events Russia Mongolia

27 September 2022, �Voting� was completed in rigged referendums in four regions of Ukraine occupied by Russia. Predictably the result was for annexation of these regions by Russia, enabling President Putin to claim that the territories were now part of Russia.

9 March 2022, Refigees from Ukraine now numbered 2.3 million. 1.4m had gone to Poland, 214,000 to Hungary, 97,000 to Russia, 83,000 to Moldova, 85,000 to Romania, 165,000 to Slovakia, and 260,000 to other European countries.

Ukraine War Map 4 � 5 October 2022 to 19 April 2023

Ukraine War Map 3 -� 6 April 2022 to 12 September 2022

Ukraine War Map 2 � 16 March 2022 to 5 April 2022

Ukraine War Map 1 � 2012 to 16 March 2022

5 March 2022, Refugees from Ukraine now numbered 1.5 million. 923,000 had gone to Poland, 228,000 had gone to Romania, and 164,000 to Hungary. Others had gone to Slovakia, Moldova and Russia.

2 March 2022, Russian forces had now occupied border areas of Ukraine in the north, north-east, east and in the south near The Crimea. Kherson was in Russian hands and Mariupol nearly so, as Russia forged a land bridge to Crimea along the Sea of Azov coastline/ However Putin�s advance was much slower than anticipated, due to four� errors of judgement, 1) The Ukrainians did not welcome Russian troops as liberators form a neo-Nazi regime, 2) Russian troops were less than willing to fight against fellow Slavs, 3) The resistance of Ukraine, backed by the West, was greater than anticipated, and 4) Russia�s invasion produced a greater backlash and Western unity than Putin anticipated, with impetus towards Finland and Sweden joining NATO. 875,000 Ukrainian refuges had fled the country to this date, a number that had almost doubled again by 5 March.

1 March 2022, UN support for Russia in opposing a vote �deploring the Russian invasion of Ukraine� was somewhat lukewarm, with just a handful of countries (Belarus, Eritrea, Syria, North Korea) voting with Russia against the resolution, and some, including Russia�s ally China, also India, abstaining. Many countries supported the resolution.

28 February 2022, Western countries imposed a range of sanctions on Russia and Belarus, including travel and flight bans, ejection from the Swift banking system, export boycotts, exclusion from international Games, and pull-outs by Western companies. Russian interest rates quickly rose from 9.5% to 20%.

26 February 2022, Germany promised to send Ukraine 1,000 anti-tank weapons. Western countries have sent a range of supplies to Ukraine, some humanitarian, some military. However NATO declined to either admit Ukraine (it had been seeking this) or to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, on the grounds that this could start a nuclear war between the West and Russia. Ukraine started applying for EU membership.

24 February 2022, At 5am local time, Russia began a multi-pronged attack on Ukraine, with forces entering the country at Mariupol, Odessa, Luhansk and Donetsk, and from Belarus towards Kiev.

21 February 2022, Vladimir Putin of Russia �recognised the breakaway Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk� which had been part of the Ukraine Republic. This was a pretext for sending in the Russian Army to �support these (Russian) republics�.

23 January 2022, Staff began evacuating Embassies in Kiev, capital of Ukraine, as fears of a Russian invasion grew, with increasing numbers of Russian troops and equipment gathered In Russia near the Ukraine border, also in Belarus, a close ally of Russia.

30 March 2021, Russia began a troops build-up near the Ukrainian border.

10 March 2020, The Russian Duma approved a measure that would allow Vladimir Putin to serve a further two 6-year terms when his current term expires in 2024. If he wins the elections, he could then remain President until 2036, by which time he will be 83 years old.

18 March 2018, Vladimir Putin easily won a fourth six-year term as President of Russia. However the elections were rather less than free and fair; no candidate with a real chance of success was allowed to stand against him, and there were several instances of ballot box stuffing.

4 March 2018, Soviet double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in the UK city of Salisbury by a nerve gas agent, likely Novichok, which is Russian in origin.

3 April 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 November 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.

30 September 2015, Russia began airstrikes in Syria, against anti-Assad rebels.

27 February 2015, Russian opposition politician, Boris Nemtsov, was assassinated in Moscow; born 9 October 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 March 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.

12.0, Ukrainian Crisis, 2013-18

25 November 2018. Russia temporarily blocked the Kerch Strait, linking the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea. This interrupted access to two major Ukrainian ports. Russia had previously annexed Crimea from Ukraine, and built a bridge over the Kerch Strait linking eastern Crimea to Russia. The blockade was lifted later that day but not before Russia had seized two Ukrainian boats and 23 sailors, with six of them injured.

1 September 2014, Russian-backed separatists took control of Luhansk Airport, and of Novalsk, eastern Ukraine.

28 August 2014, Pro-Russian rebels took the Ukrainian town of Novoazovsk.

13 August 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 August 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 July 2014, The EU imposed more sanctions on Russia for its backing of Ukrainian rebels.

26 July 2014, The death toll in the Ukraine conflict reached 1,129; 799 of them were civilians.

17 July 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 July 2014, Russia warned of severe consequences after a Ukranian shell was fired across the border and killed a Russian.

12 July 2014, Ukraine sent war jets into Donetsk, and claimed to have killed 500 rebels.

5 July 2014, Pro-Russian rebels abandoned the Ukrainian town of Slavyansk after heavy fighting.

24 June 2014, Rebels shot down a Ukrainian helicopter, killing 9. The UN estimated that over 420 had died in the conflict so far.

20 June 2014, Ukrainian President Poroshenko declared a week-long truce.

16 June 2014, Russia cut gas supplies to the Ukraine.

14 June 2014, Pro Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian warplane.

6 June 2014, Putin and Poroshenko called for an end to violence in the Ukraine.

4 June 2014, US President Obama condemned Russian �aggression� in Ukraine.

25 May 2014, Petro Poroshenko was elected Ukrainian President.

11 May 2014, The Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence after referendums.

2 May 2014, Pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian factions clashed in Odessa; 42 people died.

15 April 2014, Kiev began �anti-terrorist� operations in eastern Ukraine.

7 April 2014, Pro Russian gunmen seized government buildings in eastern Ukraine.

18 March 2014, Russian President Putin signed a Bill to absorb the Crimea into Russia.

16 March 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 March 2014, The Russian Parliament approved Vladimir Putin�s request to deploy the Russian military in the Crimea.

28 February 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 February 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 February 2014.

22 February 2014, In the Ukraine, pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukoyvitch fled after snipers killed protestors in central Kiev, and rival Yulia Tymoshenko was freed. The Ukraine now seemed as if it was about to fall into the Western / EU camp and Putin therefore moved quickly to annex the Crimea.

20 February 2014, 88 died in riots in the Ukraine.

18 February 2014, In Ukraine, 26 died and hundreds injured in clashes between pro-government and pro-western factions.

28 January 2014, The Ukrainian Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, resigned as anti-protest laws were repealed by the government.

25 January 2014, Violent protests in Ukraine continued between pro-EU and pro-Moscow factions.

22 January 2014, Police in Kiev, Ukraine, shot dead two anti-government protestors.

21 November 2013, The Ukrainian Government moved closer to Russia, sparking popular protests. Russia had been pressuring the Ukrainian President not to move too close to the EU and the West.

4 March 2012, Vladimir Putin was elected for a third Presidential term (now six years).

24 January 2011, Islamist terrorists from the north Caucasus blew themselves up in the International Arrivals Hall of Domodedovo Airport, Moscow, killing dozens of people.

7 January 2009, In a dispute over energy prices, Russia shut off all gas supplies to Europe.

5 November 2008, On Russian television, President 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.

27 August 2008, David Milliband, from the UK, visited Kiev to reinforce the Ukrainian ambitions to align itself with the West.

15 August 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.

2 March 2008, Dmitry Medvedev was elected President of Russia. Putin was constitutionally barred from standing for a third term. Putin became Russian Prime Minister.

2 August 2007, Russia asserted its claims to the Arctic by planting a flag on the seabed 4,200 metres down at the North Pole.

5 June 2007, Russia was chosen to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, at Sochi.

23 April 2007, Russian leader Boris Yeltsin died aged 76.

10 May 2006, Alexander Zinoviev, Soviet dissident, died (born 29 October 1922)

11.0, Murder of Alexander Litvinenko, 2006

24 November 2006, Mr Litvinenko's family released a statement, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of involvement in his death.

23 November 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 November 2006, The Kremlin dismissed as 'sheer nonsense' claims that the Russian government was involved in the poisoning of Litvinenko.

17 November 2006, Litvinenko�s condition deteriorated and he was transferred to University College Hospital in central London.

1 November 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 October 2006, Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in her Moscow apartment on October 7. Mr Litvinenko began to investigate her murder.

10.0, Ukrainian elections, disputed, 2004-05

23 January 2005, Viktor Yushchenko was sworn in as President of Ukraine.

28 September 2004, Viktor Yushchenko won the re-run Ukrainian elections. This event fully confirmed Ukrainian independence from Russia.

3 September 2004, The Ukrainian Supreme Court ruled that the Presidential Election of 21 November 2004 was rigged and must be re-run on 26 September 2004.

21 November 2004, In Ukraine, the Russian-backed Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, claimed victory in Presidential Elections. The Opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, refused to accept the result, and independent exit polls seemed to confirm his claim. Mass protests split Ukraine, with the Catholic West supporting Yushchenko whilst the Orthodox Russian-speaking east supported Yanukovych.

9 March 2003, Mass demonstrations in Ukraine against President |Leonid Kuchma�s attempt to extend his term of office.

9.0, Chechen Conflict 1991 - 2004

3 September 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 September 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 September 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.

29 August 2004, In elections in Chechnya, the candidate favoured by Russia, Major General Alu Alkhanov, claimed victory despite widespread evidence of irregularities.

9 May 2004, Akhmad Kadyrov, pro-Russian President of Chechnya, was killed by a landmine placed under a VIP stage during a WW2 memorial parade in Grozny.

6 February 2004, A suicide bomb attack on the Moscow metro killed 40 and injured 129. The attack was blamed on Chechen separatists.

5 June 2003, A female suicide bomber killed 16 Russian soldiers at Mozdok, a staging post for troops in Chechnya.

23 October 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 October 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.

3 July 2000, Chechen suicide bombers killed 43 Russian soldiers in Chechnya.

6 February 2000, The city of Grozny, Chechnya, fell to Russian troops.

28 November 1999, Russian forces began a three-day bombardment of Grozny, Chechnya, killing some 500 people.

30 September 1999, Russian forces invaded Chechnya, to avenge their humiliation of 1996. Putin gained popularity in Russia.

26 August 1999, Russia began the Second Chechen War following the invasion of Dagestan.

Start of Second Chechen Wa 1999-2004

End of First Chechen War 1991-97

12 May 1997, Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a peace treaty with President Aslan Maskhadov of Chechnya. Both sides agreed to renounce the use of force, but Chechnya�s eventual status remained unresolved.

31 August 1996, Russia and Chechnya signed a peace accord, under which the separatist Chechens agreed to put aside their demands for independence for 5 years.

6 August 1996, Separatist Chechens stormed the capital Grozny and other towns in Chechnya.

11 June 1996, Russian troops began to withdraw from Chechnya.

27 May 1996, Russian President Boris Yeltsin met Chechnya rebels for the first time and negotiated a ceasefire.

21 April 1996, Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev was killed in a Russian rocket attack.

31 March 1996, Boris Yeltsin announced a ceasefire in Chechnya and the imminent withdrawal of Russian troops.

9 January 1996. Chechen insurgents seized 3,000 civilian hostages. They demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya. Most of the hostages were released the following day, and the rest were rescued by Russian forces on 24 January 1996.

30 June 1995. Military accord to end fighting in Chechnya.

6 March 1995, Russia announced it had gained control of the Chechen capital Grozny.

19 January 1995. Russian troops seized the Presidential palace in Grozny, Chechnya.

31 September 1994, Russian forces attacked the Chechen capital Grozny.

11 September 1994, Boris Yeltsin ordered troops into Chechnya.

29 November 1994. Russian aircraft bombed the Chechen capital, Grozny.

27 November 1991, Yeltsin refused to recognise the declaration of independence by Chechnyia from Russia, under Dzhokar Dudayev; Dudayev was a former Air Force General in the Soviet military. Yeltsin immediately sent armed forces to Chechnya to quell the independence movement there. Chechnyia had been absorbed into Russia in 1859, and during World War Two Stalin accused the Chechens of collaborating woth Germany, exiling the entire population to Kazakhstan. The Chechens were only allowed home in 1957, 4 years after Stalin�s death.

8.0, Crackdown on dissent in Russia, 2001-03

30 October 2003, The Russian stock market had fallen 16.5% after the arrest of Yukos executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky on 25 October 2003; he was a major supporter of liberal Parties opposed to Putin.

25 October 2003, In Russia, oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a potential political challenger to Vladimir Putin, was arrested and jailed. See 30 October 2003.

21 January 2002, In Russia, TV-6, the last independent TV channel, went off air when bailiffs moved in. This was seen as further Government control of the media.

10 January 2001, Authorities in Moscow banned the Salvation Army, seeing it as a threat to the Russian State.

7.0, Putin�s rise to power, 1998-2004

14 March 2004, Presidential elections in Russia.� Vladimir Putin easily won a second term.

7 September 2003, In Russian general elections the Unified Russian Party, led by Putin, gained 38% of the vote and won a two-thirds majority of the seats in the Duma (Parliament).

16 July 2001, China and Russia signed a treaty of friendship.

20 August 2000. The Russian navy said there was almost no hope of finding survivors from the nuclear submarine Kursk. She sank on 12 August 2000, and all 118 crew died. Recovery of the wreck, minus its stern, was on 8 October 2001.

12 August 2000, Russian Navy submarine L-141 Kursk sank in the Barents Sea after a large explosion. Despite rescue attempts by Britain and Norway (these attempts delayed by the Russian Government), all 118 sailors aboard the submarine died.

7 May 2000, Putin was inaugurated for his first 4-year term as President of Russia.

31 September 1999, Boris Yeltsin resigned as President of Russia and was replaced by Vladimir Putin. Putin, 47, was elected President on 26 March 2000.

13 September 1999, A bomb exploded in an apartment building in Moscow. This was the second blast in the city in 2 weeks, with a total of 200 killed. Chechen rebels were blamed.

9 August 1999, Russian President Yeltsin again dismissed the Prime Minister (Primakov), and Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister.

12 May 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin dismissed Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, whose popularity had risen as he stabilised the economy. The Russian Duma (Parliament) discussed impeaching Yeltsin, but the witnesses they required failed to appear and the motion was lost. Sergei Stepashin became the new Prime Minister but see 9 August 1999.

31 August 1998, As the Russian Rouble collapsed in value, Boris Yeltsin tried to reinstate Viktor Chernomyrdin as Prime Minister. However the Russian Duma (Parliament) blocked this.� Eventually Yevgeny Primakov became Prime Minister.

23 March 1998, Russian President Boris Yeltsin dismissed his entire Cabinet. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was replaced by 35-year-old Sergei Kiriyenko.

29 May 1997, NATO and Ukraine signed an agreement on mutual co-operation and security, similar to the one signed with Russia on 27 May 1997.

23 April 1997, In Moscow, Chinese President Jiang Zemin met Russian President Boris Yeltsin. They called for a pluralistic world order where no one nation was dominant.

25 February 1997, Tiit Vahi, Prime Minister of Estonia, resigned following a corruption scandal, he was replaced by Mart Siiman.

