Abkhazia
region of Georgia; 11 were killed and 127 injured.
13/6/1989, Mikhail
Gorbachev and Chancellor Kohl agreed that East and West Germany should be
reunited.
3/6/1989. Liquid gas stored beside a railway in Chelyabinsk,
USSR, exploded, killing 800.
2/5/1989, The Iron Curtain began to break down. Hungary dismantled
150 miles of barbed wire fence, opening its border to Western Europe.
9/4/1989, Red Army
soldiers massacred Georgian demonstrators in Tbilisi’s main square, killing 20
people. Poison gas was allegedly used.
8/4/1989, 40 soviet submariners died when a nuclear powered
Mike c;las submarine caught fire, and refused assistance from Western merchant
ships.
7/4/1989. President Gorbachev of the USSR visited Britain,
and invited Queen
Elizabeth II to visit Moscow.
26/3/1989. The first free
elections were held in the USSR. Pro-reform candidates won many seats.
7/12/1988. Gorbachev cut the Red
Army by 10%.
16/11/1988, The Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR declared that
Estonia is ‘sovereign’, adopting their own constitution, but stopped short of
declaring independence.
26/10/1988, Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev promised to free all political
prisoners by the end of the year.
3/8/1988, Matthias Rust was freed from prison in
Russia. He had served 14 months of a
4-year sentence for flying a plane from Germany to land in Red Square, Moscow.
11/5/1988. Soviet spy Kim Philby died in
Moscow aged 76.
29/4/1988. McDonalds announced plans for 20 restaurants in Moscow to
sell the ‘Bolshoi Mac’.
2/3/1988. The Soviet Army was sent to
Azerbaijan to quell unrest there. Tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia grew.
Azerbaijan rejected a call for the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh to be returned
to Armenian control; Karabakh had been part of Azerbaijan since 1921, although
mainly populated by Armenians. Armenia invaded and occupied large parts of
Azerbaijan lying between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
See Iran & Afghanistan for Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan and subsequent withdrawal under Gorbachev
8/12/1987. Gorbachev and Reagan signed an
arms reduction treaty, to eliminate medium range nuclear missiles from Europe.
12/11/1987, President Gorbachev
sacked Boris Yeltsin as head of the Communist Party after Yeltsin criticised him
for the slow pace of perestroika
(reconstruction).
4/9/1987, Matthias Rust was
sentenced to four years in a Soviet labour
camp, however he was released on 3/8/1988. See 28/5/1987.
28/5/1987, A 19-year-old West German, Mathias Rust, evaded Soviet air defences and
landed a light plane in Red Square, Moscow, from Helsinki, Finland. He was
immediately detained, and released on 3/8/1988.
14/4/1987, Soviet
President Mikhail
Gorbachev
out-manoeuvred the White House by proposing sweeping arms cuts, beyond those
envisaged by US President Reagan.
11/10/1986, Ronald
Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev
met in Reykjavik to discuss intermediate arms limitations. The talks ended in
failure.
25/2/1986. President Gorbachev of
the USSR first used the term ‘Perestroika’ (restructuring) in a speech to the
27th Congress of the Communist Party.
11/2/1986, As Gorbachev continued to
liberalise the USSR, political prisoners including Anatoly Scharansky and
Yuri Orlov
were released and allowed to leave the country.
21/11/1985, Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev ended their meeting with an agreement to reduce their
nuclear arsenals by a mutual 50%.
19/11/1985. Reagan and Gorbachev met in
Geneva, the first such meeting for 6 years.
8/11/1986, Vyacheslav
Molotov, Soviet politician, died.
11/3/1985. In the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev (54 years old) succeeded
Konstantin Chernenko, who died on 10/3/1985. See 13/2/1984.
10/3/1985, Death of Konstantin
Chernenko, General Secretary of the Soviet
Communist Party since 1984.
7/3/1984, Donald Maclean, British Foreign Office official and Soviet
secret agent who fled to the USSR in 1951, died aged 70.
13/2/1984. Konstantin Chernenko
became the leader of the USSR. See 11/3/1985. Yuri
Andropov had died on 7/2/1984. Andropov came to power
in 16/6/1983.
9/2/1984, Yuri Andropov, Soviet
leader, died after only 15 months in office. He was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko.
26/9/1983, The
Soviet Union’s early warning system appeared to show missiles had been fired
from the USA. However the officer in charge, Stanislav Petrov, chose to delay
any response. In fact satellites had spotted reflections of sunlight from the
ground.
16/6/1983. Andropov was elected
Soviet leader of the USSR. However he died on 7/2/1984.
26/3/1983, Anthony Blunt, the Queen’s former art adviser, and Soviet spy, died.
2/2/1983. The US and USSR began START
(Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) in Geneva.
10/11/1982, (1) Leonid Illyich
Brezhnev, Soviet leader for 18 years, died
of a heart attack aged 75. He was succeeded by Yuri Andropov.
(2) Geoffrey Prime was jailed for 15 years for spying.
30/11/1981. The US and USSR began arms talks in Geneva.
18/12/1980, Death of Soviet statesman Alexei
Kosygin, Prime Minister of the USSR 1964-80.
23/10/1980, The
Soviet leader, Alexei
Kosygin, resigned due to illness.
13/6/1980, Car manufacturing workers in the USSR went on
strike.
18/6/1979. US
President Carter and USSR President
Brezhnev signed the SALT 2 (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty)
in Vienna.
21/5/1979, Elton
John became the first Western rock star to perform in the Soviet
Union.
1/6/1978. Bugging devices were found at the US embassy in Moscow.
6/9/1976, Soviet air force pilot Viktor
Belenko landed his MiG-25 jet fighter at
Hakodate in Hokkaido and requested political asylum in the USA.
27/7/1976, The Soviet chess champion Korchnoi defected to the West.
21/1/1976. The Financial Times and New York Times went on sale in
the USSR.
9/9/1975. The Czech tennis player Martina
Navratilova defected to the West.
24/2/1975, Nikolai Bulganin, Soviet Prime Minister from
1955 to 1958, died.
13/2/1974. Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, Russian author and winner of the Nobel Prize in 1970,
was expelled from the USSR. This was a result of the publication of his work, The Gulag Archipelago, a study of the
Stalinist prison camp system. Solzhenitsyn
himself had spent time in these camps between 1945 and 1953.
29/5/1972. Brezhnev and Nixon signed SALT-2 (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty).
8/10/1971,
The USSR expelled 5 Britons and refused another 13 entry in rataliation for the
expulsions of 24/9/1971.
24/9/1971, Britain expelled 90 Soviet diplomats after a KGB
defector, Oleg Lyalin, passed information to British Intelligence. See
8/10/1971. The UK had also granted asylum to the Soviet defector and space
expert Anatol Fedoseyev in June 1971.
11/9/1971, Nikita Kruschev,
President of the USSR from 1958 to 1964, died aged 77 near Moscow.
17/12/1970. The Soviet paper Pravda attacked writer Solzhenitsyn as
‘hostile’.
9/10/1970, The winner of the Nobel Prize for
Literature, dissident Soviet writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, declined to
attend the ceremony in Stockholm in December for ‘personal reasons’. It was
unclear whether the Soviet authorities had prevented him from leaving, or had
threatened nit to readmit him if he went.
11/6/1970, Alexander Kerensky, Russian political leader overthrown by the Bolsheviks in
1917, died in New York City aged 89.
2/3/1969. Soviet and Chinese troops clashed on their border.
21/12/1967, Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia, was
born.
9/3/1967, Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Joseph
Stalin, defected to the West, requesting political asylum at the
US Embassy in India..
15/10/1964. Nikita Khrushchev was replaced, in the USSR, as First Secretary of the
Communist Party by Leonid Brezhnev and as Prime Minister by Alexei
Kosygin.
22/4/1964, British
businesswoman Greville Wynne who had been imprisoned in the USSR for a year on spying
charges was exchanged for the Soviet agent Gordon
Lonsdale.
3/2/1964. China
challenged the USSR for leadership of the Communist world.
31/8/1963, The ‘hot
line’, linking the Kremlin and the White House, went into operation.
30/8/1963, Guy Burgess, Cambridge spy who worked for the
Soviet Union, died.
30/7/1963. The ‘third man’, Kim
Philby, turned up in Moscow after escaping
arrest in Britain for spying. He had defected to Russia on 23/1/1963.