6.0, Westernisation of Russia 1993-97

24 May 2003, Paul McCartney performed in his first-ever concert in Russia, in Moscow's Red Square, to a crowd of over 100,000 people

27 May 1997, NATO and Russia signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security.

24 May 1997, McDonalds opened its forst branch in Kiev, Ukraine.

9 August 1996, Boris Yeltsin became Russia�s first democratically-elected head of State.

16 June 1996, In the first round of Presidential voting in Russia, Boris Yeltsin soundly beat Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov into second place.

26 March 1996, The International Monetary Fund approved a US$ 10.2 billion loan to Russia for economic reforms.

28 February 1996. Russia became a member of the Council of Europe.

9 June 1995, Russia and Ukraine agreed to divide the former Soviet Black Sea Fleet.

22 June 1994. Russia joined NATO�s �partnership for peace.

27 May 1994, Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia.

26 February 1994, Russia announced an amnesty for political p0risoners, including those� involved in the 1991 coup that brought down the Soviet Union.

14 January 1994, US President Clinton and Soviet President Boris Yeltsin signed the |Kremlin Accords. Treaties aimed ending the preprogrammed targetimng of nuclear missiles.

28 September 1993. The Russian government announced that nearly 50% of the economy had been privatised.

14 September 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.

4 October 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.

21 September 1993, In Russia, President Yeltsin suspended the Constitution and scrapped Parliament.

13 July 1993. Rolls Royce opened its first showroom in Russia.

5.0, Continued reform in Russia, formation of CIS, end of Warsaw Pact, 1991-95

8 February 1995, Russian workers staged a 24-hour strike, over unpaid wages.

3 January 1993. President Bush of the USA and Yeltsin of the USSR signed the START II (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) Treaty.

14 October 1992, The Russian KGB handed over documents to Poland�s Lech Walesa revealing that the Russians killed Polish officers in 1940 in the Katyn Forest Massacre. The Kremlin had previously insisted it was the Germans who had done this.

21 April 1992, Vladimir Romanov, the Pretender to the Russian throne, died aged 74.

31 January 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.

13 January 1992, The Speaker of the Russian Duma (Parliament) called on Boris Yeltsin to resign, after his free-market policies in Russia had sparked massive price rises.� However on 24 January 1992 Yeltsin managed to get austerity measures passed by the Duma, cooling the inflation.

12 January 1992, Russia and Ukraine agreed to divide the Black Sea fleet.

25 September 1991, Above the Kremlin, Moscow, the old Soviet flag was lowered and the new Russian flag was raised.

20 September 1991, President Boris Yeltsin said he wanted Russia to join NATO.

12 September 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 September 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 September 1991.

1 September 1991. The Ukraine voted in a referendum to leave the USSR.

6 September 1991, Leningrad reverted to the name St Petersburg.

5 September 1991. The USSR ceased to exist as the Congress of People�s Deputies voted to give the republics their independence.

21 August 1991. The Soviet hardline coup collapsed and Gorbachev was restored as President. On 25 August 1991 Gorbachev resigned as leader of the Communist party, and the Party prepared to dissolve, ending 70 years of Communist supremacy.

20 August 1991, Estonia voted for independence,

19 August 1991. Soviet hardliners toppled President Gorbachev.

31 July 1991, Presidents Gorbachev (USSR) and Bush (USA) signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, START 1. However the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, before the Treaty was ratified. A START II Treaty was subsequently signed and ratified.

28 June 1991 The Warsaw Pact was disbanded.

23 June 1991, �The International Monetary Fund agreed to offer associate membership to Russia.

13 June 1991. First free Presidential election in the USSR.� Boris Yeltsin was elected President.

12 June 1991, The citizens of Leningrad voted 55% to 43% to return to the name St Petersburg.

20 May 1991, The USSR passed a law allowing people to leave the country free of all restrictions.

17 March 1991, Russia held an election to decide whether to remain as the USSR or break up into Republics.

3 March 1991. Estonia and Latvia voted to secede from the USSR.

25 February 1991. Warsaw Pact military alliance dissolved.

19 February 1991, In the USSR, Boris Yeltsin, Russian President, called on Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet President, to resign. Yeltsin accused Gorbachev of dictatorship.

11 February 1991,The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sent a letter to all Warsaw Pact government leaders proposing the disbandment of the military pact on 1 April 1991. The Pact was formed one week after a re0armed West Germany joined NATO in 1955.

4.0, Soviet resistance to secession of Lithuania, 1991-92

3 March 1992, Russian troops began withdrawing from Lithuania.

3 June 1991. Soviet troops sealed off the centre of Vilnius, Lithuania.

10 February 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 January 1991. Soviet troops opened fire on traffic outside Vilnius, 1 person was killed.

20 January 1991. �A crowd of over 100,000 protested in Moscow against military violence in the Baltic Republics.

14 January 1991, Valentin Pavlov become Prime Minister of the USSR

13 January 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 January 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.

8 January 1991, In Lithuania, the government of Kazimiera Prunskiene resigned over price increases.

2 January 1991, Soviet troops seized the Communist Party headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania, sparking massive protests.

3.0, Breakup of USSR, end of Cold War affirmed, liberalisation continues in Russia under Goirbachev. Economic problems, 1989-90

14 September 1990. The EC agreed to send food aid to the USSR, whose food distribution system had collapsed.

12 September 1990, US President George Bush agreed to send US$ 1,000 million food aid to the Soviet Union.

21 November 1990. A declaration of the end of the Cold War was signed in Paris.

15 October 1990. Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. However in November and December bread rationing had to be introduced in some Russian cities, including Leningrad. Despite a record harvest, distribution systems had broken down. Grain rotted in Russian warehouses whilst the international community, led by Germany, sent emergency food aid.

26 September 1990, Religious freedom of worship was gramnted in the USSR/

25 September 1990, Gorbachev was given sweeping new powers to control the economy of the USSR, which was suffering from accelerating inflation.

14 July 1990. Boris Yeltsin left the Communist Party.

29 June 1990. Lithuania announced it would suspend its declaration of independence for 100 days.

12 June 1990, Russia emerged as an independent state, from the former USSR.

29 May 1990, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Federation, defeating Gorbachev�s candiudate.

27 May 1990, The Kremlin announced economic reforms that would phase out subsidies on many staple foods, causing meat, sugar and bread prices to double or treble. The reforms would not take effect without Parliamentary approval, and a shopping frenzy ensued, emptying shop shelves.

24 May 1990, Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, visited the USSR. This was the first official British Royal visit since 1917.

8 May 1990, Estonia affirmed its independence, reviving its 1938 Constitution.

4 May 1990. The Latvian Parliament voted for independence from the USSR.

20 April 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.

18 April 1990, The Soviet Union cut off oil supplies to Lithuania.

12 April 1990. The Soviet Union finally admitted it had massacred up to 15,000 Polish officers at Katyn in 1940. See 26 April 1943.

30 March 1990, Estonia suspended the Soviet Constitution within its territory.

25 March 1990, The Soviet Union sent tanks into Lithuania, to discourage the secessionists.

13 March 1990. The Soviet Congress voted to abolish the political monopoly of the Communist Party.

12 March 1990, Dr Vitautis Landsbergis was elected President of Lithuania.

11 March 1990. Lithuania declared itself independent from the USSR. On 16 March 1990 President Gorbachev issued an ulltimatum to rescind this declaration.

28 February 1990. The USSR passed a bill allowing individuals to privately own land for the first time since the 1920s.

7 February 1990. The Soviet Communist Party voted to end its monopoly of power.

27 January 1990. The city of Tirasopol in the Moldavian SSR briefly declared independence.

13 January 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.

4 January 1990. Soviet President Gorbachev told Lithuania�s Communists that they were free to leave the Soviet Communist Party.

19 September 1989. Lithuania called for independence from the USSR.

18 September 1989, The EEC signed a 10-year trade pact with the USSR.

3 September 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 September 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 November 1989, See 7 October 1989. Pro-democracy rallies sparked by Gorbachev�s visit to East Germany resulted a a million-strong protest in East Germany.

7 October 1989. On a visit to East Germany, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev urged the East German government to introduce reforms. See 4 November 1989.

31 August 1989. The Soviet Republic of Moldavia�s Parliament voted to make Moldavian, not Russian, the official language.

23 August 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 July 1989. Soviet miners went on strike.

13 June 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev and Chancellor Kohl agreed that East and West Germany should be reunited.

2 May 1989, The Iron Curtain began to break down. Hungary dismantled 150 miles of barbed wire fence, opening its border to Western Europe.

14 September 1989, Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov died.

3 June 1989. Liquid gas stored beside a railway in Chelyabinsk, USSR, exploded, killing 800.

2.0, Gorbachev, Perestroika, prelude to breakdown of Iron Curtain, 1985-89

7 April 1989. President Gorbachev of the USSR visited Britain, and invited Queen Elizabeth II to visit Moscow.

26 March 1989. The first free elections were held in the USSR. Pro-reform candidates won many seats.

8 January 1989, The Soviet Union promised to eliminate its chemical weapons.

3 January 1989, The first commercial advertisement appeared in the Russian newspaper Izvestia.

7 September 1988. Gorbachev cut the Red Army by 10%.

16 November 1988, The Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR declared that Estonia is �sovereign�, adopting their own constitution, but stopped short of declaring independence.

26 October 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev promised to free all political prisoners by the end of the year.

29 April 1988. McDonalds announced plans for 20 restaurants in Moscow to sell the �Bolshoi Mac�.

4 February 1988, The Soviet Union posthumously rehabilitated Nikolai Bukharin and 9 other Soviet leaders executed or imprisoned after the 1938 show trials.

14 January 1988, Georgy M Malenkov, Prime Minister of the USSR (1953-55), died.

See Afghanistan for Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent withdrawal under Gorbachev

8 September 1987. Gorbachev and Reagan signed an arms reduction treaty, to eliminate medium range nuclear missiles from Europe.

12 November 1987, President Gorbachev sacked Boris Yeltsin as head of the Communist Party after Yeltsin criticised him for the slow pace of perestroika (reconstruction).

14 April 1987, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev out-manoeuvred the White House by proposing sweeping arms cuts, beyond those envisaged by US President Reagan.

Release of political prisoners

10 February 1987, In the USSR, 140 political dissidents were released.

19 September 1986, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev released from internal exile the dissident Andrei Sakharov and his activist wife Yelena Bonner, Sakharov had been interned since 1/1980 for criticising the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

27 January 1987, In the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev proposed reforms including secret ballots for electing party officials.

11 February 1986, As Gorbachev continued to liberalise the USSR, political prisoners including Anatoly Scharansky and Yuri Orlov were released and allowed to leave the country.

11 October 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik to discuss intermediate arms limitations. The talks ended in failure.

25 February 1986. President Gorbachev of the USSR first used the term �Perestroika� (restructuring) in a speech to the 27^th Congress of the Communist Party.

21 November 1985, Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev ended their meeting with an agreement to reduce their nuclear arsenals by a mutual 50%.

19 November 1985. Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, the first such meeting for 6 years.

11 March 1985. In the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev (54 years old) succeeded Konstantin Chernenko, who died on 10 March 1985. See 13 February 1984.

8 April 1989, 40 soviet submariners died when a nuclear powered Mike class submarine caught fire, and refused assistance from Western merchant ships.

21 September 1988, State of Emergency proclaimed in Nagorno-Karabakh.

3 August 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 May 1988. Soviet spy Kim Philby died in Moscow aged 76.

4 September 1987, Matthias Rust was sentenced to four� years in a Soviet labour camp, however he was released on 3 August 1988. See 28 May 1987.

28 May 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 August 1988.

8 November 1986, Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet politician, died.

10 March 1985, Death of Konstantin Chernenko, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party since 1984.

13 May 1984, A huge explosion at the Russian naval base of Severomorsk, on the Kola Peninsula. Fires burnt for 5 days afterwards. The Northern Fleet, some 150 ships, was effectively out of action for 6 months. The cause may have been inadequate radar shielding causing a detonatio0n in the missile stores, where warheads, propellants and detonators were all stored in too-close proximity.

7 March 1984, Donald Maclean, British Foreign Office official and Soviet secret agent who fled to the USSR in 1951, died aged 70.

13 February 1984. Konstantin Chernenko became the leader of the USSR. See 11 March 1985. Yuri Andropov had died on 7 February 1984. Andropov came to power in 16 June 1983.

9 February 1984, Yuri Andropov, Soviet leader, died after only 15 months in office. He was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko.

26 September 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.

20 August 1983, US President Reagan lifted the ban on exports of pipe-laying equipment to the USSR.

16 June 1983. Andropov was elected Soviet leader of the USSR. However he died on 7 February 1984.

23 May 1983, Radio Moscow announcer Vladimir Danchev praised Afghan Muslims for standing up to Russia; he was removed from the air. After some 6 months in a psychiatric hospital, he returned to work.

26 March 1983, Anthony Blunt, the Queen�s former art adviser, and Soviet spy, died.

2 February 1983. The US and USSR began START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) in Geneva.

10 November 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.

28 February 1982, Natalia Vodianova, Russian philanthropist, was born.

29 September 1981, President Reagan of the US introduced economic sanctions against the USSR for forcing Poland to adopt martial law.

30 November 1981. The US and USSR began arms talks in Geneva.

20 November 1981, The USSR contracted to supply natural gas to West Germany.

18 September 1980, Death of Soviet statesman Alexei Kosygin, Prime Minister of the USSR 1964-80.

23 October 1980, The Soviet leader, Alexei Kosygin, resigned due to illness.

20 August 1980, The USSR jammed Western radio broadcasts for the first time in seven years, to block news of Polish strikes.

13 June 1980, Car manufacturing workers in the USSR went on strike.

22 January 1980, In the USSR, dissident Andrei Sakharov was jailed for criticising the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

18 June 1979. US President Carter and USSR President Brezhnev signed the SALT 2 (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) in Vienna.

21 May 1979, Elton John became the first Western rock star to perform in the Soviet Union.

14 July 1978, In the USSR, dissident writer Anatoly Sharansky was sentenced to 13 years prison with hard labour.

1 June 1978. Bugging devices were found at the US embassy in Moscow.

18 May 1978, Yuri Orlov, Soviet human-rights campaigner, was sentenced to 7 years in a labour camp.

15 March 1977, The Jewish Russian dissident Anatoly Sharansky was arrested on charges of plotting with the CIA.

28 January 1977, The USA warned the USSR not to persecute the dissident, Sakharov.

6 September 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 July 1976, The Soviet chess champion Korchnoi defected to the West.

21 January 1976. The Financial Times and New York Times went on sale in the USSR.

9 September 1975. The Czech tennis player Martina Navratilova defected to the West.

4 September 1975, Ivan Maisky, Soviet politician, died aged 91.

24 February 1975, Nikolai Bulganin, Soviet Prime Minister from 1955 to 1958, died.

18 June 1974, Georgi K Zhukov, Soviet statesman, died aged 77.

1.0, Dissident Solzhenitsyn, 1970-74

13 February 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.

4 April 1972, The USSR refused a visa to the Swedish Academy Official due to deliver the Nobel Prize for Literature to Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

17 September 1970. The Soviet paper Pravda attacked writer Solzhenitsyn as �hostile�.

9 October 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.

3 October 1972, The US and USSR signed SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) accords, limiting submarine based and land based missiles.

29 May 1972. Brezhnev and Nixon signed SALT-2 (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty).

8 October 1971, The USSR expelled 5 Britons and refused another 13 entry in rataliation for the expulsions of 24 September 1971.

24 September 1971, Britain expelled 90 Soviet diplomats after a KGB defector, Oleg Lyalin, passed information to British Intelligence. See 8 October 1971. The UK had also granted asylum to the Soviet defector and space expert Anatol Fedoseyev in June 1971.

11 September 1971, Nikita Kruschev, President of the USSR from 1958 to 1964, died aged 77 near Moscow.

17 November 1969, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) opened in Helsinki between the USSR and USA (President Nixon). The talks had been proposed for 19 June 1969 but suspended by the USA due to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

19 June 1969, US President Nixon suspended arms limitation talks with the USSR due to the their invasion of Czechoslovakia.

19 October 1969, The USSR and China began talks in Beijing to settle their boundary dispute along the River Issuri.

2 March 1969. Soviet and Chinese troops clashed on their border. Chinese troops attempted to occupy Damiansky island, one of the Ussuri river islands ceded by China to Tsarist Russia in 1860. China now maintained that the concession had been unfairly extracted and revoked it. Russia drove off the Chinese invasion.

12 January 1968, Soviet dissidents Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginsburg were sentenced in Moscow to hard labour.

9 March 1967, Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Joseph Stalin, defected to the West, requesting political asylum at the US Embassy in India..

7 October 1966, The USSR expelled all Chinese students.

26 March 1965, Kirill Mazurov became the new First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, second in governmental rank to Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin.

5 November 1964, Zhou Enlai, Prime Minister of China, visited the USSR for a summit meeting of Communist States.

15 October 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.

19 May 1964, The US lodged a complaint with Russia over microphones found at its Moscow Embassy.

15 July 1964, Anastas Mikoyan succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as President of the USSR.

27 April 1964, Greville Wynne, British businessman sentenced in Moscow in 1963 for spying, was exchanged at the Berlin border for Gordon Lonsdale, KGB agent sentenced in London for espionage in 1961.

22 April 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 February 1964. China challenged the USSR for leadership of the Communist world.

31 August 1963, The �hot line�, linking the Kremlin and the White House, went into operation.

30 August 1963, Guy Burgess, Cambridge spy who worked for the Soviet Union, died.

30 July 1963. The �third man�, Kim Philby, turned up in Moscow after escaping arrest in Britain for spying. He had defected to Russia on 23 January 1963.

1 July 1963, Kim Philby, British spy, was revealed as the �third man�.

20 June 1963. The White House and the Kremlin agreed to set up a �hot line�.

13 April 1963, Gary Kasparov, Russian world chess champion, was born.

9 February 1963, In Russia, the former head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, and Archbishop of Lvov, was released after 18 years imprisonment, which began when the Ukrainian Catholic Church was forcibly united with the Russian orthodox Church.

23 January 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 Cuba for Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

1 June 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.

0.2, Gary Powers incident 1960-62

10 February 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.

19 August 1960, Gary Powers was sentenced to 10 years prison in the USSR for spying.

11 May 1960, The USA admitted (see 5 May 1960) that Gary Powers had been spying but refused to apologise.

8 May 1960, Brezhnev became President of the USSR.

5 May 1960, The USA denied that Gary Powers had been spying.

1 May 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. He had been on a flight path from Pehsawar air base, Pakistan, over the USSR to Greenland. On 8 July 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.

0.0 De-Stalinisation, 1961

31 October 1961, Joseph Stalin's body was removed from the Lenin Mausoleum and reburied outside the Kremlin as part a Soviet policy of de-Stalinization.

10 November 1961. The USSR renamed Stalingrad as Volgograd.

1 November 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.

-1.0, Soviet military, nuclear tests, 1958-61

30 October 1961, The Soviet Union detonated a 50-megaton yield hydrogen bomb known as Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya, the largest man-made explosion ever. Too large to be fit inside even the largest available warplane, the weapon was suspended from a Tupolev Tu-95 piloted by A.E. Durnovtsev, a Hero of the Soviet Union. A parachute slowed the bomb's descent so that the airplane could have time to climb away from the fireball, and at an altitude of four kilometres, was exploded at 8:33 AM GMT Although the news drew protests around the world, the event was not reported in the Soviet press

24 October 1961, Bertrand Russell protested to the Soviet Embassy in London about the resumption of nuclear tests by the Russians. The Russian response that it must be ready for an attack from the USA did not impress him.

31 August 1961, After failure of the Geneva Conference, the USSR announced it would resume nuclear weapons testing.

7 November 1960, Missiles first appeared on the Red Square military parade.

12 July 1960, President Khrushchev of the USSR asserted that the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 was no longer valid; this would legitimate Soviet interference in the Caribbean. On 14 July 1960 the US confirmed that the Monroe Doctrine was still in operation.

21 April 1959, The Soviet Union protested to the USA about the stationing of nuclear weapons in West Germany.

27 March 1959, Soviet fighter aircraft buzzed US aircraft in the air corridor connecting West Berlin to West Germany.

31 May 1958, The Kremlin and Washington agreed to hold talks on a ban on atmospheric atom bomb tests.

16 June 1961. Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union whilst in Paris, travelling with the Leningrad Kirov Ballet.

27 November 1960, Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukrainian politician and co-leader of the Orange Revolution, Prime Minister (2005, 2007-10), was born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union.

24 July 1959, At a trade exhibition in Moscow, USA Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev publically debated the merits of their different political systems, in a model of a typical Ame3rican kitchen.

21 February 1959, Harold MacMillan, British Prime Minister, and Selwyn Lloyd, Foreign Secretary, visited the USSR.

-2.0, Khruschev 1953-58

10 August 1958, Khrushchev opened what was then the largest hydroelectric project in the world, on the Volga near Kuibyshev. The dam contributed to a fall in the level of the Caspian Sea.

26 October 1957, In the USSR, Marshal Georgi Zhukov was sacked as Defence Minister and former Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov was sent as Ambassador to Mongolia, after an unsuccessful attempt to remove Khruschev.

15 February 1957, In the USSR, Andrei Gromyko replaced Dmitri Shepilov as Foreign Minister.

7 September 1958, Nikita Kruschev stated that any attack by the US on China would be regarded as an attack on the USSR.

7 January 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.

1 June 1956, In the USSR, Vyacheslav Molotov was replaced as Foreign Minister by Dmitri Shepilov.

14 May 1956, A British diver disappeared whilst bugging the underside of Soviet President Kruschev�s warship in Portsmouth.

18 April 1956, The Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev, along with Nikolai Bulganin, visited the UK.

18 March 1956, At the 20^th Party Congress, Khrushchev denounced Stalin�s crimes.

22 November 1955, A Tupolev Tu-16 dropped the first Soviet nuclear bomb, RDS-37, in Siberia.

12 October 1955, The Soviet Navy made a goodwill visit to Portsmouth, UK, and the British Royal Navy made a goodwill visit to Leningrad (St Petersburg), Russia.

18 September 1955, Four years after they fled to Russia, the British Government officially confirmed that Donald McLean and Guy Burgess were Soviet spies.

7 May 1955, The USSR annulled treaties with Britain and France in retaliation for the setting up of the Western European Union, which included Germany.

5 June 1955, The Warsaw Pact was founded.

14 May 1955. Eastern bloc countries signed the Warsaw Pact.

8 February 1955, Soviet Prime Minister Malenkov resigned. He was succeeded by Bulganin, who reaffirmed ties between the USSr and China, and appointed Zhukov as Minister of Defence.

31 March 1954. The USSR offered to join NATO.

20 March 1954. In the USSR, Khrushchev became First Secretary of the Communist Party.

19 February 1954, Russia transferred Crimea to Ukraine, to mark the 300^th anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian Union.

23 September 1953, The dismissed Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, Beria, was shot as a traitor.

16 September 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.

21 August 1953, The USSR banned lobotomies.

10 July 1953, The Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, Lavrenti Beria, was dismissed.

14 March 1953, Nikita Kruschev became First Secretary of the Communist Party in the USSR, replacing Georgi Malenkov.

Death of Stalin 1953

5 March 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 October 1952, Vladimir Putin, who was elected Russian president in 1999, was born.

6 October 1952, In the USSR, the 19th Congress of the Communist Party adopted the directives of the Fifth Five Year Plan. Industrial production was to rise by 70% by 1955 over the 1950 figure, also a large increase in agricultural output.

17 August 1952, A large Chinese delegation, led by Zhou Enlai, visited the USSR for discussions.

12 August 1952, In Moscow, 13 prominent Jewish intellectuals were murdered on the orders of Stalin, the so-called �Night of the Murdered Poets�.

25 May 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 March 1950. The USSR claimed to have the atom bomb.

12 January 1950. The death penalty was re-introduced in the USSR.

25 September 1948, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, business oligarch, was born in Smolensk, USSR

11 February 1948, Soviet composers Aram Kachaturian, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich were castigated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party for producing works of �bourgeois decadence�.

15 March 1946. The USSR began its 4^th 5-Year Plan.

9 February 1946, In the USSR, Stalin announced a new Five Year Plan with emphasis on scientific research and industrial production in oil, coal, iron and steel.

5 March 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 March 1947.

14 August 1945. The Soviet Union concluded a Treaty of Friendship with Nationalist China. This included handing over Manchuria, which the Soviets had conquered from Japanese forces, to China. However before the Soviets moved out, they stripped the region of all the military and industrial equipment they could move, and took this, along with many Japanese PoWs, back to Russia to support their own industrial reconstruction.

-3.0, Russia in World War Two, 1939-47

25 November 1947. The USSR demanded war reparations from Germany.

26 April 1943. The mass grave of 4,000 Polish officers was found in the Katyn forest. Germany accused Russia of the murder. The Soviet Union finally admitted carrying out the 1940 massacre, of up to 15,000 Polish officers, on 12 April 1990.

8 January 1943, German forces began to retreat from the Stalingrad area, leaving some of their compatriots under siege in Stalingrad itself.

31 January 1943. The German 6tb Army under Field Marshal Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad after five months of fighting. The last Germans fighting in Stalingrad surrendered on 2 February 1943.� Hitler had refused to countenance an attempted German breakout from Stalingrad and insisted his troops hold on, despite, from December 1942, increasing shortages of food, ammunition, and medical supplies.� The Luftwaffe tried to drop supplies by air to the besieged city but often failed in this task. The Stalingrad Campaign cost the lives of 479,000 men from November 1942; German deaths amounted to 147,000, with a further 91,000 troops captured (many to be worked to death as Stalinpferde, Stalin horses, in Soviet labour camps).

28 June 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 July 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 January 1870) for more events of World War II in Europe

22 June 1941. (1) Germany invaded Russia. Hitler expected the war in Russia to be over by Christmas 1941, saying �We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down�. Hitler calculated that Stalin�s purges of the officer class had badly weakened the Red Army.

The invasion plan, called Operation Barbarossa had been announced by Hitler to his generals on 30 March 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 Germany would attack, despite troop movements on the frontier in the weeks before the invasion.

The German invasion was to have begun on 15 May 1941, but the need to intervene in the Balkans against Greece and Yugoslavia delayed the Russian invasion by seven (crucial) weeks.� The original plan was for German forces to have reached a line from Archangel to the Volga by autumn 1941.� Russian resistance was greater than Hitler anticipated, and Hitler�s orders to try and capture Moscow whilst Leningrad was already besieged, whilst simultaneously taking tanks from the Moscow front to the southern front gave a respite to the defence of Moscow.

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) Romania joined in with Germany in attacking Russia. Rumania was led by Ion Antonescu (born 2 June 1882 in Transylvania). Antonescu was pro-Nazi, and during a period of serious internal disorder in Rumania, King Carol of Rumania was compelled to offer Antonescu the Premiership on 5 September 1940. Antonescu then demanded the abdication of Carol. In 1944 Russia counterattacked into Rumania and King Michael I, who had succeeded Carol, arrested Antonescu. Antonescu was convicted of war crimes on 17 May 1946 and executed near the Rumanian fort of Jilava on 1 June 1946.

Germany turns on Russia and attacks unexpectedly

See China-Japan-Korea for events of World War Two in Pacific

13 April 1941. Stalin signed a neutrality pact with Japan; Russia was concerned that Japanese conquests in Manchuria had brought Japanese forces up to Russian territory.

18 September 1940, Hitler signed the directive for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet Russia.

3 August 1940, Latvia officially joined the Soviet Union.

1 August 1940, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov confirmed the USSR�s neutrality in the conflict in Europe.

21 July 1940. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, occupied by the USSR since June 1940, voted to become part of the USSR.

14 July 1940. The Soviet Union annexed Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.

27 June 1940. The USSR invaded Bessarabia.

26 June 1940. The USSR demanded that Romania cede Bessarabia, and also northern Bukovina as �compensation for Romanian misrule in Bessarabia�. The Romanian government had to submit and on 28 June 1940 Russian troops marched into these areas. In July 1941 Romania entered the war as Germany�s ally and recaptured Bessarabia. The Russians re-occupied Bessarabia during 1944 and in February 1947 Romania again had to cede Bessarabia and northern Bukovina..

See France-Germany (from 1 January 1870) for main European events of World War Two

17 June 1940, The Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

16 June 1940. The Soviet army invaded the Baltic Republics, starting with Lithuania, on the pretext that these countries were planning to attack the USSR. 200 Soviet tanks crossed the Lithuanian border and seized the capital, Kaunas.

12 March 1940. Finland signed a peace treaty with the USSR, surrendering large areas of territory on the Karelia Peninsula. See 30 November 1939.� The Finns had lost over 20% of their fighting force in 3 months.� Finland surrendered over 10,000 square miles of territory to the USSR. The border was returned to roughly where it had been drawn by Peter the Great in 1720.� In the hope of recovering these lands, Finland sided with Germany when Hitler attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941.

5 March 1940, Stalin signed the order to massacre 27,500 �Polish nationalists and counter-revolutionaries�, see 12 April 1940, Katyn.

11 February 1940, Germany and Russia signed an economic pact. The USSR would export raw materials to Germany, especially oil and grain, in exchange for manufactured goods.

See also Finland for Russia-Finland conflict 1939-40

23 September 1939. Stalin sacked General Meretzkof, as Finnish successes against Russia continued.

14 September 1939. The USSR was expelled from the League of Nations, for its aggression against Finland.

11 October 1939. The USSR signed a pact ceding the former Polish city of Vilna to Lithuania.

Poland now fully invaded. Ruaais co-exists with Germany

30 September 1939. Germany and the USSR signed a pact agreeing on the partition of Poland.

29 September 1939, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed �mutual assistance� pacts with the USSR.

22 September 1939, Russian forces took Lvov, Poland.

21 September 1939, Germany and Russia declared that Poland no longer existed.

17 September 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.

Russia invades eastern Poland; Germany already invading western Poland

23 August 1939. Hitler and the USSR concluded a 20 year non-aggression pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This left Hitler free to invade Poland.� Hitler believed the German-Soviet pact would lead France and Britain to withdraw their guarantees of assistance to Poland.� When instead Britain reaffirmed its support for Poland on 25 August 1939, Hitler postponed the attack on Poland, originally scheduled for the night of 25-26 August 1939.�� Diplomatic moves with Britain failed to dislodge UK support for Poland, and Hitler invaded on 1 September 1939.

12 August 1939, As Russia began talks with the Allies, Stalin also attempted to forge a peace treaty with Germany.

15 June 1939, Stalin rejected German offers of a trade agreement.

18 April 1939, The USSR proposed a 10-year alliance with Britain and France. Negotiations on this continued through the summer of 1939, but Polish-Soviet antipathy was a major stumbling block.