1/7/1963, Kim Philby, British
spy, was revealed as the ‘third man’.
20/6/1963. The White
House and the Kremlin agreed to set up a ‘hot line’.
13/4/1963, Gary Kasparov, Russian world chess champion,
was born.
23/1/1963, Kim Philby was
officially reported as ‘missing’ after failing to meet his wife at a dinner
party in Beirut. Formerly a high-ranking British intelligence officer, he had
been accused of spying for the USSR in 1955 but had been exonerated by Prime Minister Harold MacMillan. Philby’s accomplices Guy
Burgess and Donald
McClean had fled to Moscow in 1951; MacMillan insisted
there was no ‘third man’.
See South America for Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
1/6/1962, The Soviet Union raised the price of consumer goods by
more than 25 percent in order to cover higher operating expenses for the U.S.S.R.'s
collective farm program. Butter was up 25%, and pork and beef by 30%. In
protest, workers walked off of the job at the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive
Factory and the strike soon turned into an uprising.
10/2/1962. The USA exchanged a Soviet spy for the captured pilot Gary Powers. The exchange
took place in the middle of a bridge linking the American and Soviet sectors of
Berlin.
10/11/1961. The USSR renamed Stalingrad as Volgograd.
1/11/1961, In the Soviet Union, a ‘de-Stalinisation’
programme resulted in Stalin’s body being removed from the Red Square mausoleum
where it had lain next to Lenin since his death in 1953. Even Stalingrad, with its great significance regarding World
War Two, was renamed Volgograd.
31/8/1961, After failure of the Geneva Conference, the
16/6/1961. Rudolf Nureyev defected from the
Soviet Union whilst in
7/11/1960, Missiles first appeared on the Red Square military parade.
1/5/1960. A US spy plane, the U-2, piloted by Gary Powers, was hit by an SA2 missile and shot down over the USSR near
Sverdlovsk. On 8/7/1960 Gary Powers was indicted as a spy;
he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released after 18 months in
exchange for Soviet agent Rudolf Abel.
31/5/1958, The Kremlin and Washington agreed to hold
talks on a ban on atmospheric atom bomb tests.
7/1/1957. President Khrushchev of the USSR welcomed China’s Prime Minister Chou En Lai. Behind
the scenes, however, there was rivalry between the two countries. The USSR
supported Manchurian and Vietnamese Communists, and there were differences on
how Communism should be enforced. However Chou
En Lai supported the USSR’s crackdown in
1956 in Hungary.
14/5/1956, A British diver disappeared whilst bugging the underside
of Soviet President Kruschev’s warship in Portsmouth.
18/4/1956, The Soviet leader Nikita
Kruschev, along with Nikolai Bulganin,
visited the UK.
18/3/1956, At the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes.
22/11/1955, A Tupolev Tu-16 dropped the first Soviet nuclear bomb, RDS-37, in Siberia.
18/9/1955, Four years after they fled to Russia, the British
Government officially confirmed that Donald
McLean and Guy
Burgess were Soviet spies.
14/5/1955. Eastern bloc countries signed the Warsaw Pact.
15/4/1954, Ulo Altermann, Estonian soldier and forest
brother, died (b. 1923).
31/3/1954. The USSR offered to join NATO.
20/3/1954. In the USSR, Khrushchev became First Secretary
of the Communist Party.
19/2/1954, Russia transferred Crimea to Ukraine, to mark the 300th
anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian Union.
16/9/1953, The wife of former British Foreign Office
official and Soviet spy Donald McLean disappeared, two years after her husband fled to Russia
with Guy Burgess.
14/3/1953, Nikita Kruschev became
First Secretary of the Communist Party in the USSR, replacing Georgi Malenkov.
5/3/1953. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died
aged 74 of a brain haemorrhage at his dacha.. He was born in 1879 in Georgia, the son of a
shoemaker. In the months before his death Stalin became paranoid, and in
January 1953 the discovery of a ‘Doctor’s
Plot’, involving 9 Jewish physicians. Stalin died before the trial of these 9
doctors could be staged, but it was believed they were to be the scapegoats to
precipitate a major purge of the Soviet Communist Party. Later in 1953 Pravda
announced the doctors were innocent and their confessions had been obtained
under torture.
7/10/1952, Vladimir Putin, who was elected Russian
president in 1999, was born.
25/5/1951. British diplomats Burgess (1910 – 1963) and MacLean (1913 – 1983) were first reported missing. They had
defected to Moscow. They had been recruited by the Soviets whilst working at
MI5 during the 1930s. Burgess did not like life in Moscow and died
in 1963 of alcohol poisoning and kidney failure.
8/3/1950. The USSR claimed to have the atom bomb.
12/1/1950. The death penalty was re-introduced in the
USSR.
29/8/1949, The Soviet Union successfully tested its first
nuclear device, in what is now Kazakhstan.
25/11/1947. The
15/3/1946. The USSR began its
4th 5-Year Plan.
5/3/1946. Winston Churchill referred to an “Iron Curtain” descending
across Europe, in a speech at Fulton, USA. The first public acknowledgement
that the Cold War had begun. See 12/3/1947.
26/4/1943. The mass grave
of 4,000 Polish officers was found in the Katyn forest.
8/1/1943, German forces began to retreat from the Stalingrad area, leaving some of their compatriots under siege in Stalingrad itself.
31/1/1943. The
German 6tb Army under Field Marshal Paulus
surrendered at Stalingrad after five months of fighting. The
last Germans fighting in
28/6/1942. The Germans launched Operation Blue, an offensive to
capture the Russian Caucasus oilfields and secure the Volga River. The Soviets
responded by concentrating resistance at Stalingrad, threatening the northern
flank of this Operation. On 23/7/1942 Hitler
ordered General Paulus to capture
Stalingrad at all costs. Meanwhile Stalin
could not let go the city that bore his name.
See France-Germany (from 1/1/1870) for more events of
World War in Europe
22/6/1941. (1)
The invasion plan, called Operation Barbarossa had been announced
by Hitler to his generals on 30/3/1941 in a speech to 200 senior army officers.
At 3.am on 22 June the greatest offensive in history was launched. Three
million men poured across a front nearly a thousand miles long. Hitler
had said that the Communists must be not only beaten but annihilated, or ‘in 30
years we shall have to fight them again’. By the end of World War Two, four million Russians had
died in battle and a further 3.5 million had been taken captive. 97% of these
died in captivity; Hitler had decided that the Geneva Convention did not apply
to them, or to millions more captured later. 17,000 Russian villages were wiped
off the map by the Germans.
Stalin had not believed
The German invasion was to have
begun on 15/5/1941, but the need to intervene in the Balkans against
The Germans correctly estimated
Russian military strength in the west at 150 divisions but thought the Soviets
had just 50 further divisions in reserve; in fact the Red Army summoned up over
200 reserve divisions. Unexpected July rains turned unsurfaced Russian roads
into mud whilst the scorched earth policy meant roads, bridges, railways and
factories were destroyed before the Germans advanced. The Russians also
destroyed the railway rolling stock and because the Russian gauge was different
from the German one, the Nazis could not use the Russian rail network.
(2)
See China-Japan-Korea for events of World War Two in
Pacific
13/4/1941. Stalin signed a
neutrality pact with
18/12/1940, Hitler signed the directive for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet
20/8/1940. Leon
Trotsky was assassinated
in Coyoacan, Mexico, where the exiled Bolshevik leader
had fled to. He was struck several blows on the head with an ice pick by Ramon Mercader del Rio, one of Stalin’s agents. Aged 61, he
had been outmanoeuvred for power by Stalin
in 1923.
3/8/1940, Latvia officially joined the Soviet Union.
21/7/1940. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, occupied by the USSR
since June 1940, voted to become part of the USSR.
14/7/1940. The Soviet Union annexed Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
27/6/1940. The
26/6/1940. The
See France-Germany (from 1/1/1870) for main European events
of World War Two
17/6/1940, The Soviet Union
occupied
16/6/1940. The Soviet army invaded the
See also Scandinavia for Russia-Finland conflict 1939-40
23/12/1939. Stalin sacked General Meretzkof, as Finnish successes
against
14/12/1939. The
11/10/1939. The
30/9/1939. Germany and the
USSR signed a pact agreeing on the partition of Poland.