4 May 1939, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov succeeded Litvinov as Soviet Foreign Minister.

-4.0, Stalinist Purges, 1933-38

15 March 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 October 1937. Stalin killed a further 62 in his purges.

23 January 1937, More �show trials� in Moscow as Stalin purged party members deemed to be disloyal.

28 June 1937, In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin had 36 �confessed� German spies shot.

12 June 1937. Stalin�s purge extended to the Red Army; 12 top generals were executed.

25 August 1936, Stalin executed 16 senior Communists.

1 November 1934, The USSR exiled 12,000 �enemies of the State� to Siberia.

18 April 1933, Russia staged a show-trial of three Britons accused of espionage.

13 July 1935, The USSR and USA made a trade pact.

2 May 1935. France and the USSR signed a mutual defence pact in case of attack.� See 7 March 1936.

9 March 1935. In the USSR, Nikita Krushchev was elected chief of the Communist Party.

1934, The Red Army began to suppress the Buryat culture around Lake Baikal, Siberia, along with their Lamaist Buddhusm. Over a two-year period their datrsans (monasteries) were destroyed and some 10,000 Buryat massacred or worked to death.

15 May 1934, Karlis Ulmanis became dictator of Latvia.

30 November 1932, The USSR said its citizens could emigrate, if they paid the government a large sum of money in foreign currency.

6 February 1932. The Fascists staged a successful coup in Memel, Lithuania.

-5.0, Soviet agriculture and industry 1928�38

1938, Over the past decade, since 1928, 94% of the USSR�s 26 million peasant holdings had been forcibly amalgamated into 250,000 kolkhozy, State-owned farms. Effectively (State-) serfdom had been reimposed on the rural peasanta, at gunpoint. A largely fictional social enemy, the kulak, or greedy affluent peasant, had been invented by Stalin to justify the murders of those peasants who nresisted, The effect was that Soviet agricultural production fell 30%, creating a man-made famine.

3 August 1935, A Soviet miner, Aleksei Grigorevich Stakhanov (1906-77), mined a record 102 tonnes of coal in 6 hours. His name became a celebrity, with towns named after him and an entire Soviet cult of exemplary �Stakhanovite� labour for the State being built around him.

1933, The Baltic � White Sea Canal opened. It had been dug under Stalin by convict slave labour.

18 March 1933, A decree in the Soviet Union forbade peasants from leaving collective farms to seek work elsewhere without permission

22 January 1933, The USSR launched its Second Five Year Plan. This envisioned the growth of heavy industry but also the production of more consumer goods.

19 June 1931. The second Five Year Plan was announced in the USSR. This was to begin in 1933; the main aim was now not industrial expansion but improvement in living conditions.

10 January 1931. Molotov announced the collectivisation of USSR agriculture. In the Ukraine a famine was politically created to destroy the peasant kulaks, and also the nation itself; an estimated 5 � 7 million people died as a result.

24 February 1930. Reports out of the USSR claimed that 40 kulaks a day were being murdered by Stalin�s agents.

7 January 1930, The Soviet government ordered all agricultural land to be collectivised.

1 October 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, as in �tight-fisted�). On 5 January 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. The Soviet secret police (Ogpu) crushed any dissent.

2 March 1931. Birth of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He was born in Stavropol, in the north Caucasus.

1 February 1931, Boris Yeltsin, Russian leader, was born.

4 August 1930. Soviet troops killed 200 striking workers in Odessa � city of irony, see 1905.

21 July 1930, Maxim Litvinov became Soviet Foreign Minister.

26 June 1930, Stalin was �purging undesirables� from the Soviet Union administration.

25 April 1930, In the USSR, the Gulag (Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovykh Lagerey, or Main Administratin of Corrective Labour Camps) Agency was created to run the penal camps.

30 November 1929, Soviet planes bombed the Manchurian town of Pokutu.

24 September 1929. Workers in the USSR were given 2 days off a week.

29 March 1929, Lennart Meri, President of Estonia, was born (died 28 March 2006)

-6.0, Trotsky purged 1924-40. See 1923 below

20 August 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.

1 February 1937, Russia executed 13, who had been accused of being Trotskyites.

17 January 1935, Leading Soviet Communists, including Kamenev and Zinoviev, were convicted of complicity in Kirov�s murder.

1/ July 1929. Britain refused Leon Trotsky asylum.

11 April 1929. Germany refused asylum to Leon Trotsky.

21 February 1929. France refused asylum to Leon Trotsky, Stalin�s most feared opponent, now exiled from the USSR.

31 January 1929. Leon Trotsky was expelled from Russia by Stalin. He found asylum in Mexico.

16 January 1929, In Russia, Comintern Chief Bukharin was forced from office.

10 January 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.

17 November 1929, Nikolai Bukharin, Head of the Third International since 1926 and a potential rival to Joseph Stalin, was expelled from the Soviet Communist party.

10 March 1928, In the Soviet Union, show trials of �bourgeois� engineers accused of sabotage began.

15 November 1927, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Communist Party, USSR.

14 November 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".

23 October 1926, In Russia, Leon Trotsky and Zinoviev were ousted from the Politburo.

16 January 1925, Trotsky was dismissed as Soviet War Commissar.

26 November 1924. The Communist party of the USSR denounced Trotsky.

25 January 1928, Edvard Shevardnadze, Soviet Foreign Minister under Gorbachev, was born.

9 November 1927, Rebellion in the Lithuanian city of Taurag� by citizens dissatisfied with President Antanas Smetona, 209 people were convicted of charges arising from the insurrection, and eleven were executed.

29 October 1927, Russian archaeologist Peter Kozlof discovered the tomb of Genghis Khan.

24 May 1927. Britain severed relations with the USSR amid allegations of subversion and espionage throughout the British Empire. On 9 June 1927 the USSR executed 20 people accused of being British spies.

8 November 1926, Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci was jailed. He had started the Italian Communist Party in 1921, and by 1924 was party leader and heading the fight against Mussolini�s Fascism. He was imprisoned as part of a fascist crackdown on its opponents, and in 1928 Gramsci�s prison term was extended to 28 years. In prison in Rome he wrote Prison Notebooks, detailing his theory of cultural hegemony, the process whereby the working class take on the values and interests of the middle and upper classes. Gramsci argued that the working class needed to develop its own distinctive culture before a true Communist revolution was possible, this process requiring intellectuals from the working class to create this culture. He died in prison in 1937 and his sister in law, Tatiana, smuggled his works out of the prison and sent them in a diplomatic bag to Moscow. His writings were not published until after World War Two had ended.

2 June 1926, Jonas Staugaitis was elected head of the Seimas in Lithuania.

1 September 1924, Communists staged a failed coup attempt in Estonia.

26 January 1924. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad.

15 January 1923, Lithuania seized Memel from the occupying Allied forces.

-7.0, Soviet Russia struggles for, gains, international recognition 1920-34

18 September 1934. The USSR joined the League of Nations in an anti-Nazi move.

16 November 1933, The USA established diplomatic relations with the USSR for the first time since the Russian Revolution.

12 September 1932, The USSR restored relations with Japan.

29 November 1932. The USSR and France signed a non-aggression pact.

25 July 1932. The USSR, Poland, and Japan signed a non-aggression pact.

1 June 1931. The USA was to help build 90 steel plants in the USSR.

1 October 1929, Britain resumed diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia.

29 July 1929, Britain�s Foreign Secretary, Arthur Henderson, had talks with his Soviet counterpart about restoring Anglo-Soviet diplomatic relations.

1926, Soviet agriculture finally regained its 1913 output levels.

24 April 1926. Germany signed a friendship treaty with the USSR.

12 October 1925, Germany and the USSR signed a commercial treaty.

28 October 1924. France recognised the USSR.

7 February 1924, Italy recognised the USSR.

1 February 1924. Britain�s Labour Government recognised the USSR.

8 May 1923, Britain protested to Russia about their anti-British propaganda.

24 May 1922, Russia signed a trade agreement with Italy.

19 May 1922, In Russia the Young Pioneer Movement was established as an equivalent to the Boy Scouts

16 April 1922. Germany restored relations with the USSR, signing the Second Treaty of Rapallo. Secretly, the USSR agreed to let Germany build and test weapons in Soviet territory that were forbidden within Germany under the Treaty of Versailles.

1 March 1922, Russia signed a trade agreement with Sweden.

4 October 1921. League of Nations rejected Russian entry.

25 March 1921, The USA refused to restart trading with Russia.

16 March 1921, Britain and Russia signed a trade agreement.

27 May 1920, Leonid Krassin, Soviet trade delegate, arrived in London.

-8.0, Death of Lenin; Stalin wins power struggle against Trotsky 1922-24

21 January 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. Stalin wanted to encourage the Russian peasants to produce more food for the cities by allowing thema measure of private enterprise and profit, building up the USSR internally first (see 1 October 1928, Stalin�s First Five Year Plan, above). Trotsky, however, wanted to extract as much food from the countryside as possible to facilitate urban growth and heavy industry, and then to export Revolution abroad.

9 March 1923. Vladimir Illitch Lenin retired from the Bolshevik leadership of the USSR because of a second stroke.

25 May 1922, Lenin was disabled by a major stroke. In fact, although Trotsky was pushed aside, Stalin took on some of his policies.

-9.0, Start of the Soviet State; plan for industrial recovery 1920-22

30 September 1922. Soviet Russia was officially renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR.

17 November 1922, Siberia voted for union with the USSR.

3 April 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 into reality, it proved to be a liability as its excess bureaucracy was a brake on economic growth.

22 September 1920, The Soviet Congress adopted an ambitious plan for the electrification of Russia.

-10.0, Russian economic problems, 1921

22 September 1921, US Congress set aside US$ 20 million for food aid to starving children in the USSR. Famine in Russia claimed some 3 million lives. Russia was humiliated by having to accept US-organised food distribution within Russia itself. Subsequently, the Russians employed by the US food distributors came under Soviet Government suspicion and many were killed in future purges.

4 August 1921, Lenin asked the world for help in overcoming the famine in Russia.

12 March 1921. Lenin announced that state planning of the economy will end and free enterprise would be permitted. This was a move forced by the Russian famine in 1921. The famine was caused by a drought in 1920 which wiped out the crops but revolution and civil war exacerbated the situation. The USA responded to Lenin�s appeal and sent 800,000 tons of food.

The Soviet Union economy in 1921 was vastly smaller than in 1913, after years of warfare, international and then civil. 1921 pig iron production stood at a fifth of its 1913 level, coal was 3%, the railways had just half the locomotoves of 1913, livestock was down 25%, and cereal deliveries were below� 40% of 1916 levels.On top of this, southern Russia had suffered a drought in 1916. 2 million died in the subsequent famine, and there were even reports of cannibalism.

23 February 1921, Thousands of workers in Moscow were now on strike and martial law was declared.

22 January 1921, In Russia a poor harvest and the resistance of the rural peasants to have tjheir grain requisitioned meant that the bread ration in Russian cities was cut by a third. Workers were now getting only 1,000 calories a day.

-11.0, Mutiny at Kronstadt, suppressed, 1921

18 March 1921, The mutiny at Kronstadt naval base, Petrograd, Russia, which began on 7 March 1921, was suppressed.

7 March 1921, Following a mutiny of Russian sailors at Kronstadt naval base near Petrograd, military forces attacked the base. The mutiny was suppressed on 18 March 1921.

5 February 1921. Anti-Soviet sailors mutinied at Kronstadt naval base, outside Petrograd. The rebellion was crushed by Red Army troops on 17 March 1921.

-12,0, End of the Russian civil watr; Communists triumphant, 1919-22

25 October 1922, The last Japanese troops left Vladivostok.� With all anti-Bolshevik forces gone, Soviet rule was established there.

18 October 1921. Russia granted independence to the Crimea.

13 October 1921, Turkey, Russia, and the Caucasian Republics signed a treaty in Kars.� Turkey retained Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin, and Russia took Batum.

27 May 1921. Anti-Bolshevik forces took Vladivistok.

21 May 1921, Andrei Sakharov, Russian physicist and human rights campaigner, was born.

19 November 1920, 100,000 White Russian refugees from the Crimea arrived in Constantinople.

16 November 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 November 1920, Sebastopol was captured by the Red Army.

1 November 1920, White Russian forces under Baron Wrangel were pushed southwards into the Crimea by the Communists.

12 October 1920, Communist Russian forces ended their war with Poland, with the Peace of Tartu. This freed up the Red Army to push back 42-year-old Baron Petrr Nikolaveich Wrangel�s forces which then occupied much of southern Russia. On 1 November 1920 Wrangel was forced back to Sevastopol, which he evacuated� on 14 November 1920 and fled to Constantinople ending resistance to the Russian revolution,

11 August 1920, A Latvian-Soviet peace treaty gave Latvia independence from Soviet Russia.

27 July 1920, The Red Army took Pinsk.

12 July 1920, A peace treaty between Russia and Lithuania; Russia recognised Lithuanian independence,

11 June 1920, The Red Army recaptured Kiev from the Poles.

19 May 1920. The Red Army invaded northern Iran.

7 May 1920. Polish and Ukrainian troops seized Kiev from the Red Army. Poland wanted to bring the Ukraine under its influence, to weaken Russia.

28 April 1920, The Red Army entered Baku.

28 March 1920, Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea, was taken by the Red Army.

20 February 1920. The Red Army captured Archangel.

8 February 1920. The Bolsheviks captured Odessa.

7 February 1920. The Bolsheviks executed the White Russian, Commander Koltchak.

2 February 1920. Estonia proclaimed its independence from Russia.

9 January 1920. Bolshevik troops defeated White Russians under Admiral Koltchak.

8 January 1920, The White Army under Alexander Koltchak was defeated by the Bolsheviks at Krasnoyarsk.

5 January 1920. Poles and Letts captured Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Lithuania) from the Bolsheviks.

16 September 1919, German troops left Latvia and Lithuania.

13 September 1919, Soviets captured Kharkov from the White Russians under Anton Denikin.

28 November 1919. Latvia declared war on Germany. German troops left Latvia and Lithuania on 16 September 1919.

15 November 1919. The Red Army captured Omsk.

22 October 1919, The Bolshevik Red Army defeated a White Russian army under Nicolai Yudenich near Petrograd. Yudenich retreated into Estonia.

12 October 1919. British troops pulled out of Murmansk, Russia.

27 September 1919, The last Anglo-French-US forces pulled out of Archangel, eastern Russia. They had landed there on 2 August 1918 in order to support anti-Bolshevik White Russian forces, since defeat of the Bolsheviks would bring Russia back into the war against Germany. An initial contingent of 1,500 Allied troops was reinforced up to 30,000, but this was still too small a number to control the vast and hostile terrain of the area. With no hope of a White Russian victory against the Bolsheviks, the Allied hold on Archangel became untenable and they were evacuated.

-13.0, Russian Civil War 1918-19

11 September 1919, In Russia, the White Army foiled attempts by the Red Army to recapture the city of Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd).

2 September 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.

9 June 1919, Red Army troops took Ufa.

3 June 1919. More British troops arrived at Archangel, Russia.

31 May 1919, In the Estonian War of Independence, the Estonian Army continued a successful campaign against the Red Army with the capture of the Soviet-held towns of Alūksne, Gulbene, and Valmiera in northern Latvia.

20 April 1919, A Polish army under Pilsudski took the city of Vilnius, Lithuania, from the Soviets.

19 April 1919, Battle for the Donbass. The Ninth Red Army was forced to cease operations against the White forces in Kamianske, Ukraine

8 April 1919. The Red Army invaded the Crimea.

1 April 1919,� British troops supporting White Russian troops defeated a Bolshevik force.

21 March 1919, The Western Allies decided to pull out of Russia.

12 March 1919, The Lithuanian Army formed an aviation unit, the precursor to the Lithuanian Air Force.

4 March 1919, The Comintern was formed. This was the �Communist International�, to spread Communism worldwide.

15 February 1919, Denikin became Commander of White Russian forces in the soiutheast.

24 January 1919, Battle of Skoczow. Czech forces forced the Polish Army back to the town of Drogomysl, Poland. Also the Battle of Shenkursk. The Red Army was almost surrounding Shenkursk, Russia, and Allied Commander General Edmund Ironside ordered the remaining American, Canadian and British force to break out and escape towards Arkhangelsk, Russia.

22 January 1919, The Red Army occupied Kiev, capital of the Ukraine.

11 January 1919. Soviet forces entered Vilnius, Lithiania.

3 January 1919, Part of the Latvian Army defected to the Communists and Communist forces occupied Riga, capital of Latvia.

22 September 1918, The Red Latvian Rifle Division captured Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia.

27 November 1918, The Soviet Red Army invaded Narva, Estonia.

18 November 1918. Latvia gained independence from Russia, then ruled by Lenin and soon to be known as the USSR.

1 November 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 July 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.

24 August 1918, An Anglo-Japanese force defatted Soviet Russian troops on the Ussuri River.

31 July 1918, Anglo-French forces occupied Archangelsk, northern Russia.

10 July 1918. A provisional government of Siberia was set up.

-14.0, Disintegration of Russian Empire amidst Revolutionary chaos, 1917-18

26 June 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.

26 May 1918, The short-lived Transcaucasian Republic broke up.

9 April 1918. Latvia declared its independence.

24 February 1918. Estonia declared its independence.

16 February 1918, Lithuania declared its independence from Russia.

5 February 1918, Soviet�Ukrainian War. 7,000 Soviet soldiers marched on Kiev but met little resistance from the Ukrainian garrison

20 November 1917. The Republic of the Ukraine was declared.

29 July 1917, Taking advantage of Revolutionary chaos, the Finns declared their independence from Russia.

29 June 1917. Ukraine declared its independence.

-15.0, Death of the last Russian Tsar, 1917-18

17 July 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, then later recovered and buried in a shallow grave. The Bolshevik government was afraid that anti-Bolshevik White Russians or Czechoslovak troops would liberate the Romanov family and restore them to power. Western European powers such as Britain were afraid to give the Romanovs sanctuary (even if they could have been physically extricated from Russia) for fear of sparking workers� uprisings in their own territories.

30 September 1917. The ex-Tsar and family were exiled to Siberia.

21 July 1917, Alexander Kerensky, formerly Russian Minister for War, now headed a provisional Government in Russia, replacing that of Prince Lviv.

21 March 1917. Ex-Tsar Nicholas II and his family were arrested.

15 March 1917. Czar Nicholas II abdicated in Pskov. The 300-year Romanov dynasty ended (see 8 March 1917).

-16.0, Russian Tsarist Government collapses; Communist Revolution, 1917-18

6 March 1918, In Russia, at the 7^th Party Congress in Moscow, the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Communist Party.

5 March 1918. Moscow was declared the new capital of Russia, in place of Petrograd.

3 March 1918. The Bolshevik government in Russia signed 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 April 1918.� Turkey regained territories lost to Russia even in 1877.

1 March 1918, Ukrainian military commander Symon Petliura, with support from Germany, pushed Russian forces out of Kiev.

17 February 1918, The Bolsheviks seized power in Archangel.

14 February 1918, The Soviet Union adopted the Gregorian Calendar. The previous day had been 31 January in Russia

8 February 1918, The Bolsheviks seized power in Kiev.

7 February 1918, The Bolsheviks seized power in Astrakhan.

31 January 1918, The Bolsheviks seized power in Orenburg.

28 January 1918. Lenin created a Red Army and the Cheka, a security police force.

27 January 1918, The Bolsheviks seized power in Nikolayev.

11 January 1918, The Bolsheviks seized power in Yekaterinoslav.

24 September 1917, The Bolsheviks seized power in Kharkov.

22 September 1917. The Bolsheviks opened peace talks with Germany and Austria. The Allies accused Russia of betrayal.

20 September 1917, The Cheka, a predecessor to the KGB, was established in Russia after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin.

15 September 1917, The Bolsheviks seized power in Kostroma.

14 September 1917, The Bolsheviks seized power in Novorossiysk.

8 September 1917, The Bolsheviks seized power in Vyatka.

6 September 1917. As the Russian Army disintegrated after the October Revolution into bands of raiders, Romania and Russia signed an armistice.

5 September 1917. Russia signed an armistice with Germany, at Brest-Litovsk.

27 November 1917, The Bolsheviks seized power in Novgorod.

19 November 1917. A Revolutionary Council was established in Petrograd, with Leon Trotsky as leader.

16 November 1917. Bolshevik troops took Moscow.

8 November 1917, In Russia, The People's Commissars gave authority to Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin.

Kerensky administration May-Nov 1917. However Bolsheviks gaining power.

7 November 1917 (25/10 in Russia). The Bolshevik Revolution, which led to the world�s first Communist Government under Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov Lenin. Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky�s government was overthrown. See 6 March 1918.

9 October 1917, Stalin joined the Bolshevik Committee.

15 September 1917. Russia was declared a Republic with a provisional government, by Soviet Party Prime Minister Aleksandr Kerensky.

4 September 1917, Trotsky was released from prison on bail, and, with Lenin absent, assumed leadership of the Bolshevik Party. However Trotsky was seen as high-handed, which alienated many Bolsheviks, and Stalin had more support than Trotsky did.

20 August 1917, In elections to the Petrograd City Council, the Bolsheviks did well, securing nearly a third of the vote, just behind the Socialist revolutionaries. Kerensky, favoured by the Right and the aristocracy, was looking insecure.

2 August 1917, Conclusion of the secretly-held Bolshevik Sixth Congress (from 26 July 1917). Lenin was still in hiding in Finland, which was gaining independence from Russia.

16 July 1917. The provisional government in Petrograd, Russia, crushed the Bolshevik uprising. The Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, fled to a series of safe houses, finding refuge in Finland. However on 7 November 1917 Kerensky, leader of the Russian provisional government, was ousted by Lenin.

The War was going badly for the Russians, with low morale and mass desertions, as the Russian Revolution progressed.

16 June 1917. The first pan-Soviet Congress opened in Petrograd.

17 May 1917, Kerensky became head of the Soviet interim government.

Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky return to power in Moscow April-May 1917

18 May 1917. Trotsky returned to Russia from the USA

17 April 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 April 1917, Stalin was released from exile in Siberia (imposed 1913).

3 April 1917, Vladimir Illyich Lenin returned to Moscow from exile.

16 March 1917, An interim Soviet Russian government was set up.

12 March 1917,� Izvestia, the official daily newspaper of the USSR, was founded.

10 March 1917, A Soviet, or council, of workers and soldiers was set up in Russia.

8 March 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 March 1917

9 January 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.

-17.0, Russia in World War One, 1915-16

31 September 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.

22 February 1916. Tsar Nicholas II opened the Duma (Parliament).

For main events of World War One see France-Germany

31 October 1915, Famine was reported in some parts of Russia.

30 April 1915. Germany invaded the Russian Baltic provinces.

-18.0, Rasputin 1869-1916

30 September 1916. In Russia, Gregory Rasputin, the infamous Siberian �seer� and miracle worker, was murdered, aged 47.

11/1905, Rasputin was first introduced to the Tsar and Tsarina. He was brought in as a �miracle worker� who coukd cure the Tasr�s infant son, Alexis (born 12 August 1904) of his haemophilia. Rasputin prophesied that Alexis would not die but that his haemophilia would disappear when he reached the age of 13. In fact Alexis, along with the rest of his family, was assassinated by the Bolsheviks just a few days short of his 14^th birthday,

8 January 1869, Russian priest Grigory Rasputin was born, to parents Yefim and Anna in Pokrivskoe.

31 August 1914. St Petersburg was renamed Petrograd.

15 June 1914, Yuri Andropov, Russian President, was born in the village of Nagutskyoye, north of the Caucasus Mountains.

21 February 1914, At a secret meeting in St Petersburg, the Russian Government and military agreed a plan to seize the Dardanelles Straits from Turkey, guaranteeing Russian access to the Mediterranean.

5 May 1912. The first issue of Pravda, meaning Truth, appeared in Russia.

-19.0, Continued civil strife in Russia, heavy State repression, 1910-12

17 April 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 April 1914, In Russia, 10,000 workers went on strike in St Petersburg.

14 September 1911, Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin was assassinated when a police double agent shot him at the opera in Kiev; he died on 18 September 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).

9 March 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.

1 January 1912. Harold �Kim� Philby, the British traitor who spied for Soviet intelligence, was born.

20 November 1911, Lenin, in exile in Paris, attended the funeral of Paul and Laura Lafarge, two Socialists. Lenin said that �world bourgeois parlementarism was coming to a close�.

16 April 1911, Guy Burgess, English civil servant who spied for the Russians, was born in Devonport. He died in August 1963 in a Moscow hospital.

24 October 1909, Italy and Russia signed the Racconigi Pact. Each nation promised to support the status quo in the Balkans. Italy promised to support Russian aims in tye dardanelles, and Russia agreed not to interfere with Italian actions in Tripoli.

6 July 1909, Andrei Gromyko, President of the USSR, was born near Minsk, to a peasant family.

19 November 1908, A court in St Petersburg was adjourned when the prosecuting council refused to deal with Russia�s first female barrister.

9 June 1908, King Edward VII of Britain met Tsar Nicholas II of Russia at Reval, Russia. The Tsar agreed to introduce social reform in Macedonia (which was still nominally under Ottoman Turkish control).

-20.0, Duma meets, fails to achieve liberal reform, 1907

31 September 1907. 167 Duma (Parliament) deputies jailed for treason in Russia. See 14 October 1907.

14 September 1907, In St Petersburg, 38 soldiers were sentenced to life imprisonment for surrendering to the Japanese at Port Arthur.

14 November 1907, The Third Duma met in Russia; it sat until 1912. Elected on a restricted franchise, it suppressed revolutionary activities.

14 October 1907. Third parliament (Duma) formed in St Petersburg. See 31 September 1907.

5 September 1907, King Edward of Britain met the Russian Foreign Minister, Alexander Izvolski, at Marienbad (now, Czech Republic), to strengthen mutual relations.

31 August 1907, The UK and Russia agreed an entente, defining spheres of influence in Persia, Tibet, and Afghanistan.� There was an implicit agreement that Britain would not allow Russia to control the Bosporus, and the entente opened up the London money markets to Russia, allowing it to recover from the Japanese defeat of 1904/5. France was also part of this agreement, forming a Triple Entente to contain the newly unified Prussian-dominated Germany.

-21.0, Ongoing civil strife in Russia; Government concessions but retains autocratic power, 1905-07

16 June 1907. The Russian parliament (Duma) was dissolved by Tsar Nicholas II on grounds of treason after reactionary parties attempted to force concessions. An electoral reform in Russia increased the representation of the propertied classes, and reduced the representation of national minorities.

3 April 1907. Russia reported that 20 million people were starving in the worst famine on record.

5 March 1907. Second Parliament (Duma) met in St Petersburg.

3 January 1907, The Prefect of St Petersburg was assassinated at the Institute of Experimental Medicine.

19 September 1906. Birth of Leonid Brezhnev.� He was born in Kamenskoye (now Dneiprodzherzhinsk), in the Ukraine.

22 November 1906, Stolypin introduced agrarian reforms in Russia.

2 November 1906. Jewish revolutionary Leon Trotsky was exiled for life to Siberia.

5 October 1906. In Russia, 1,000 prisoners a day were being exiled to Siberia.

21 July 1906. In Russia, the Duma (Parliament) was dissolved and martial law set up. The Cadets withdrew to Finland where they issued the Viborg manifesto, calling on Russians to refuse to pay taxes.

21 June 1906. The Russian Parliament, the Duma, was exiled. On 23 June 1906 it called on Russians to refuse to pay taxes.

11 June 1906, Isvolsky became Russian Foreign Secretary.

28 May 1906. The Russian government decided to redistribute 25 million acres of land to peasants.

24 May 1906. Czar Nicholas II granted universal suffrage but refused an amnesty for political prisoners as suggested by the Duma.

12 May 1906, The Russian Duma and the Tsar disputed over the release of political prisoners.

10 May 1906. The first Russian Parliament, or Duma, met in St Petersburg. There was deadlock as the Cadet�s party opposed the Fundamental Laws.

6 May 1906, Tsar Nicholas II promulgated the Fundamental Law of the Russian Empire, reaffirming autocratic rule.

5 May 1906, In Russia, Count Witte was replaced by the more conservative Ivan Goremykin.

4 April 1906, Elections were held for the first Duma (Parliament) in Russia.

20 March 1906. Russian army officers were killed by soldiers in a mutiny at Sevastopol, Crimea.

2 March 1906, Tsar Nicholas II ceded some power to the Russian Parliament.

1 January 1906, In Moscow, with the worker uprisings of late December 1905 quelled, the authorities re-imposed order with the punitive raids known as The Black Hundreds.

22 December 1905, The arrest of members of the St Petersburg Soviet led to civil disorder on the streets of Moscow as workers rioted. However Russian troops stayed loyal to the State and the uprising was quelled by 1 january 1906.

7 September 1905. Russian revolutionaries occupied the fortress at Kiev, Ukraine.

1 September 1905, 20 Russian army officers and 230 guards were arrested at St Petersburg after a plot to kill the Tsar was uncovered.

16 November 1905, Count Sergei Witte was appointed Prime Minister of Russia.

10 November 1905, Amidst growing unrest in Russia, all Russian universities were closed. Mutinies broke out in Vladivostok and other cities.

30 October 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 October 1905, The first meeting of the Soviet (Council) of Workers Deputies met in St St Petersburg. There was widespread disorder across Russia, with a train strike preventing the British Ambassador leaving St Petersburg.

21 October 1905, A railway strike began in Russia, which became nation-wide by 25 October 1905. By the end of October this had become a general strike across Russia.

2 September 1905. Russia suffered its worst famine since 1891. Several million people died.

-22.0, Russia turns back its liberalisation, 1905

Mutiny on the Potemkin

25 August 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.

19 August 1905, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia proposed an Impoerial Duma (parlkiament), which would only be elected on a limited franchise and have only deliberative powers.

24 July 1905, Kaiser William of Germany and Czar Nicholas of Russia signed the Treaty of Bjorko at a meeting in Finland. This proposed a mutual defence pact between the two countries if either was attacked by another European power. However the Russian Foreign Office opposed the Treaty because it threatened Russia�s relationship with France, upon whom Russia was dependent for aid. The German Chancellor, Von Bulow also opposed the Treaty, and Franco-German tension over the Morocco crisis left the Treaty dead in the water.

8 July 1905. The crew of the battleship Potemkin surrendered to the Romanians at Constanta after a mutiny. Romania refused to extradite them back to Russia because it said the mutiny was a political act. The ship itself was returned to Russia on 9 July. 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 June 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 July 1905. Russian troops killed more than 6,000 people in Odessa to restore order after a general strike. The crew of the battleship Georgei Pobiedonosets surrendered to the authorities.

30 June 1905, In Odessa the crew of the battleship Georgei Pobiedonosets mutinied in sympathy with the Potemkin crew. The naval mutiny spread and the whole Russian Black Sea Fleet was pout of action as crews sabotages ships� engines. Officers had to send crews ashore to avoid worse damage.

28 June 1905, Wednesday (-14,559) The Potemkin arrived at Odessa, and sailors took ashore the dead body of the first crewmate shot. This triggered a general revolutionary riot; sailors and civilians attacked and burnt granaries, quays and ships in harbour. Hundreds of people were killed as government troops tried to quell the disorder.