22/9/1939, Russian forces
took
21/9/1939, Germany and Russia declared that Poland no longer
existed.
17/9/1939. Soviet troops invaded Poland. The German
army reached Brest Litovsk in Poland. De Valera said Ireland would remain neutral in
the War. Australia and New Zealand took sides with Britain straightaway. The
Canadian debated the issue for three days then voted to join the War with one
vote against. In South Africa the prime Minister General Hertzog wanted to stay
out of the war; he was forced to resign and replaced by General Smuts who immediately
took Britain’s side.
23/8/1939. Hitler and the
4/5/1939, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov succeeded Litvinov as Soviet
Foreign Minister.
15/3/1938, Stalin’s purges reached a crescendo with the execution of
18 senior statesmen, many of them friends of Lenin.
Amongst those confessing, at Lubyanka Prison, to improbable plots to overthrow
the Soviet State was Nikolai
Bukharin.
21/10/1937. Stalin killed a further 62 in his purges.
28/6/1937, In the Soviet Union, Joseph
Stalin had 36 ‘confessed’ German spies shot.
12/6/1937. Stalin’s purge extended to the Red Army; 12
top generals were executed.
25/8/1936, Stalin executed 16 senior Communists.
2/5/1935. France and the
9/3/1935. In the USSR, Nikita Krushchev
was elected chief of the Communist Party.
18/9/1934. The
1/8/1934, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, President of Kyrgyzstan, was
born.
16/11/1933, The USA
established diplomatic relations with the USSR for the first time since the
Russian Revolution.
18/4/1933, Russia staged a show-trial of three Britons accused of
espionage.
29/11/1932. The USSR and France signed a non-aggression pact.
25/7/1932. The
19/6/1931. The second Five
Year Plan was announced in the USSR.
1/6/1931. The
2/3/1931. Birth of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
He was born in Stavropol, in the north Caucasus.
1/2/1931, Boris Yeltsin, Russian leader, was born.
4/8/1930. Soviet troops killed 200 striking workers in Odessa
– city of irony, see 1905.
26/6/1930, Stalin was ‘purging undesirables’ from the
Soviet Union administration.
25/4/1930, In the USSR, the Gulag Agency was created to run the
penal camps.
24/2/1930. Reports out of the
7/1/1930, The Soviet government ordered all agricultural land to be
collectivised.
30/11/1929, Soviet planes bombed the Manchurian town of
Pokutu.
1/10/1929, Britain resumed diplomatic relations with Soviet
Russia.
24/9/1929. Workers in the
29/7/1929, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur Henderson, had talks with
his Soviet counterpart about restoring Anglo-Soviet diplomatic relations.
1//7/1929. Britain
refused Leon
Trotsky asylum.
11/4/1929. Germany refused asylum to Leon Trotsky.
21/2/1929. France
refused asylum to Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s most feared opponent,
now exiled from the
31/1/1929. Leon Trotsky was expelled from Russia by Stalin. He found asylum in Mexico.
1/10/1928. Stalin’s
first Five Year Plan began. The idea was for rapid industrialisation of the
USSR, especially in coal, iron, oil, steel, and machine building. Output
of consumer goods was also to rise sharply. Agriculture was to be collectivised, which meant disempowering the
wealthy rural peasantry, or Kulaks (‘fists’ in Russian). On
5/1/1930 Stalin sent thousands of government agents to the Russian countryside
to persuade the Kulaks to join the new
collectives. Under Stalin’s scheme, every poor farmer who turned his land over
to the collective would be allowed to own a house, stable, garden, and one car,
and to keep the income from any sales of garden vegetables.
25/1/1928, Edvard Shevardnadze, Soviet Foreign
Minister under Gorbachev, was born.
10/1/1928. Stalin
purged his opponents. Many were arrested by his security
police, the OGPU, and sent to exile in Siberia. Trotsky was
exiled from the USSR.
15/11/1927, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Communist
Party, USSR.
14/11/1927, The Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party voted to expel both Trotsky
and Zinoviev from membership, along with 81 of
their associates. The resolution became effective on December 2, when the
Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU purged 93 other Party members associated with
the "Trotsky-Zinoviev faction".
9/11/1927, Rebellion in the Lithuanian city of Tauragé by
citizens dissatisfied with President Antanas Smetona, 209 people were
convicted of charges arising from the insurrection, and eleven were executed.
29/10/1927, Russian archaeologist Peter Kozlof discovered the tomb of Genghis
Khan.
24/5/1927. Britain severed relations with the USSR amid allegations
of subversion and espionage throughout the British Empire. On 9/6/1927 the USSR
executed 20 people accused of being British spies.
23/10/1926, In Russia, Leon Trotsky and Zinoviev
were ousted from the Politburo.
24/4/1926. Germany signed a friendship treaty with the
2/6/1926, Jonas Staugaitis was elected head of the
Seimas in Lithuania.
12/10/1925, Germany and the
1/12/1924, Communists staged a failed coup attempt in
Estonia.
26/11/1924. The Communist party of the
28/10/1924. France recognised the USSR.
2/10/1924, Trotsky took command
of the Red Army in Georgia.
7/2/1924,
1/2/1924. Britain’s
Labour Government recognised the USSR.
26/1/1924. Petrograd was renamed
21/1/1924, Vladimir
Illitch Lenin died, aged
53. The middle-class lawyer who made a revolution on behalf of the workers died
of a series of debilitating strokes. A power
struggle then ensued between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, who won.
9/3/1923. Vladimir Illitch Lenin retired from the Bolshevik leadership of the USSR
because of a second stroke.
30/12/1922. Soviet
Russia
was officially renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR.
17/11/1922, Siberia voted for union with the USSR.
25/10/1922, The last Japanese troops left Vladivostok. With all anti-Bolshevik forces gone, Soviet
rule was established there.
25/5/1922, Lenin was disabled my a major stroke.
16/4/1922. Germany
restored relations with the
3/4/1922, Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the Communist
Party.
1921, Gosplan, the State Planning Commission of
the USSR, was established. Charged with State and Regional planning, and
turning plans inti reality, it proved to be a liability as its excess
bureaucracy was a brake on economic growth.
18/10/1921. Russia granted independence to the
4/10/1921. League of Nations rejected Russian entry.
4/8/1921, Lenin asked the world for help in overcoming
the famine in Russia.
10/7/1921. Mongolia declared its independence as a People’s
Republic, becoming the world’s second Communist state after Russia.
27/5/1921. Anti-Bolshevik forces took Vladivistok.
21/5/1921, Andrei Sakharov, Russian
physicist and human rights campaigner, was born.
25/2/1921, The Red Army entered Tbilisi, Georgia.
5/2/1921. Anti-Soviet sailors mutinied at Kronstadt naval base, outside
Petrograd. The rebellion was crushed by Red Army troops on 17/3/1921.
22/12/1920, The Soviet Congress adopted an ambitious plan for
the electrification of Russia.
19/11/1920, 100,000 White Russian refugees from the Crimea arrived in
Constantinople.
16/11/1920. The Bolsheviks defeated the White Russians in the Crimea, so ending
the Russian Civil War. The white Russian General, Baron Wrangel, fled with
his men to Turkey.
14/11/1920, Sebastopol was captured by the Red Army.
1/11/1920, White Russian
forces under Baron Wrangel were pushed southwards into the Crimea by the Communists.
11/8/1920, A Latvian-Soviet peace treaty gave Latvia independence from
Soviet Russia.
27/7/1920, The Red Army took
Pinsk.
19/5/1920. The Red Army invaded northern Iran.
7/5/1920. Polish and Ukrainian troops seized Kiev from the Red Army. Poland wanted to bring the Ukraine under its
influence, to weaken Russia.
27/4/1920, Soviet Russian troops invaded Azerbaijan, ending its
independence (see 28/5/1918). On
28/5/1920 the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan was declared.
28/3/1920, Novorossiysk, on
the Black Sea, was taken by the Red Army.
20/2/1920. The Red Army captured Archangel.
8/2/1920. The Bolsheviks captured Odessa.
7/2/1920. The Bolsheviks executed the White Russian, Commander Koltchak.
2/2/1920. Estonia proclaimed its independence from Russia.
9/1/1920. Bolshevik troops defeated White Russians under Admiral Koltchak.
15/11/1919. The Red Army captured Omsk.
12/10/1919. British troops pulled out of Murmansk, Russia.
2/9/1919, White Russian forces under Denikin captured Kiev, and came within 250 miles of Moscow, with
backing from the UK. However a Red Army
counter attack in December 1919 forced Denikin out of Kharkov and eventually back to the Caucasus, where he
held on until March 1920. Denikin had a
narrow Russophile view, and failed to see the need to link with Ukrainian and
Polish anti-Bolshevik forces; he even blockaded Georgia and Azerbaijan, fearing
these states would set up independent Republics.
3/6/1919. More British troops arrived at Archangel, Russia.
20/4/1919, A Polish army under Pilsudski took the city of Vilnius, Lithuania, from the Soviets.
8/4/1919. The Red Army invaded the Crimea.
1/4/1919, British troops
supporting White Russian troops defeated a Bolshevik force.
4/3/1919, The Comintern was formed. This was the ‘Communist
International’, to spread Communism worldwide.
22/1/1919, The Red Army occupied Kiev, capital of the Ukraine.
11/1/1919. Soviet forces entered Vilnius, Lithiania.
3/1/1919, Part of the Latvian Army defected to the Communists and
Communist forces occupied Riga, capital of Latvia.
18/11/1918. Latvia gained independence from
1/11/1918, In Lvov, the last Austrian Governor, Count Huyn, armed the
Ukrainians who proclaimed an independent Republic of West Ukraine, in
opposition to the Bolsheviks.
25/7/1919, The Soviet Assistant Foreign Commissar, Leo Karakhan,
issued the Karakhan
Manifesto. This renounced all former Tsarist rights and privileges in China.
Although Russia did not hand over the Chinese eastern Railway (it in fact sold
it to the Japanese in 1935), this Manifesto did much to convince the Chi9nese
radicals that Soviet Russia was their
only ally.
16/7/1918. The last Tsar, Nicholas
II, was murdered
by the Bolsheviks along with his entire family, his daughters Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, and his son Alexis, and domestic staff, and even his dog, in the cellar of a
house in Ekaterinburg. Their bodies were thrown
down a disused mineshaft. The Bolshevik government was afraid that
anti-Bolshevik White Russians or Czechoslovak troops would liberate the Romanov
family and restore them to power.
10/7/1918. A provisional government of Siberia was set up.
26/6/1918. The Bolshevik government in Russia faced enemies on all;
sides. In the south, General Anton Denikin had seized large parts of the Caucasus and Ukraine. In the
north bands of anti-Bolsheviks roamed at will. Former Czech prisoners of war
had organised themselves into the Czech legion and had seized Osmk on the
Trans-Siberian railway. Over 100 British marines had landed at Murmansk to keep
the Bolsheviks out of that port.
28/5/1918, Azerbaijan officially proclaimed its independence. Se 27/4/1920.
26/5/1918, The short-lived Transcaucasian Republic broke up.
23/5/1918. Georgia declared
independence from Russia.
22/4/1918, Armenia, Georgia
and Azerbaijan united to form the short-lived Transcaucasian Republic, see
26/5/1918.
9/4/1918. Latvia declared its
independence.
23/3/1918. Lithuania declared its independence.
6/3/1918, In Russia, at the 7th Party Congress in Moscow,
the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Communist Party.
5/3/1918. Moscow was declared the new capital of Russia, in place of
Petrograd.
3/3/1918. The Bolshevik government in Russia assigned the Treaty of Brest Litovsk with the Germans. Lenin insisted on signing,
against the wishes of Trotsky. Trotsky wanted the
Communist Revolution to spread throughout Germany, but Lenin feared the rapid
advance of German troops into Russia, approaching Petrograd.
Russia lost heavily in terms of land and
industry (Russia lost 56
million inhabitants, 79% of its iron, and 89% of its coal production), but the Bolsheviks needed
peace at any cost before their new and shaky administration was overthrown, by Germany or by anti-Bolshevik White Russians and Czechoslovak
troops. Under this Treaty, Finland regained its
independence from Russia. The
Baltic Republics were ceded to Germany.
Communists recruited from Finnish labourers joined Red Guards to try and re-establish Communist control in
Finland. Germany moved in to repulse
them. See 6/4/1918. Turkey regained territories lost to Russia
even in 1877.
24/2/1918. Estonia declared its independence.
16/2/1918, Lithuania declared its independence from Russia.
28/1/1918. Lenin created a Red Army and the Cheka, a security police force.
22/12/1917. The Bolsheviks opened peace talks with Germany and Austria.
The Allies accused Russia of betrayal.
6/12/1917. As the Russian Army disintegrated after the October
Revolution into bands of raiders, Romania and Russia signed an armistice.
5/12/1917. Russia signed an armistice with Germany, at Brest-Litovsk.
20/11/1917. The Republic of the Ukraine was declared.
19/11/1917. A Revolutionary Council
was established in Petrograd, with Leon
Trotsky as leader.
16/11/1917. Bolshevik troops took
Moscow.
8/11/1917, In Russia, The People's Commissars gave authority to Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin.
7/11/1917 (25/10 in
9/10/1917, Stalin joined the Bolshevik Committee.
30/9/1917. The ex-Tsar and
family were exiled to Siberia.
15/9/1917. Russia was declared a Republic with a provisional government,
by Soviet Party Prime Minister Aleksandr Kerenski.
29/7/1917, Taking advantage of Revolutionary chaos, the Finns declared
their independence from Russia.
16/7/1917. The provisional
government in Petrograd, Russia, crushed the
Bolshevik uprising. The Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, fled to
Switzerland. However on 7/11/1917 Kerensky, leader of the Russian provisional government, was
ousted by Lenin.
29/6/1917. Ukraine declared its independence.
16/6/1917. The first pan-Soviet Congress opened in Petrograd.
18/5/1917. Trotsky returned to Russia
from the USA
17/5/2017, Kerensky became head of the Soviet interim
government.
17/4/1917. On his return to Russia (from Zurich) with the other
Bolshevik leaders, Vladimir Illyich Lenin demanded a transfer of power to workers Soviets.
13/4/1917, Stalin was released from
exile in Siberia (imposed 1913).
3/4/1917, Vladimir
Illyich Lenin returned to Moscow
from exile.
21/3/1917. Ex-Tsar Nicholas II and his family were arrested.
16/3/1917, An interim Soviet
Russian government was set up.
15/3/1917. Czar Nicholas II abdicated
in Pskov. The 300-year Romanov dynasty ended (see 8/3/1917).
12/3/1917, Izvestia,
the official daily newspaper of the
10/3/1917, A Soviet, or
council, of workers and soldiers was set up in Russia.
8/3/1917. The
Russian ‘February’ (old style calendar) Revolution began at Petrograd. Widespread
demonstrations were sparked by food shortages; more ominously for Tsar Nicholas II, soldiers refused to open fire on the
crowds. The Russian army had suffered severe casualties against the Germans and
was more on the people’s side. Soldiers were defecting and joining the
demonstrators. See 15/3/1917
9/1/1917. The Russian Prime Minister, Aklexander
Trepov, resigned in the face of strikes, food
shortages, and anti-war protests. He was succeeded by Dimitri Golitzin.
31/12/1916, By the end of
1916, Russia had seen some 3,600,000 of its citizens killed or wounded in the
Great War, and a further 2,000,000 taken prisoner by the Central Powers.
30/12/1916. In
22/2/1916.
Tsar Nicholas II opened the Duma (Parliament).
For main events of World War One see France-Germany, from 1/1/1870
30/4/1915. Germany invaded the Russian Baltic provinces.
31/8/1914. St Petersburg was renamed
15/6/1914, Yuri Andropov, Russian President, was born in the village
of Nagutskyoye, north of the Caucasus Mountains.
5/5/1912. The first issue of Pravda, meaning Truth, appeared in
17/4/1912, The Lena
massacre: Russian
soldiers fired into a crowd of gold miners, who had gone on strike in Siberia
to demand a reduction in the workday and improved food and sanitation.
According to official figures, 270 miners were killed and another 250 wounded,
and the dead were buried in a mass grave. This
incident was a key landmark in the unrest leading to the 1917 Revolution.
1/1/1912. Harold ‘Kim’ Philby, the British traitor who spied for Soviet
intelligence, was born.
24/9/1911, Konstantin
Chernenko, Soviet politician, was born.