27 June 1905, Mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin, see 8 July 1905. Meat served to the crew was spoiled, the sailors refused to eat it, an officer shot a crewman, and enraged sailors fired on their officers, killing the captain and all but 5 officers on board. A committee of 20 sailors took charge of the ship, which was then sailed to Romania.

25 June 1905, The battleship Potemkin sailed from Sevastopol for at-sea firing practice.

3 June 1905. Cossacks charged at rioting crowds in St Petersburg.

23 June 1905, Tsar Nicholas II broke his promise regarding an elected assembly.

8 May 1905, In Russia the Union of Unions was formed by Paul Miliukov, demanding Parliamentary reform.

-23.0, Russian liberalisation, 1905

30 April 1905, Tsar Nicholas II guaranteed freedom of conscience and freedom of worship in Russia.

11 April 1905, The Russian Government stopped censoring private telegrams.

9 March 1905, Russia agreed to pay �65,000 compensation for the Dogger Bank incident of 1904.

3 March 1905, Czar Nicholas II agreed to form a Consultative Assembly.

29 January 1905, Czar Nicholas II made proposals for reforming the criminal code, establishing worker�s insurance and improving work conditions. However these changes were too little too late and did not halt the rising mood of revolution.

25 January 1905, Czar Nicholas II promised reforms.

-24.0, Civil disorder in Russia, 1905

17 February 1905, Grand Duke Sergei was killed in Moscow by an assassin�s bullet.

22 January 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 January 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 January 1905. 75,000 Russian workers went on strike amid growing civil disturbances, and anti-monarchist sentiments, fuelled by defeats by Japan.

16 January 1905, In Russia the Putilov Works was hit by a strike in support of four workers who had been dismissed. See 22 January 1905.

23 November 1904, Negotiations between Russia and Germany over a mutual defence treaty, both countries sharing a mutual tension with Britain, which had opened on 27 October 1904, ended this day when Russia insisted on consulting with France also.

26 September 1904, After months of unrest and riots in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II made decrees to improve the lot of the peasants.

-25.0, Russo-Japanese War 1904 see also Japan, 1904

25 February 1905, The Hague found against Russia in the Dogger Bank Incident and ordered Russia to pay compensation to Britain.

28 October 1904, The Russian Czar agreed with Britain to refer the Dogger Bank incident to The Hague.

22 October 1904, The �Dogger Bank� incident nearly caused war between Britain and Russia. The Russian Baltic fleet sank two Hull trawlers on the Dogger bank. The Russian Commander, Admiral Rozhdestvensky, later claimed he thought they were Japanese torpedo boats, sent under false flags to attack, but there was widespread disbelief and indignation in Britain. The Russians were fearful of Japanese attack and on edge, guns ready; they suddenly found themselves surrounded by a flotilla of small boats. However when they realised their mistake they did not stop to help but steamed off into the night. The people of Hull were furious and demanded the British navy chase after the Russians to �teach them a lesson�. Only French diplomatic intervention prevented the incident from escalating further. The Russian fleet was on its was to fight the Japanese navy in the Pacific.� Russia expressed regret and provided compensation.

21 October 1904, US President Roosevelt called for a peace conference at The Hague to end the Russo-Japanese War.

For Russo-Japanese war 1904 see China-Japan-Korea

16 August 1904, Britain protested to Russia about attacks on neutral merchant shipping.

8 February 1904. The Russo-Japanese war broke out.� This was provoked by Russian penetration into Manchuria and Korea.� By 1898 Russia had secured the Pacific ice-free port of Port Arthur and had linked it to the Trans-Siberian railway going to Vladivostock and beyond.� Japan ousted the Russians from Seoul, Korea.� The Russian army numbered 1,000,000 peacetime standing, plus 4,500,000 reserves; the Japanese army only comprised 150,000 men with 900,000 reserves. However the Russians faced a huge logistical problem because most of their forces had to be transported from Europe. The Trans-Siberian railway, still incomplete, was not up to the job.� In an effort to resist the |Japanese they sent their Baltic Fleet around the Cape to the Pacific; en route they sank two British North Sea trawlers, thinking they were Japanese warships. See 30 January 1902. Fighting started when the Japanese attacked Port Arthur without warning, sinking two battleships and a cruiser, trapping the rest of the fleet in port. Only after this event did Japan declare war on Russia.

12 August 1904, Tsarervich Alexis was born. 12 August 1904, He was haemophiliac and this resulted in the intervention of Rasputin in 1905.

-26.0, Russian expansionism; Trans-Siberian Railway opened, 1858-1903 See also Central Asia

29 September 1903, Count Witte, Russian Financial Minister, was dismissed. This signalled the supremacy of the Russian Government faction favouring continued Russian expansion in Manchuria and Korea.

3 July 1903, The UK and Japan demanded that Russia withdraw from Manchuria.

15 May 1903, British Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne announced that Britain would strongly resist the establishment of any fortified base by another power on the Persian Gulf. This was aimed at countering expansionist plans by Russia.

22 September 1902. Czar Nicholas II abolished the nominal independence of Finland and appointed a Russian Governor-General. For more details see Finland

2 April 1901, A proposed agreement between Russia and China for Russian occupation of Manchuria was cancelled by China, after Chinese appeals for support from Britain, Japan and Germany. For details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchuria

14 January 1901, Russia ceased exiling criminals to Siberia.

13 September 1897, Russia occupied Port Arthur.

1895, Emigration increased markedly from the Russian heartland, mostly to Siberia,along the newly-built Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1895 108,000 people left Russia, compared to just 10,000 in 1882. Population pressures had forced Czar Nicholas II to ease restrictions on travel. By 1899 annual emigration to Siberia was 223,000.

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.

30 March 1885, Russian troops, having already taken Merv (Mary), were now close to Herat, Afghanistan, which unnerved the British as it could threaten India. Russian troops were ordered to halt their advance until the borders of Afghanistan could be fixed. However against orders they fought and heavily defeated the Afghans at Al Tepe this day. Britain seemed likely to declare war on Russia, a move averted by British Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809-98), who devised a settlement whereby Russia gained Pendjeh District and Afghanistan secured the Zulfkar Pass. The Russian-Afghan border was fully delineated in 1887.

18 November 1877, In the Caucasus, Russia captured the fortress of Kars from Ottoman Turkey.

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.

15 September 1873, Alexis Fedchenko, Russian explorer of central Asia, died (born 7 February 1844).

26 July 1867. Russia formed the governor-generalship of Turkestan, having moved into the area to prevent Muslim incursions into their territory.

28 May 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.

-27.0, Civil unrest in Russia; Future Communist leaders, 1900-04

20 February 1904, Alexei Kosygin, Soviet Communist leader and Prime Minister, was born in Leningrad.

1903, Josef Stalin (born 1879) joined the Bolshevik Party.

17 November 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 July 1902. After riots in Russia which killed several thousand people, Czar Nicholas II offered to talk to the people.

15 April 1902, In Russia, socialist revolutionaries assassinated the Interior Minister, Sipyagin. He was succeeded by Viacheslav Plehve, who suppressed the peasants revolt and attacked the Armenian Church.

4 February 1902. In Moscow, 30,000 students began a political protest against the Tsar.

1 March 1902, Lenin published a pamphlet entitled �What is to be Done�, outlining his ideas for liberating the working masses through a Communist Revolution.

25 March 1902, In Russia, 567 students were tried for rioting and �political disaffection�. Most were given short prison terms, but 95 were banished to Siberia.

3/1901, Students and workers protested across major cities; several Russian provinces were placed under martial law.

17 March 1901. Anti-Czarist protests by students in St Petersburg were broken up by Cossack troops.

10 March 1901, Workers and students set up barricades in Moscow.

27 February 1901, The Russian Propaganda Minister was assassinated after his repression of student agitators.

1900, The average size of a peasant�s landholding in Russia had shrunk to 8 acres, from 13 in 1860, because of rising population. However Russia was beginning to industrialise, in the cities.

1 November 1900, Tsar Nicholas II fell ill with typhoid fever, precipitating a crisis in the Russian Empire for the entire month.

16 July 1900, Lenin and his wife left Russia to begin a 5-year exile in Switzerland.

3 July 1900, To curb civil unrest, the Russian Czar, Nicholas II, decreed an end to the banishment of dissidents to Siberia.

29 January 1900, Lenin returned from three year�s exile in Siberia.

29 January 1901, Joseph Gourko, Russian General, died (born 15 November 1828).

23 September 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.

1898, Lenin, whilst in exile in Siberia, published his book �The Development of Capitalism in Russia�.

16 August 1898, Mikhail Gregorjovich Tchernaiev, Russian General, died in Mogilev (born 24 October 1828)

1 March 1898, The first Communist Party meeting in Russia; the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party met in Minsk.

30 August 1896, Alexis Lobanov-Rostovski, Russian statesman, died (born 30 September 1824)

23 December 1895, Sergius Stepniak, Russian Revolutionary, born 1852, died when hit by a train in Chiswick, London

1 November 1894, Alexander III, Tsar of Russia, died (24/10).� Nicolas II became Tsar of Russia.

17 April 1894, Nikita Kruschev, Soviet leader, was born in Kalinovka, near Kursk.

10 February 1894, Germany signed a commercial treaty with Russia.

4 January 1894, Russia and France signed a treaty of mutual defence. Despite huge differences between their political systems, both countries felt threatened by encirclement. France felt threatened by a rare entente between Germany and Britain. Russia saw itself threatened to the south and east by the British Empire in central and eastern Asia.

1892, A drought through the summer of 1891 affected a large area of Russia from the Urals to the Black Sea, an area twice the size of France with a population of 36 million. There was no rain fdor 3 months, and the harvest sharnk by over 90%. This caused a cholera and typhus epidemic by the end of 1892.

17 August 1892. Russia and France signed a military convention.

8 May 1891, Helena Blavatsky, Russian theosophist, died in London (born at Ekatirnoslav 31 July 1831).

9 March 1890, Molotov, Soviet politician, was born in Kukaida under the surname Skriabin.

18 March 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.

22 September 1888, Michael Loris-Melikov, Russian statesman, died.

1 November 1888, Nikolay Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky, Russian explorer, died.

27 May 1883, Alexander III was crowned as �Tsar of all the Russias�.

11 March 1883, Alexander Gorchakov, Russian statesman, died (born 16 July 1798).

7 July 1882, Michael Skobiev, Russian general, died (born 29 September 1843).

15 May 1882, Constantine Kauffman, Russian General, died (born 3 March 1818).

13 March 1881, Alexander II, Tsar of Russia since 1855, aged 62, died from injuries sustained when a bomb was thrown at him near his palace, by a Polish student. The assassination was devised 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, determined to root out sedition in Russia. He also authorised a systematic campaign against Russian Jews, imposing severe restrictions on their worship from 5/1882 onwards. Millions of Jews emigrated from Russia over the next three decades.

-28.0, Marx published Das Kapital, worker demomstrations, Marx, Engels, died, Fabian Society formed, 1858-95

5 August 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.

1889, The Second International (working men�s association, see 1876), also lnown as the Socialist International, was founded in Paris.

4 January 1884. The Fabian Society was founded, to promote socialist ideals.

17 March 1883, Karl Marx was buried in Highgate Cemetery, London.

14 March 1883. Karl Marx, born 5 May 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.

2 September 1881, Karl Marx�s wife Jenny died.

13 November 1877, A demonstration by socialist marchers in Trafalgar Square led to violent clashes with mounted police and guardsmen.

1876, The �First International� (working men�s association) broke up after severe ideological splits. See 28 September 1864 and 1889.

1872, Marx�s Das capital was first published in Russia. It got past the censors because it was considered too dull to have much impact.

5 March 1871, Rosa Luxemburg, German Socialist leader and founder of the left-wing Spartacus movement, was born.

28 September 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. See 1876.

22 January 1858, Beatrice Webb, founder member of the Fabian Society, was born.

17 February 1880, Tsar Alexander II narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by Nihilists as a bomb exploded outside the Winter Palace, St Petersburg.

21 September 1879, Joseph Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia, as Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, son of a shoemaker.

26 October 1879, Leon Trotsky was born in Yanovka, Ukraine, as Lev Davidovich Bronstein.

23 January 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.

13 June 1876, Mikhail Bakunin, Russian anarchist (born 1814) died in Bern,

13 January 1874, Conscription was introduced in Russia.

9 June 1872, Peter I, Tsar of Russia, was born.

22 April 1870, Vladimir Illyich Lenin, Russian Communist leader, was born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), as Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov, the son of a schools inspector.

2 May 1869, Alexander Menshikov, Russian statesman, died (born 11/7.1787).

18 May 1868, Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was born, the son of Alexander III.

1865, Censorship laws were relaxed in Russia.

1864, Local govermment assemblies (zemstvos) were set up in most Russian provinces. However, to ensure the continued dominance of the Russian nobility, the zemstvos were kept at the territorial level of the province and district (uezd); the smaller units of township (volost) and village (village assembly, shkod) were kept as ;largely self-governing by the local peasantry.

1863, Russian universities were given more autonomy.

3 March 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.

2 July 1858. Czar Alexander II of Russia ordered all serfs working on imperial land to be freed.

-29.0, Crimean War, 1853-56

30 March 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. The Treaty also stipulated that the Aland Islands should not be fortified, by the army or navy. This allayed British fears over threats to its trade in the Baltic, see Russia-1854.

1 February 1856, Russia agreed to preliminary peace conditions for ending the Crimean War.

11 September 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.

16 August 1855, Battle of Chermaia, in the Crimean War. The Russians were defeated by a combined force of British troops and Piedmontese soldiers sent by Count Cavour of Savoy.

28 June 1855, Lord Raglan, British Army officer and commander of the expeditionary force in the Crimea, died.

2 March 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.

1854, During the Crimean War, Anglo-French forces attacked and destroyed the Russian fortress of Bomarsund, which the Russians had erected in the 1830s on the Aland Islands (see 17 September 1809). At the time, Palmerston had protested against this fort, without effect, because it potentially threatened British trade in the Baltic.

5 November 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 October 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 October 1854. The Allies (French and British) laid siege to the Russians at Sevastopol.

20 September 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 September 1854, Allied French and British troops landed in the Crimea.

8 August 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.

22 May 1854, The Russian Baltic fort of Gustavfarm was destroyed by a British fleet, with 1,500 Russian PoWs being captured.

27 March 1854. Crimean War began; Britain and France declared war on Russia.� On 12 March 1854 the British and French formally allied with Turkey. See 30 November 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.

20 March 1854, Russia sent troops southwards across the Danube, threatening Ottoman Turkey. Ultimately this posed the threat of Russia on the Mediterranean, putting communications between Britain and India at risk, and so was unacceptable to the UK.

6 February 1854, Russia broke off diplomatic relations with Britain and France.

4 October 1853. The Russians refused to withdraw from the Danubian Principalities, and Turkey declared war on Russia. On 23 October 1853 the Turks, under Omar Pasha, crossed the Danube into Wallachia. See 30 November 1853.

31 May 1853, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia despatched troops to protect Christian minorities in Ottoman-ruled Moldavia and Wallachia.

1853-56, Crimean War

-30.0, Marx, Engels, born. They meet, Marx moves to England, 1818-1849

24 August 1849, Karl Marx moved from France to England.

4 July 1848, The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, was published.

21 February 1848, The Communist Manifesto was first published.

8 September 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 June 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.