14/9/1911, Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin was assassinated
when a police double agent shot him at the opera in Kiev; he died on 18/9/1911.
He had held the post for 6 years; his predecessor managed only one year, in the
turmoil of Russian politics. He was ruthless and simply crushed any opposition,
which made him unpopular and he fell out with the Tsar, Nicholas, also his Council
of Ministers and the Duma (Parliament).
16/4/1911, Guy Burgess, English civil servant who spied for the
Russians, was born in Devonport. He died in August 1963 in a
9/3/1910, Madame Ekaterina Breshkovskaya, 66, sometimes referred to as the "Grandmother of the
Russian Revolution" was convicted on charges of conspiracy and sentenced
to exile in Siberia, but her co-defendant Nikolai
Tchaikovsky was acquitted.
6/7/1909, Andrei Gromyko, President
of the USSR, was born near Minsk, to a peasant family.
19/11/1908, A court in St Petersburg was adjourned when the
prosecuting council refused to deal with Russia’s first female barrister.
31/12/1907. 167 Duma (Parliament) deputies jailed for treason in Russia.
See 14/10/1907.
14/12/1907, In St Petersburg, 38 soldiers were sentenced to
life imprisonment for surrendering to the Japanese at Port Arthur.
14/10/1907. Third parliament (Duma) formed in St Petersburg. See
31/12/1907.
31/8/1907, The UK and
16/6/1907. The Russian parliament (Duma) was dissolved on grounds of
treason.
5/3/1907. Second Parliament (Duma) met in St Petersburg.
19/12/1906. Birth of Leonid Brezhnev. He was born in Kamenskoye
(now Dneiprodzherzhinsk), in the Ukraine.
2/11/1906. The Jewish revolutionary
Leon Trotsky was exiled for life to Siberia.
5/10/1906. In Russia, 1,000 prisoners a day were being exiled to Siberia.
21/7/1906. In Russia, the
Duma (Parliament) was dissolved and martial law set up.
21/6/1906. The Russian Parliament, the Duma, was exiled.
On 23/6/1906 it called on Russians to refuse to pay taxes.
28/5/1906. The Russian government decided to redistribute 25 million acres
of land to peasants.
24/5/1906. Czar Nicholas II granted
universal suffrage but refused an amnesty for political prisoners as suggested
by the Duma.
12/5/1906, The Russian Duma and the Tsar disputed over the release of
political prisoners.
10/5/1906. The first Russian
Parliament, or Duma, met in
20/3/1906. Russian army officers were killed by soldiers
in a mutiny at Sevastopol, Crimea.
2/3/1906, Tsar Nicholas II ceded some power to the Russian Parliament.
7/12/1905. Russian revolutionaries occupied the fortress
at Kiev, Ukraine.
1/12/1905, 20 Russian army officers and 230 guards were
arrested at St Petersburg after a plot to kill the Tsar was uncovered.
30/10/1905. Czar Nicholas II of Russia, on advice from Sergei Yulevitch Witte,
issued issued a decree to turn his country from an absolute aristocracy into a
semi-constitutional monarchy in an attempt to quell growing popular unrest,
issuing the October Manifesto. However by the end of 1906 Czar Nicholas, with the opposition
divided as to the acceptability of his reforms, was able to resume autocratic
rule again.
25/10/1905, The
first meeting of the Soviet (Council) of Workers Deputies met in St Petersburg.
21/10/1905, A railway strike began in Russia, which became
nation-wide by 25/10/1905. By the end of October this had become a general
strike across Russia.
25/8/1905, The mutineers from the
battleship Potemkin were
sentenced. Eight were condemned to death. Heavy taxation, Russia’s defeat by
Japan, and the Czar’s opposition to constitutional government were causing
resentment.
24/7/1905, Kaiser William of Germany and Czar Nicholas
of Russia signed an alliance at a meeting in Finland.
8/7/1905. The crew of the battleship Potemkin surrendered to the Romanians after a mutiny. Romania
refused to extradite them back to Russia because it said the mutiny was a
political act. The mutiny began as the battleship was watching the rioters in
the city of Odessa. A sailor complained about bad food and was shot. The crew
mutinied, on 27/6/1905, and threw the captain and several officers overboard;
the remaining 8 officers joined the mutiny. A steamer laden with coal was
seized and the coal transferred to the Potemkin.
3/7/1905. Russian troops killed more
then 6,000 people in Odessa to restore order after a general strike.
27/6/1905, Mutiny on the Russian
battleship Potemkin, see 8/7/1905.
23/6/1905, Tsar Nicholas II broke his promise regarding an elected assembly.
3/6/1905. Cossacks charged at rioting crowds in St
Petersburg.
5/9/1905. Hundreds died in clashes
between Armenians and Tartars.
30/4/1905, Tsar Nicholas II guaranteed freedom of conscience.
9/3/1905, Russia agreed to pay
£65,000 compensation for the Dogger Bank
incident of 1904.
3/3/1905, Czar Nicholas II agreed to form a Consultative Assembly.
17/2/1905, Grand Duke Sergei was killed in Moscow by an assassin’s bullet.
25/1/1905, Czar Nicholas II promised reforms.
22/1/1905. Bloody Sunday in St Petersburg when 140,000 striking workers were fired on
and 105 killed as they marched on the Winter palace to protest peacefully at Tsar Nicholas II’s regime.
The workers movement had begun on 16/1/1905 as a
local strike but soon grew to encompass over 100,000 workers. They planned to
present to the Tsar a petition calling for universal suffrage, equality for all
classes, an 8-hour day, civil liberties and release of political prisoners. The workers were led by priest Georgi Gapon. Workers in St Petersburg elected a ‘Soviet’ (‘Council’ in Russia), to
debate matters such as pay and working conditions. This event sparked the Russian Revolution.
19/1/1905. 75,000 Russian workers went on strike amid growing civil
disturbances, and anti-monarchist sentiments, fuelled by defeats by Japan.
16/1/1905, In Russia the Putilov Works was hit by a strike in support of
four workers who had been dismissed. See 22/1/1905.
26/12/1904, After months of unrest and riots in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II made
decrees to improve the lot of the peasants.
22/10/1904, The ‘Dogger Bank’ incident nearly caused war between
For Russo-Japanese war 1904 see China-Japan-Korea
16/8/1904, Britain protested to
20/2/1904, Alexei Kosygin, Soviet
Communist leader and Prime Minister, was born in Leningrad.
17/11/1903. Vladimir
Lenin emerged as leader of the
Bolsheviks within the Russian Social Democratic party. A walk-out by
disgruntled Jewish Social Democrats gave him the slight majority he needed. The
opposition Mensheviks (minority) feared Lenin would suppress free debate and institute a one man
dictatorship.
3/7/1903, The UK and
22/9/1902. Czar Nicholas II abolished the nominal independence
of
3/7/1902. After riots in Russia which killed several thousand people,
Czar Nicholas II offered to talk to the people.
15/4/1902, In Russia,
socialist revolutionaries assassinated the head of the secret police.
8/1/1902, Georgi Malenkov,
Soviet politician, was born in Orenburg.
17/3/1901. Anti-Czarist protests by students in St Petersburg were
broken up by Cossack troops.
27/2/1901, The Russian
Propaganda Minister was assassinated after his repression of student agitators.
23/9/1900, The fifth Congress of the Socialist Second
International met in the Salle Wagram in Paris. Of the 1,300 delegates, 1,000
were French; the second biggest contingent, 95, came from Britain. Just 6 were
from the Americas and the only Japanese delegate was unable to afford the boat
fare. Opinion was divided as to whether the working class should gain power
through revolution or through campaigning for universal suffrage.
16/7/1900, Lenin
and his wife
left Russia to begin a 5-year exile in Switzerland.
29/1/1900, Lenin returned from three year’s exile in Siberia.
1/3/1898, The first Communist Party meeting in Russia; the
Russian Social Democratic Workers Party met in Minsk.
13/12/1897,
Russia occupied Port Arthur.
5/8/1895. Engels
died in London, aged 74. He was an immigrant businessman who,
along with Marx, founded the
political philosophy called communism. Marx was the better of the two at theory
but Engels could communicate these ideas better to the public.
1/11/1894, Alexander III,
Tsar of Russia, died. Nicolas II became Tsar of Russia.
17/4/1894, Nikita Kruschev,
Soviet
leader, was born in Kalinovka, near Kursk.
10/2/1894, Germany signed a commercial treaty with Russia.
1893, The city of Novosibirsk was founded. In 1891 a survey
party located a site for the Transiberian Railway to cross the River Ob. At the
site they selected there was just a village called Krivoshchokovo (‘crooked creek’). Work began
on the railway bridge in 1893; by the time the railway through here was complete,
the rail workers settlement on the right bank of the Ob had a population of
7,832. By 1925 the town was knwn as Novonikolaevsk and had over 100,000
inhabitants; in that year it changed name to Novosibirsk.
17/8/1892. Russia and France signed a military convention.
9/3/1890, Molotov, Soviet
politician, was born in Kukaida under the surname Skriabin.
18/3/1889, Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria,
Russian secret police chief from 1938 and one of the most feared men in the
USSR until his execution in 1953, was born.
31/1/1884. The
Russians seized the town of Merv in Turkmenistan, near a disputed area of
Afghan border territory, alarming the British.
4/1/1884. The Fabian Society was founded, to promote
socialist ideals.
27/5/1883, Alexander III was crowned as ‘Tsar of all the
Russias’.
17/3/1883, Karl Marx was buried in Highgate
Cemetery, London.
14/3/1883. Karl
Marx, born 5/5/1818, died. He was aged 64, and was
buried at Highgate cemetery, London. He had lived in London since his expulsion
from Prussia and Paris in 1849. Marx and Engels drew up the Communist Manifesto in January 1848, calling for
workers of all lands to unite. He published Volume One of Das Kapital in 1867.
He, his wife Jenny, and their children lived in poverty in two rooms in Soho,
while Marx studied
economic history in the British Museum.
13/3/1881, Alexander II, Tsar
of Russia since 1855, aged 62, died from injuries sustained when a bomb was
thrown at him near his palace. The bomb was thrown by a group of Nihilists
headed by Sophia
Perovskaya. He was succeeded by his 36-year old son, Alexander III,
who reacted to the assassination with great severity; this included a
persecution of Russia’s Jews. Millions of them emigrated from Russia over the
next three decades.
2/12/1881, Karl
Marx’s wife Jenny died.
24/1/1881, Russia, advancing
from the north, took the Turkmen fortress of Geok Tepe.
17/2/1880, Tsar Alexander II narrowly escaped an
assassination attempt by Nihilists as a bomb exploded outside the Winter
Palace, St Petersburg.
21/12/1879, Joseph Stalin was born in Gori,
Georgia, as Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, son of a shoemaker.
26/10/1879, Leon Trotsky was born in
Yanovka, Ukraine, as Lev Davidovich
Bronstein.
1878, Russia began the
conquest of Armenia.
23/1/1878, In Moscow, a trial of nearly 200 revolutionaries
ended in acquittals. However the Russian police arrested most of them
afterwards and sent them to Siberia anyway.
18/11/1877. In the Caucasus, Russia captured the
fortress of Kars from Ottoman Turkey.
13/11/1877, A demonstration by socialist
marchers in Trafalgar Square led to violent clashes with mounted police and
guardsmen.
1875, Russia completed its colonisation of Sakhalin.
Sakhalin was a Chinese dependencey until ca. 1800. The Japanese occupied
southern Sakhalin until 1875, when it was ceded to Russia. In 1905, following
the Russo-Japaanese war, southern Sakhalin was returned to Japan. Japan
occupied northern Sakhalin in 1920 during the Siberian Intervention but
returned that portion of the island in 1925. Southern Sakhalin was taken again
by the USSR in August 1945, a few days before Japan’s surrender. See also China-Japan.
13/1/1874, Conscription was introduced in Russia.
1873, Russia forced Bukhara and Tajikistan
to submit to being protectorates.
9/6/1872, Peter I, Tsar
of Russia, was born.
5/3/1871, Rosa Luxemburg, German Socialist leader and founder of
the left-wing Spartacus movement, was born.
22/4/1870, Vladimir Illyich Lenin, Russian Communist leader, was born in Simbirsk (now
Ulyanovsk), as Vladimir
Ilyitch Ulyanov, the son of a
schools inspector.
8/1/1869, Russian priest Grigory
Rasputin was born, to parents Yefim and Anna in Pokrivskoe.
1868, Russia
occupied Samarkand (Uzbekistan).
18/5/1868, Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was born, the son of
Alexander III.
26/7/1867. Russia formed the governor-generalship of Turkestan,
having moved into the area to prevent Muslim incursions into their territory.
28/9/1864, Socialist radicals in London
formed an International Workingmen’s Association to help unite the world’s
workers in revolution. led by Marx and Engels.
3/3/1861. Russian serfs were emancipated by Czar Alexander II as a part of a programme of
modernisation. 20 million serfs, about a third of the
population, were given the right to own the land they cultivated. But they had to pay for this right, both to
the government and the former landowner so many serfs remained un-free.
28/5/1858. Russia acquired from China the territory on the
left (north) bank of the middle and upper River Amur, along with the territory
on both sides of the lower Amur. This was under the Treaty of Aigun.
2/7/1858. Czar Alexander II of Russia ordered all serfs
working on imperial land to be freed.
22/1/1858, Beatrice Webb, founder member of the
Fabian Society, was born.
30/3/1856. The Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War. Russia agreed to demilitarise the Black Sea,
demolishing its naval bases at Sevastopol and three other locations. It
also renounced its claim to protect the Holy Places in Palestine. Russia ceded a part of Bessarabia, forcing it
back from the Danube River.
1/2/1856, Russia agreed to
preliminary peace conditions for ending the Crimean War.
11/9/1855. During the Crimean
War, the Russian Black Sea port of Sevastopol fell to Anglo-French forces after an 11 month siege.
The Russians demolished the fort as they abandoned it. However the Allies were unable to occupy the port
facilities before winter set in and British troops faced a second winter in the
Crimea.
28/6/1855, Lord Raglan, British Army officer and commander of the
expeditionary force in the Crimea,
died.
2/3/1855, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia died
during hostilities during the Crimean
War. His successor, Alexander
was more disposed to make peace with Britain, but negotiations broke down.
5/11/1854. The combined
English and French armies defeated the Russians at the Battle of Inkerman,
in the Crimean War. British
forces now spent their first winter in the Crimea, poorly supplied. Public
opinion in Britain began to turn against the war, outraged by daily reports in The Times from war correspondent W H Russell.
25/10/1854. Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade, led by Lord Cardigan. The Russians were
attacking a combined force of English, French, and Turks, who were themselves
besieging Sevastopol. Of the 607 who rode out, only 198 returned. In poor visibility, Lord Raglan noted that
the Russians, at the north end of a valley, were attempting to move some guns,
and ordered the Light Brigade to capture them; he was unaware of other Russian
artillery along the valley. However the British and French won the battle
in the end.
17/10/1854. The Allies (French
and British) laid siege to the Russians at Sevastopol.
20/9/1854. The Allies, on the
banks of the River Alma, gained a major victory over a 40,000 strong
Russian force in the Crimean War; 2,000 British casualties.
14/9/1854, Allied French and
British troops landed in the Crimea.
8/8/1854, Britain and France put forward the Vienna Four
Points they considered essential for a peace settlement with Russia in the
Crimean War. These were, firstly
guarantees of the independence of Serbia, secondly free passage for vessels
along the Danube, thirdly a revision of the Straits Convention, and fourthly
that Russia abandoned its claim to a protectorate over the Sultan of Turkey’s
Christian subjects. Russia rejected
these terms.
27/3/1854. Crimean War began; Britain and France declared war on Russia. On 12/3/1854 the British and French formally
allied with Turkey. See 30/11/1853. The ostensible cause of the Crimean War was
a dispute between Russia, France, and Turkey over control of the Christian Holy
Places in Turkish-controlled Palestine. The Turks refused Russia’s demands and
Russia marched into the Turkish vassal states of Wallachia and Serbia. This
threatened Russian occupation of Istanbul and hence Britain’s communications
with its Indian Empire, so Britain entered the war against Russia.
24/8/1849, Karl Marx moved from France to England.
4/7/1848, The Communist Manifesto,
written by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, was published.
21/2/1848, The Communist Manifesto was first
published.