1 February 1845. Karl Marx settled in Brussels after being expelled from France.

28 August 1844, Karl Marx met Friedrich Engels in Paris; their lifelong collaboration began.

19 June 1843, Karl Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, daughter of a Prussian aristocrat.

1843, Engels published �The Condition of the Working Class in England.

27 November 1820, Friedrich Engels, German socialist and associate of Karl Marx, was born in Barmen.

5 May 1818, Karl Heinrich Marx, father of Communism, was born in Trier, Germany, son of a Jewish lawyer.

19 April 1845, Michael Muraviev, Russian statesman, was born (died 21 June 1900).

10 March 1845, Alexander III, Emperor of Russia, second son of Alexander II, was born (died 1894)

29 October 1843, Mikhail Skobelev, Russian General, was born near Moscow (died 7 July 1882 near Moscow)

1841, Czar Nicholas I forbade the auctioning of serfs.

1833, Czar Nicholas I forbade the spltting up of families by the sale of serfs.

13 July 1841, The Straits Convention, signed by the five great European powers, guaranteed Ottoman sovereignty and closed the Bosporus and Dardanelles to all foreign warships. This was directed at preventing Russian expansion.

21 April 1834, Count Aleksei Arakcheev, Russian soldier and statesman, died (born 1769).

29 January 1832, Nicholas Ignatiev, Russian diplomat, was born (died 3 July 1908).

31 July 1831, Helena Blavatsky, Russian theosophist, was born at Ekatirnoslav (died in London 8 May 1891).

12 July 1831, Vasily Golovnin, Russian Vice-Admiral, died. He was given the mission, accomplished 1817-19, of sailing a Russian ship around the world. He was born on 20 April 1776.

27 June 1831, Pavlovich Constantine, Grand Duke of Russia, died (born 27 April 1779).

10 June 1831, Hans Karl Diebitsch, Russian Field Marshal, died (born 13 May 1785).

26 May 1831, The Russians defeated the Poles at the Battle of Ostrolenska.

25 February 1831, The Poles halted the Russian advance at the Battle of Grochow.

15 November 1828, Joseph Gourko, Russian General, was born (died29 January 1901)

24 October 1828, Mikhail Gregorjovich Tchernaiev, Russian General, was born (died 16 August 1898 in Mogilev)

12 February 1826, Count Feodor Rostopschin, Russian General, died in Moscow (born in Orel 23 March 1763)

26 September 1825, The Decembrist Army Revolt in St Petersburg was crushed; it had begun on 1 September 1825. Young men inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution had attempted to overthrow the Tsarist rulers. Five rebels were hanged and 121 were exiled to Siberia.

18 September 1825, Tsar Nicholas I became ruler of Russia.

13 September 1825, Tsar Alexander I died in agony, aged 47, after eating poisonous mushrooms in the Crimea. He was succeeded by his 21-year-old brother, Nicholas I.

1824, Russia gained control over the fortresses of Abkhazia. However the general population was not subdued until 1864.

30 September 1824, Alexis Lobanov-Rostovski, Russian statesman, was born (died 30 August 1896).

4 September 1821, Czar Alexander declared that Russian influence in Alaska extended as far south as Oregon and closed Alaskan waters to foreigners.

21 May 1820, Nicholas Giers, Russian statesman, was born (died 26 January 1895).

29 April 1818, Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, was born.

3 March 1818, Constantine Kauffman, Russian General, was born (died 15 May 1882).

25 March 1813, Mikhail Kutusov, Russian Field Marshal, died (born 16 September 1745).

Russian defeat of Napoleon, 1812

26 November 1812, The Battle of Berezina. The Russians won; French plans to over-winter at Smolensk had been thwarted.

18 November 1812, Russian forces closing in on the retreating French in western Russia won the Battle of Polotsk.

16 November 1812, French troops retreating from Moscow successfully broke through a Russian roadblock at Krasnoi.

3 November 1812, French troops retreating from Moscow successfully broke through a Russian roadblock at Vyazama.

24 October 1812, Battle of Maloyaroslavets. The French had planned a retreat from Moscow through undamaged terrain, white they might gather sustenance. However the Russians positioned artillery to cover the bridges over the River Luzha, which the French had to cross to achieve this planned retreat. After a series of fierce battles, the French did capture the town, but the Russian artillery still commanded the bridges. The French now had no choice but to attempt a retreat through the devastated terrain they had previously advanced through.

19 October 1812, Napoleon�s forces began their retreat from Moscow.

18 October 1812, Russian forces defeated the French at the Battle of Tarutino, south of Moscow.

14 September 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 November 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 October 1812.

7 September 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.

16 August 1812, The Battle of Smolensk began. The Russians initially defended the city with a tenacity that the French had not anticipated, then managed to withdraw to avoid encirclement. The Russians destroyed all buildings and bridges as they fell back, leaving Napoleon�s forces having captured nothing but ruins.

24 June 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 June 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 September 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. Sweden was unable to secure an undertaking by Russia not to fortify the Aland Islands, which were close to Stockholm, but see 30 March 1856.

21 February 1808. Russia occupied Finland, which was formerly under Swedish domination.

8 March 1807, Nicolai Petrovich de Rezanov, Russian administrator, died in Krasnoiarsk, Siberia.

Tsar Paul I, 1796 - 1801

11 March 1801, Paul I, Tsar of Russia, was strangled in a scuffle with his officers, who were conspiring to compel him to abdicate. Aged 46 hi was succeeded by his 23-year-old son, who ruled until 1825 as Alexander I Pavlovich.

7 November 1800, Russian Emperor Paul I imposed an embargo on British vessels in Russian ports until Britian restored Malta to the Knights of St John.

18 May 1800, Alexander Suvarov, Russian field marshal, died in St Petersburg (born 24 November 1729 in Moscow)

6 April 1799, Aleksander Bezborodko, Grand Chancellor of Russia, died in St Petersburg (born in Gluchova 14 March 1747).

16 July 1798, Alexander Gorchakov, Russian statesman, was born (died 11 March 1883).

17 November 1796, Paul I became Emperor of Russia.

6 November 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, who ruled until 1801.

Territorial gains from Poland, 1792-95

28 March 1795, The Duchy of Courland was incorporated into the State of Russia.

9 November 1794, Russian forces entered Warsaw, ending the Polish rebellion.

10 October 1794, The Polish army, 7,000 men �under Tadeusz Kosciusko was heavily defeated by the Russians, 16,000 men, at Maciejowice, and its leader taken prisoner. Kosciusko was released by Czar Paul in 1796, and died on 15 October 1817 when his horse fell over a precipice.

23 January 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 May 1792. Russian troops invaded Poland.

Territorial gains from the Ottoman Empire, 1774-88

28 March 1791, Britain increased its naval strength. This was an attempt to intimidate Russia into making peace with the Ottoman Empire, but the strategy failed.

17 September 1788, Russian forces under Prince Grigory Potemkin captured the Black Sea port and fortress of Ochakov from the Ottoman Turks.

6 January 1784, Under the Treaty of Constantinople, Ottoman Turkey ceded the Crimea to Russia.

1783, Russia conquered the Crimea, from the Tatars.

16 July 1774. The Russians and Turks signed the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, ending their six-year war. Moldavia and Wallachia were returned to Turkey and the Crimea became independent. Russia gained control of much of the northern Black Sea coast. The Sultan was allowed to remain spiritual leader of the Crimean Moslems; however Russia gained the right to build and protect an Orthodox church in Istanbul. Russian merchants were to have unrestricted access to the Black Sea and Mediterranean across Ottoman territories. This gave Russia a pretext to intervene in Turkish internal affairs.

6 July 1796, Nicholas, Tsar of Russia 1825 � 55, was born.

25 March 1793. By the Treaty of London, Russia joined the coalition against France.

16 October 1791, Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin, Russian Army officer, statesman and lover of Empress Catherine II, died in Bessarabia, Russia, aged 51.

14 August 1790, The Treaty of Verela ended the Swedish-Russian War, with no significant territorial changes.

30 September 1788, Lord Raglan, the Field Marshall responsible for the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, was born at Badminton, Gloucestershire.

11 July 1787, Alexander Menshikov, Russian statesman, was born (died 2 May 1869).

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 nobles 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.

3 May 1783. Katherine II of Russia, who was thought of as an enlightened monarch by Europeans, officially introduced serfdom in the Ukraine.

31 March 1783, Nikita Ivanovich Panin, Russian statesman, died in Italy (born 18 September 1718 in Danzig)

19 May 1782, Ivan Fedorovich Paskevi ch, Russian Fiueld Marshal, was born (died 13 february 1856)

14 September 1780, Karl Nesselrode, Russian statesman, was born (died 23 March 1862)

27 April 1779, Pavlovich Constantine, Grand Duke of Russia, was born (died 27 June 1831).

23 September 1777. Tsar Alexander I, who defeated Napoleon�s invasion of Russia in 1812, was born.

20 April 1776, Vasily Golovnin, Russian Vice-Admiral, was born. He was given the mission, accomplished 1817-19, of sailing a Russian ship around the world. He died on 12 July 1831.

11 January 1775, Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev, Russian Pretender, was executed in Moscow.

27 July 1774, Samuel Gmelin died whilst exploring the Caspian area.

28 September 1772, Ernst Biren, Russian, died.

21 April 1768, Alexius Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Grand Chancellor of Russia, died (born in Moscow 1 June 1693).

26 February 1766, Catherine II The Great of Russia granted freedom of worship there.

5 July 1764, Ivan II, Tsar of Russia, was murdered.

8 March 1764, Carlo Pozzo di Borgo, diplomat for Russian interests in France, was born near Ajaccio, Corsica (died 15 February 1842 in Paris)

23 March 1763, Count Feodor Rostopschin, Russian General, was born in Orel (died 12 February 1826 in Moscow)

12 September 1762, Catherine II The Great was crowned Empress of Russsia.

17 July 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.

The Seven Years War; Russia against Prussia

22 May 1762, Peace was formally agreed between Russia and Prussia (Treaty of Hamburg). Russian forces began to return home.

5 January 1762, Elizabeth I of Russia died; her successor Tsar Peter III made peace with Prussia.� This was fortunate for Frederick of Prussia because after the end of the Pitt Ministry in England, the English were moving towards making peace with France and therefore no longer giving financial support to Prussia.� See 15 February 1763 and 5 October 1761.

22 January 1761, France communicated to Russia that it desired peace in the war against Prussia. Austria communicated similarly to Russia the following day. However Russia rejected this proposal, as its original purpose in eliminating the threat it saw in Prussia, would then remain unsatisfied.

21 May 1760, Russia and Austria signed a secret convention, never shared with France, that would give East Prussia to Russia as compensation for its war losses in supporting the Austrians against Prussia.

26 February 1760, Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Russian diplomat, died in Paris (born 1688),

19 September 1757, Elizabeth I of Russia had a fainting fit at Tsarskoe Selo; the start of a serious illness.

17 May 1757, Russian troops advanced on Konigsberg, Prussia.

16 January 1756. George II secured an agreement, the Convention of Westminster, by which Frederick of Prussia guaranteed to help England if Hanover was attacked, and England promised to help Prussia if Silesia was attacked.� This guaranteed the neutrality of the Prussian states under Frederick II in the escalating Anglo-French dispute.� However it was also alarming to Russia, who saw the Treaty as a potential Anglo-Prussian alliance against them. See 1 May 1756.

The Seven Years War; Russia against Prussia

1 October 1754, Paul I, Tsar of Russia, was born.

14 March 1747, Aleksander Bezborodko, Grand Chancellor of Russia, was born in Gluchova (died in St Petersburg 6 April 1799).

16 September 1745, Mikhail Kutusov, Russian Field Marshal, was born (died 25 March 1813).

1743, Russians reached the Taymyr Peninsula, the northernmost point of Asia.

23 January 1743, Russia and Sweden began negotiations to end their conflict.

19 September 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.

6 September 1741, Elizabeth Petrovna became Empress of Russia in a coup.

8 November 1739, Vasily Dolgoruki, Russian politician, was executed (born 1672).

30 June 1737, The Russians attacked the Ottoman fortress of Ochakov, Romania.

14 April 1737, Dmitry Golitsun, Russian statesman, born 1665, died in prison after being denounced for anti-monarchical sentiments.

19 June 1736, The Russians took Azov, Romania, from the Ottomans.

30 January 1730, Peter II, Tsar of Russia, died of smallpox aged 14. This day he was to have married Catherine, second daughter of Alexis Dolgoruki. He was succeeded by Anna of Russia.

24 November 1729, Alexander Suvarov, Russian field marshal, was born in Moscow (died 18 May 1800 in St Petersburg)

12 November 1729, Alexander Menshikov, Russian statesman, died.

2 May 1729, Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, was born in Stettin, Germany (died 1796). She became ruler of Russia in 1762 in a coup in which her husband Peter III was assassinated.

14 August 1728, Danish explorer Vitus Bering discovered that the Bering Strait was the easternmost limit of Siberia.

21 February 1728, Peter III, Tsar of Russia and grandson of Peter the Great, was born in Kiel.

16 May 1727, Katherine I of Russia died aged 44. She was succeeded by her 12-year-old son Peter, who reigned until 1730.

8 February 1725. Katherine I became Empress of Russia on the death of her husband Peter the Great.

For more on Great Northern War see Sweden

Tsar Peter the Great 1696 - 1725

28 January 1725. Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia from 1682, died in St Petersburg after a 42-year reign. Aged 52, he had established Russia as a major European power.

30 August 1721, Conclusion of the Peace of Nystad. Peter the Great obtained Swedish lands including Estonia, and an outlet to the Baltic and the West.

18 September 1718, Nikita Ivanovich Panin, Russian statesman, was born in Danzig (died 31 March 1783 in Italy)

4 August 1717. A treaty of friendship was signed between France and Russia.

7 July 1717, Tsarevich Alexis, eldest son and heir of Peter the Great of Russia, was murdered at his father�s instigation.

1716, The city of Omsk was founded as a fortress.

18 October 1715, Peter II, Tsar of Russia, was born.

6 August 1714, Naval Battle of Gangut, in the Baltic; Russia defeated Sweden.

21 July 1711, Peter the Great of Russia had to sign the Treaty of Pruth after his defeat , alongside his Wallachian and Moldavian allies, by the Ottoman Turks. Turkey recovered the Fortress of Azov, and King Charles XII of Sweden was permitted safe return to Stockholm.

18 September 1709, Elizabeth Petrovna. Empress of Russia, was born (died 5 January 1762).

22 August 1709, Ivan Mazeppa, Hetman of the Cossacks, died.

9 October 1708, Battle of Lesnaya. 11,000 Swedes under Loewenhaupt were defeated by a larger Russian force just east of the River Dnieper.

8 July 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 October 1708, Battle of Lesnaya; Russia defeated Sweden.

9 September 1708, The Swedes forced a bried engagement with the Russians at Dobry. However the Russians were pursuing a scorched earth policy, retreating as winter loomed. The Swedish army began to run short of food and fodder for the horses. However Charles XII decided not to retreat, but to move to the Ukraine to join the Cossacks under Ivan Mazeppa, who had secretly agreed to mount an uposising against the Russians with 30,000 men. However this was a military blunder by Charles, who should have consolidated his position and supplies before marching deeper into Russia.

Winter looms: the war turns against Sweden

8 July 1708, Charles XII now advanced to the River Dnieper at Mogilev.

4 July 1708, Battle of Holovsin; Sweden defeated Russia.

29 June 1708, Charles XII crossed the River Berezina at Borisov.

26 January 1708, Charles XII of Sweden took Grodno, which had bgeen abandoned by Peter.

1 January 1708, Charles XII of Sweden invaded Russia, crossing the now-frozen River Vistula with 45,000 men.

1706, Russia occupied the Kamchatka Peninsula.