8/12/1847. In Britain, an international convention of
the Communist League adopted Karl Marx’s principles of the overthrow of the middle
classes and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
1/6/1847. The Communist Party, then called the League of the Just, met at a
congress in London organised by Joseph Moll. The
purpose of the meeting was to secure the co-operation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in formulating the Party programme. Marx did
not attend because of the cost of travel from Brussels. The Party aims were the
downfall of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, and the establishment
of a new society without class or private property. The first Russian Communist
meeting was at Minsk on 1 – 3 March 1898, where 9 delegates met. All were
subsequently arrested and none played a significant role in later politics.
10/3/1845, Alexander III,
Tsar of Russia, was born.
1/2/1845. Karl Marx settled in Brussels after being expelled
from France.
28/8/1844, Karl Marx
met Friedrich
Engels in Paris; their
lifelong collaboration began.
19/6/1843, Karl Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, daughter of a Prussian aristocrat.
26/5/1831. The Russians defeated the Poles at the Battle of
Ostrolenska.
25/2/1831. The Poles halted the Russian advance at the Battle
of Grochow.
22/2/1828. Following the Russian capture of Tehran, Russia and
Iran signed the Peace of Turkmanshai, ending their 2 year war. Russia acquired part of Armenia, including Yerevan.
26/12/1825, The
Decembrist Army Revolt in Russia was crushed; it had begun on 1/12/1825.
18/12/1825, Tsar Nicholas I became ruler of Russia.
1824, Russia gained control over the
fortresses of Abkhazia. However the general population was not subdued until
1864.
4/9/1821. Czar Alexander declared that Russian influence in Alaska extended as far south as
Oregon and closed Alaskan waters to foreigners.
27/11/1820, Friedrich Engels, German socialist and associate of Karl Marx, was born in Barmen.
5/5/1818. Karl
Heinrich Marx, father of
Communism, was born in Trier, Germany, son of a
Jewish lawyer.
29/4/1818, Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, was born.
26/11/1812, The
Battle of Berezina. The Russians won; French plans to over-winter at Smolensk
had been thwarted.
18/11/1812, Russian
forces closing in on the retreating French in western Russia won the Battle of
Polotsk.
16/11/1812, French
troops retreating from Moscow successfully broke through a Russian roadblock at
Krasnoi.
3/11/1812, French
troops retreating from Moscow successfully broke through a Russian roadblock at
Vyazama.
19/10/1812, Napoleon’s
forces began their retreat from Moscow.
18/10/1812, Russian
forces defeated the French at the Battle of Tarutino, south of Moscow.
14/9/1812. Napoleon entered Moscow, which had been abandoned and burned by the Russians in
their scorched earth policy. This
denied Napoleon’s army much-needed winter
quarters. Winter was approaching (see 9/11/1812) and Napoleon was forced to retreat. Napoleon failed to persuade Czar Alexander to come to terms, and his army
began to leave Moscow to return to France on 19/10/1812.
7/9/1812. Napoleon’s forces marching to Moscow defeated the Russians under Kutzov at the Battle of Borodino, 70 miles west of the city. Each side lost some
40,000 men.
24/6/1812. Napoleon began his conquest of Russia. France and Russia had been
allies but relations had deteriorated between them. This day La Grande Armee crossed the River
Niemen into Russia. On 28/6/1812 he captured Vilnius, capital of Poland. Napoleon headed
the biggest army ever assembled up to that time, 614,000 men of at least 20
different nationalities. Within 6 months, 90% of
them would be dead. Napoleon wanted Russia under Tsar Alexander I to join the French blockade
of Britain. Napoleon’s army was welcomed as he entered
Lithuania and Poland, as liberators from
the Russians, who had taken control of these countries in 1795.
For main
events of Napoleonic Wars see France-Germany
17/9/1809, In February 1808 Tsar Alexander invaded Finland, then part of Sweden,
without a declaration of war. On
this day the Treaty of Fredrikshamn ended the war; Sweden
ceded Finland and the Aland Islands to Russia.
21/2/1808. Russia occupied Finland,
which was formerly under Swedish domination.
11/3/1801, Paul I, Tsar of Russia, was
strangled in a scuffle with his officers, who were conspiring to compel him to
abdicate.
6/11/1796. Death of Czarina Katherine
the Great of Russia. She died at Czarskoye Selo (The Czar’s
Village) near St Petersburg, aged 67.
She had been Empress of Russia since 1762.
She was succeeded by her 42-year old son, Paul I.
6/7/1796, Nicholas, Tsar of Russia, was born.
28/3/1795, The Duchy of Courland was incorporated into the
State of Russia.
9/11/1794, Russian forces entered
Warsaw, ending the Polish rebellion.
10/10/1794, The Polish army was
heavily defeated by the Russians, and its leader taken prisoner.
25/3/1793. By the Treaty of London,
Russia joined the coalition against France.
23/1/1793, Prussia signed a treaty
with Russia. Poland was partitioned,
with Prussia obtaining Danzig, Thorn, Posen, and most of Great Poland. Russia received Minsk, Pinsk, and the frontier
on the Zbrucz. Austria received promises
of help in re-conquering Belgium, as well as some Polish territories.
18/5/1792. Russian troops invaded Poland.
8/1/1792. The Ottoman Turks bowed to the inevitable and accepted
Catherine the Great’s Russian sovereignty over Georgia. Britain feared
further Russian expansion in the Black Sea as this could threaten British
Mediterranean interests.
30/9/1788, Lord Raglan, the Field Marshall responsible for the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava,
was born at Badminton, Gloucestershire.
1785, Katherine II of Russia
introduced the Charter of the Nobility.
It was a device to enrich the Russian nobles, at the exoense of the peasants,
so as to ensure their continued loyalty to her. Under this Charter, the Russian nbles were freed from tax and military service
oblicagions, and had no duties except to keep the serfs subdued. The civil condition of the peasants
worsened, and many were now virtual slaves to their noble, forced both to
slave for him and fight in the Russian Army when required. This Charter made inevitable the future
Communist Revolution in Russia.
1783, Russia conquered the Crimea.
3/5/1783. Katherine II of Russia, who was thought of as
an enlightened monarch by Europeans, officially introduced serfdom in
the Ukraine.
23/12/1777. Tsar
Alexander I, who defeated Napoleon’s invasion
of Russia in 1812, was born.
5/7/1764, Ivan II, Tsar of Russia, was murdered.
17/7/1762, Peter III, Tsar of Russia, was murdered. He
was about to divorce his wife of 17 years, Catherine; she struck first, with
the help of her lover Orlov, by rallying the support of the army and church,
and had herself proclaimed Empress.
22/5/1762, Peace was
formally agreed between Russia and Prussia (Treaty of Hamburg). Russian forces
began to return home.
1/10/1754, Paul I, Tsar of Russia, was born.
19/12/1741, Vitus Bering, Danish born explorer of Russia,
who gave his name to the Bering Strait and Bering Sea, died of scurvy on Bering
Island after being shipwrecked. On earlier expeditions he had mapped the Bering
Strait and much of the coast of Siberia.
30/1/1730, Peter II, Tsar of Russia, died of smallpox
aged 14. This day he was to have married Catherine, second daughter of Alexis
Dolgoruki.
2/5/1729, Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, was
born in Stettin, Germany. She became ruler of Russia in 1762 in a coup in which
her husband Peter
III was assassinated.
14/8/1728, Danish explorer Vitus Bering discovered that the
Bering Strait was the easternmost limit of Siberia.
21/2/1728, Peter III, Tsar of Russia and grandson of Peter the Great, was born in Kiel.
16/5/1727, Katherine I of
Russia died aged 44. She was succeeded by her 12-year-old son Peter,
who reigned until 1730.
8/2/1725. Katherine I became Empress of Russia on the death
of her husband Peter the Great.
28/1/1725. Peter
the Great, Tsar of Russia from
1682, died in St Petersburg. Aged 53, he had established Russia as a major
European power.
30/8/1721, Conclusion of the Peace of Nystad. Peter the Great obtained Swedish lands including
Estonia, and an outlet to the Baltic and the West.
4/8/1717. A treaty of friendship was signed between France and Russia.
18/10/1715, Peter II, Tsar of Russia, was born.
6/8/1714, Naval Battle of Gangut, in the Baltic;
Russia beat Sweden.
8/7/1709, The Battle of Poltava (in modern day
eastern Ukraine). Peter the Great of Russia destroyed the Swedish army. Hanover and
Denmark joined with Russia in attacking the Swedish Empire.
9/10/1708, Battle of Lesnaya; Russia beat Sweden.
4/7/1708, Battle of Holovsin; Sweden beat Russia.
2/7/1708, Battle of Kliszow; Sweden beat Russia.
1706, Russia occupied the Kamchatka Peninsula.
9/8/1704, The Russians under Tsar Peter I took Narva, (seaport, now in Estonia) by
force from Sweden. Narva remained a
Russian port until Estonia independence
in 1918.
27/5/1703. Tsar Peter the Great founded St Petersburg and proclaimed it the new
capital of Russia.
13/4/1703, Battle of Pultusk; Sweden beat Russia.
18/7/1702, Battle of Hummelsdorf; Russia beat
Sweden.
7/1/1702, Battle of Errestfer; Russia beat Sweden.
20/11/1700, Sweden defeated the Russians at Narva.
20/12/1699, Peter the Great changed New Year’s day in Russia from September 1
to January 1.
5/9/1698, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposed a tax on beards in an effort to
move his country from Asiatic to European customs.
18/7/1696, The Fleet of Tsar Peter I of Russia occupied Azov, at the mouth of
the River Don.
29/1/1696, Ivan V, Tsar of Russia, died. Peter the Great became Tsar. He decreed that all Russians should be clean –
shaven, or pay a beard tax.
15/4/1684, Katherine I of Russia was born.
27/4/1682, Theodore III, Tsar of Russia, died.
30/5/1672. Peter the Great of
Russia was born in Moscow. He was the son of Tsar Alexei.
31/1/1667, After eight years war between Russia and Poland, the
Treaty of Andruszow between them
divided up Ukraine between them, along the Dneiper River.
18/1/1654. The Ukraine came under Russian
domination.
1649, A new code of Russian laws
legitimised the serfdom of peasants.
12/7/1645, The
Russian Tsar, Michael
Romanov, died aged 49. He was succeeded by his 16-year old son, Alexis
Mikhailovich (1629-76).
9/3/1629, Tsar Alexis I of Russia was born (died 1676).
21/2/1613. Michael Romanov was elected Tsar of Russia,
founding the House of Romanov, which ruled until the Revolution began on
12/3/1917.
12/3/1610, Swedish troops under Jacob de la Gardie took Moscow.
10/7/1605, Theodore II, Tsar of Russia, was murdered.
1584, The port city of
Archangel was founded by Ivan the
Terrible. Originally known as New
Kholmogory, the city was renamed after an earlier monastery in the
neighbourhood.
18/3/1584. Czar Ivan IV, Ivan the Terrible, died aged
54, whilst about to play a game of chess. He may have died of grief for his
son, whom he had killed in a mad fit of rage three years previously.
10/8/1582. After 25 years of conflict,
Russia made peace with Poland and gave up its claim on the Baltic state of
Livonia.
25/7/1570, Ivan
the Terrible had many of his advisers and ministers publicly
executed in Moscow.
27/2/1558, Russia’s first
trade mission to England reached London.
27/2/1557, The first Russian
Embassy in London opened.
1556, Ivan the Terrible completed
the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, paving the way for further expansion of
Russia eastwards. Russian troops now stood on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
2/10/1552, Ivan the Terrible took the Tartar city of Kazan, using artillery to break
down the city walls. The Volga became a Russian river.
20/8/1552, Ivan IV
(The Terrible) began an attack
on Kazan with an army of 150,000 men, after a faction in Kazan promised him the
Khanate.
21/6/1547, Moscow was destroyed by a fire
which consumed 25,000 of the city’s wooden houses. 1,700 people died and 80,000
were made homeless.
16/1/1547. Ivan the Terrible,
first Russian to assume the title of Tsar, was crowned.
6/7/1535. Sir
Thomas Moore was beheaded in London, for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head
of the Church of England. Thomas More was born in
1477 in London. He published Utopia in 1515 which described a pagan,
communist, city state in which the institutions and policies are governed
entirely by reason. His ideas contrasted with the self-interest and greed for
power seen in Europe’s Christian states.
1533, Basil III, Grand Duke of
Muscovy, died aged 54 He was succeeded by his 3-year-old son who ruled until
1584 as Ivan
IV (the Terrible).
25/8/1530, Ivan the Terrible of Russia was born. As Ivan IV,
he killed over 3,000, including the royal heir.
8/9/1514, At the Battle of Orsha, a combined force of Poles
and Ukrainians defeated the Russians.
27/10/1505. Ivan the Great
(Ivan III),
Czar of Russia, died aged 65. He was
succeeded by his 26-year-old son who ruled as Basil III Ivanovitch until 1553.
30/10/1495, An explosion at Vyborg castle deterred Russian
forces who were invading Sweden through Karelia.
1471, Yaroslav, some 300
kilometres NE of Moscow, formerly an independent principality, was conquered by
the Russians.
1462, Basil II, Grand Duke of Muscovy,
died aged 47 after a 27-year reign marked by civil war. He was succeeded by his
son, Ivan
III,aged 22, who effectively became the first Russian monarch. Ivan III
ruled for 23 years and greatly expanded Russian territory.
17/2/1405, Deatb of the Mongol leader Tamerlane (Timur-i-Leng) at Otrar, east pf
the Syr Darya River, whilst en-route to conquer China. He became leader in
1369, and went on to conquer Persia, the Caucasus, and the Tartars (in 1390).
In 1398 he subdued northern India.
8/9/1380. The Russians under Prince Dmitri Donskoi won a major victory over the Mongols at the Battle of
Kulikovo. This prevented the Mongols from reaching Moscow, although they made
several further attempts in future years.
12/2/1294.
Kublai Khan died, aged 80.
14/11/1263, Alexander Nevsky, Russian leader, died; on his
death Russia fragmented.
10/2/1258. The Siege of Baghdad ended
with a battle in which Hulagu Khan's
Mongol forces
overran Baghdad, then the leading centre of Islamic culture and learning and
capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. They burned the imperial city to the ground,
killing as many as 1,000,000 citizens.
26/6/1243. The Mongols routed the Seljuk Turkish army.
5/4/1242. Russian troops defeated the Teutonic Knights at Lake Piepus, thwarting their planned invasion
of Russia.
9/4/1241. The Mongols defeated an army of Teutonic Knights.
6/12/1240. The Mongols took Kiev, in the Ukraine.
15/7/1240. Alexander Nevski defeated the Swedish army,
led by General
Briger Jarl, on the banks of the Neva.
4/3/1238, Mongol invasion of Rus – Battle of the Sit
River: The Mongol Hordes of Batu Khan
defeated the
Rus' under Yuri Vsevolodovich
21/12/1237, Mongols invading Russia sacked Ryazan.
18/8/1227. Genghis
Khan, Mongol emperor who conquered more than a
million square miles, died after falling from his horse. Ogodei Khan
was his chosen
successor.
1207, Jochi, eldest son of Genghis Khan, conquered the Buryat people to his north.
8/2/1191, (-) Yaroslav
II, Grand Prince of Vladimir, was born.
4/10/1052, Vladimir
Yaroslavich, Prince of Novgorod, died.
988, Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev,
sent envoys to study the Jewish, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Islamic religions.
He spurned Islam
because it banned alcohol, but was impressed by the glory of Santa Sophia Cathedral
in Coinstantinople. Therefore Greek Orthodox became the basis of the state
religion of Russia.
882, The Kievan Rus State was founded.
863, The Cyrillic alphabet, used in Russia and Bulgaria, was invented by
Cyril (36), a Macedonian missionary and his brother Methodius (35).
862, The city of Novgorod was founded by
Prince Rurik.
He stablished the Russian Royal Family which ruled until 1598.
69-66 BCE, Armenia was conquered by the Romans under Lucullus. However they left the
Armenian King, Tigranes,
as ruler.
70 BCE, Under Tigranes, Armenian rule now
extended from Mount Ararat to Tyre on the Mediterranean. Tigranes began construction of a
new capital city, Tigranocerta, at the headwataers of the River Tigris.
95 BCE, The Armenian King Artavazd died and was
succeeded by his son Tigranes. Tigranes began a 40-year reign under which Armenia became the most powerful state
in the region.
190 BCE, Armenia regained its independence.
325 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered Armenia.