7 July 1705, The Westernising reforms of Peter I The Great of Russia sparked a rebellion by the Astrakhan Tatars.

9 August 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.

4 July 1704, Peter recaptured Dorpat.

27 May 1703. Tsar Peter the Great founded St Petersburg and proclaimed it the new capital of Russia. The mouth of the River Neva was low lying, frozen for half the year, a misty swamp during summer. However it was a vital window for Russia onto the Baltic. Earth was piled onto the marches to raise their level, and then wooden pilings sunk to support the buildings. Stone was scarce so Peter demanded that every ship arriving carry at least 30 stone blocks, and every carriage arriving bring at least 3 paving stones. Even so, stone across Russia was so scarce that Peter forbade any other building in stone across all of Russia, on pain of confiscation and exile. 30,000 labourers died building the city, of malaria and dysentery.

13 April 1703, Battle of Pultusk; Sweden defeated Russia, and then laid siege to Thorn.

18 July 1702, Battle of Hummelsdorf; Russia defeated Sweden.

7 January 1702, Battle of Errestfer; Russia defeated Sweden.

10 June 1701, Swedish forces under King Charles XII relieved Riga, which had been under siege by Saxony troops (Great Northern War). Charles XII then went on to invade Poland.

20 November 1700, Sweden defeated the Russians at Narva (now, Estonia).

13 June 1700, Peter the Great concluded a peace with Turkey. Under the Treaty of Constantinople, Turkey ceded the Black Sea fortress of Azov to Russia, and Russia and Turkey made a 30-year truce.

20 September 1699, Peter the Great changed New Year�s day in Russia from September 1 to January 1.

29 November 1699, Patrick Gordon, Scottish-born Russian General, died (born 1635).

5 September 1698, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposed a tax on beards in an effort to move his country from Asiatic to European customs.

28 July 1696, Russian forces under Peter the Great captured the fortress commanding the Sea of Azov from its Ottoman defenders. Russian troops also conquered Kamchatka.

18 July 1696, The Fleet of Tsar Peter I of Russia occupied Azov, at the mouth of the River Don.

29 January 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.

1695, Major famine in Estonia

1 June 1693, Alexius Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Grand Chancellor of Russia, was born in Moscow (died 21 April 1768).

1691, Russians discovered the Kamchatka Peninsula.

19 February 1690, Alexius Petrovich, Tsarevich, was born (died 1718).

27 January 1689, Peter the Great of Russia married Eudoxia Lopukhina.

15 April 1684, Katherine I of Russia was born (died 1727).

27 April 1682, Theodore III, Tsar of Russia, died.

14 April 1682, In Russia a priest called� Avvakum was burned at the stake for resisting reforms to the Russian Orthodox Church.

Czar Alexis Mikhailovitch (1645-1676)

8 February 1676, Czar Alexis Mikhailovich died aged 47 after a reign of 31 years. He was succeeded by his eldest sutrving son, aged 15, who ruled as Theodore III until his death in 1682.

26 October 1673, Demeter Cantemir Prince of Moldavia was born. He acceded to the throne in 1710, but then joined forces with Peter the Great of Russia against Ottoman Turkey. The Turks were victorious, and Prince Cantemir emigrated to Russia.

30 May 1672. Peter the Great of Russia was born in Moscow. He was the son of Tsar Alexei.

6 June 1671, Stephen Razin, Cossack rebel and pirate in Russia, was executed.

24 June 1670, Astrakhan was captured by Stenka Razin.

31 January 1667, After eight years war between Russia and Poland, the Treaty of Andruszow between them divided up Ukraine between them, along the Dneiper River.

1664, The Russian postal service was inaugurated.

18 January 1654. The Ukraine came under Russian domination.

1652, The Siberian city of Khabarovsk was founded as a fortress by a Russian explorer of the same name.

1649, A new code of Russian laws legitimised the serfdom of peasants.

1648, Russians reached the Bering Strait, which was unnamed at the time.

Czar Michael (1613-1645), first of the Romanov Dynasty (1613-1917)

12 July 1645, Russian Tsar, Michael Romanov, died aged 49. He was succeeded by his 16-year old son, Alexis Mikhailovich (1629-76), who ruled until 1676.

1643, Russians reached Lake Baikal.

1 March 1634, The Poles and Cossacks lifted the Russian siege of Smolensk.

1632, The Russians besieged Smolensk.

1632, The Siberian city of Yakutsk was founded by Russian fur traders.

9 March 1629, Tsar Alexis I of Russia was born (died 1676).

1621, Sweden seized Riga.

13 February 1619, Treaty of Delino ended the Russian-Polish war.

1 September 1618, Russia and Poland signed a 15-year armistice, ending the war between them. Polamnd retained control of Smolensk.

27 February 1617, The Treaty of Stolbovo ended the Ingrian War between Sweden and Russia.� Sweden gained Ingermanland and Karelia.

1614, The Romanovs defeated the Cossacks.

21 February 1613. Michael Romanov was elected Tsar of Russia, founding the House of Romanov, which ruled until the Revolution began on 12 March 1917.

Polish invasion of Russia

4 November 1612, A Russian anti-Polish rebellion ensued (see 8 October 1612), Romanov (1565-1645) was elected the new Russian Czar, and Polish troops, exhausted, began a retreat back to the Polish border.

8 October 1610, Polish forces seized Moscow, and the Russian throne was offered to Ladislas (1595-1648),� the son of Sigismund III King of Poland (1566-1632). However Sigismund objected to this, wanting the Russian throne for himself.

September 1610, Battle of Klushino; Polish forces defeated a Russian relief force attempting to raise the siege of Smolensk.

12 March 1610, Swedish troops under Jacob de la Gardie took Moscow. Sweden was alarmed at a Polish-Lithuanian attempt to take over Russia.

1609, Tsar Vasili IV (1552-1612) massacred the Poles in Moscow and allied Russia with Sweden, This provoked a Polish invasion of Russia. Poland besieged Smolensk.

Polish invasion of Russia

19 May 1606, Vasili IV became Tsar of Russia.

10 July 1605, Theodore II, Tsar of Russia, was murdered.

Boris Godunov

23 April 1605, Death of Tsar Boris Godunov (born ca. 1551).

1601,A famine began in Russia, lasting until 1603. Up to 2 million people, a third of the population,may have died. The Poles and Lithuanians, hoping to claim Orthodox Russia for the Catholic Church,and supported inside Russia by disaffected nobility,invaded the country.

21 February 1598, On the death of Tsar Fedor, Boris Godunov was elected Tsar.

17 January 1598, Death of Tsar Fedor I (born 31 May 1557).

15 May 1591, Dmitri, son of Ivan IV The Terrible and heir of Tsar Fyodor I, was killed, possibly by agents of Boris Gudonov.

1589, The Patriarchate of Moscow was established by Tsar Godunov; this was the basis for the Romanov Dynasty.

Ivan IV (The Terrible)

18 March 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.He was succeeded by his feeble-minded son Fedor, aged 27, who ruled until 1598. Fedor was dominated by Boris Federovich Godunov, a son-in-law and favourite of Ivan the Terrible.

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.

1582, Cossack troops under Yermak Timofeyevich defeated the Tatar ruler of Siberia. From now on, Russia imposed a tax on Siberians, paid in furs.

10 August 1582. After 25 years of conflict, Russia made peace with Poland and gave up its claim on the Baltic state of Livonia.

15 January 1582, Ivan IV, The Terrible, of Russia ceded, at the Peace of Zapoli, Livonia and Polotsk to Stephen Bathory of Poland. He also ceded this day, by the Trucve of Ilyusa, Ingria to Sweden. Muscovy lost the Baltic seaboard for over a century.

9/1581, Russian forces in Pskov were besieged by a Polish-Lithuanian army.The Russians subsequently gave up claims on Livonia.

1 September 1581, Yermak Timofeyevich, the Cossack leader of a band of thieves who plundered the Russian countryside, and who was wanted by the Russian military for murder, fled up the Volga River where he was hired by the Stroganov Merchants to protect theor interests in western Siberia from the Tartars. This day he set out across the Urals, reaching the Tartar Khanate of Sibir by Spring 1582. With superior armaments, guns and cannons against the bows and arrows of a larger Tartar army, Timofeveyich captured the Tartar capital of Kashlyk (Sibir). Czar Ivan IV �The Terrible� now pardoned Timofeyevich, however a band of tartars managed to kill him in 1584.

1571, Tatar raids into Russia; 100,000 Russians captured as slaves.

5/1571, The Crimean Army under Devlet I started the Great Fire of Moscow.

25 July 1570, Ivan the Terrible had many of his advisers and ministers publicly executed in Moscow.

27 February 1558, Russia�s first trade mission to England reached London.

27 February 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 October 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 August 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 June 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 January 1547. Ivan the Terrible, first Russian to assume the title of Tsar, was crowned.

6 July 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.

4 September 1533, Ivan IV, aged 3, became ruler of Russia. He was to be known as Ivan the Terrible.

21 November 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 August 1530, Ivan the Terrible of Russia was born. As Ivan IV, he killed over 3,000, including the royal heir.

8 September 1514, At the Battle of Orsha, a combined force of Poles and Ukrainians defeated the Russians.

27 October 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 October 1495, An explosion at Vyborg castle deterred Russian forces who were invading Sweden through Karelia.

18 January 1478, Ivan the Great, Grand Prince of Moscow, subjugated the city-state of Novgorod and absorbed its territory into that ruled from Moscow,

1480, Ivan III defeated the Tatars.

1471, Yaroslav, some 300 kilometres NE of Moscow, formerly an independent principality, was conquered by the Russians.

27 March 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.

1389, Death of Prince Dimitri Donskoi (born 1350, Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1359). He defeated an invasion threat from Lithuania in 1375 and in 1370 recovered Tver for the Russians from the Golden Horde. Born as Dimitri Ivanovich, he took the surname Donskoi (of the Don).

1363, Algirdas of Lithiania defeated the Mongols; he extended Lithuanian territory as far as the Black Sea.

23 April 1343, Estonian peasants rose up this day, St Georges Day,against an oppressive and exploitative Danish and German nobility. The revolt began in Harjumaa County and spread to Oesel island. Over 1,800 nobles were killed by the peasants, who besieged revel (now, talinn) and asked for help from Swedish military posts in Finland. Meanwhile the Teutonic Knights of Prussia came in ti settle metters, and killed the peasant leader at a �peace confetrence�. The Teutonic Knights then roiuted the peasant forces near Revel before Swedish help could arrive. Denmark�s King Waldemar then sold northern Estonia for 19,000 silver marks to the Tutonic Knights, in 8/1346, because controlling the region was a drain on his resources. The Teutonic Knights then gave the area to a fellow order, the Livonian Knights.

14 November 1263, Alexander Nevsky, Russian leader, died; on his death Russia fragmented.

1252, Aleksandr Nevski became Grand Duke of Vladimir, and made preparations to resist any further Mongol invasions.

5 April 1242. Russian troops defeated the Teutonic Knights at Lake Piepus, thwarting their planned invasion of Russia.

15 July 1240. Alexander Nevski defeated the Swedish army, led by General Briger Jarl, on the banks of the Neva.

1237, Tatar invasion of Russia.

1233, The city of Narva (now Estonia) was founded by Waldemar II, King of Denmark. It came under Russian rule in 1704.

1233, Mongol forces defeated the Rus State at the Battle of Kalka River.

2 February 1207, Terra Mariana, comprising present-day Estonia and Latvia, was established as a principality of the Holy Roman Empire.

1201, The city of Riga (now in Latvia) was founded.

8 February 1191, Yaroslav II, Grand Prince of Vladimir, was born.

8 March 1169, Andrew of Suzdal sacked Kiev, and became the most powewrful Russian Prince.

7 February 1055, Jaroslav I, Great Prince of Russia, died, ending the golden age of Kiev. His lands were divided amongst his five sons. The Kievan Rus State, in existence since the 9^th century, split into several smaller states and civil war followed.

4 October 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.

913, Prince Igor became ruler of the Kievan Rus. He ruled to 945.

882, The Kievan Rus State was founded.

879, Prince Oleg, a Rus prince (reigned 882-912) turned on and defeated his rivals,Askold and Dir, and seized the city of Kiev for hiumself. He transferred his the capital to there from Novgorod.

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.

Belarus 8-20

16 November 2021, Belarus, having flown in large numbers of migrants, mainly Iraqi Kurds, to the capital Minsk, now transported them to the Polish border. Poland declined to accept them and a border standoff ensued, as the harsh winter weather approached.

9 August 2020, In an election widely held to have been flawed, Lukashenko won an implausible 80% of the vote. Tye Opposition leader, Ms Tikhahovskaya, was credited a tiny 9.9%. Popular protests against the �result� were met by a heavy police crackdown. Lukashenko was backed by Russia and China.

10/2015, Lukashenko �won� a 5^th Presidential Term, however no Opposition candidate was allowed to compete.

7/2011, Widespread anti-Government ptotests in Belarus were met by a heavy-hended police crackdown.

4/2011, A terrorist bomb killed 15 on the Minsk Metro.

1/2011, Lukashenko was �elected� for a 4^th Term.

3/2006, Lukashenko won a 3^rd Presidential term; however the election was disputed.

17 October 2004, In Belarus, voters approved an amendment to the Constitution that allowed President Alexander Lukashenko to stand for a third term.

2001, Lukashenko won a second Presidential tern; however there had been a clampdown on the Opposition.

1997, Reunification was proposed between Belarus and Russia; however this initiative has lapsed.

23 May 1997, Russia and Belarus agreed a Union Charter, aimed at eventual union between the two countries.

1996, Lukashenko was awarded extended powers in reforms to the Constitution. He instituted an economic union with Russia.

1994, Alexander Lukashenko became President of Belarus. He promised an end to post-USSR dissolution chaos; he retained many many old Soviet symols and institutions such as the KGB

1991, A referendum in Belarus produced an 83% vote in favour of remaining unified with the USSR. However the USSR fell apart; instead Russia, Belarus and Ukraine established a Commonwealth of Independent States linking all three.

27 July 1990 Belarus declared its �sovereignty�, a step towards independence from the USSR.

1989, Belarusian was adopted as the official language.

1988, The nationalist Belarusian Popular Front (BPP) was formed, partly as a response to popular outrage when evidence of mass executions by the Soviets 1937-41 near Minsk emerged, in which over 100,000 people died.

1986, 70% of Belarus suffered radioactive contamination from Chernobyl.

1941-44, German occupation of Belarus. Two million people, including most of its large Jewish popualton, died.

1939, Western Belarus, taken by Poland in 1921, was restored to Belarus when the Soviet Srmy invaded Poland.

1929, Stalin began collectivisation of agriculture in Belarus.

18 March 1921, The Treaty of Riga awarded Poland a large area of western Belarus.

1919, In the chaos following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Poland invaded.

26 March 1918, In Minsk the independent Byelorussian National Republic was declared.

1 January 1916, During the German invasion of Russia in World War Two, Field Marshal von Hindenburg decreed that the Byelorussian language had official status., in German-occupied areas of Belarus.

1882, Yanka Kupala, Belarusian national poet, was born.

1863, Uprising in Belarus against Russian rule, led by Kastus Kalinowski. The rebellion was suppressed and Kalinowski was executed.

1835, Czar Nicholas I decreed that Jews were allowed to reside in Minsk.

1772, 1795, After the Partition of Poland, Belarus came under Russian domination.

1324, The Grand Duchy of Lithuania now ruled the territory of Belarus.

1000, Emergence of the Polotsk Principality, which became modern Belarus.

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