Chronography of Russia / Soviet Union, Belarus and Ukraine (also Baltic States)
Also Karl Marx and origins of Communist Movement
Page last
modified 19 May 2023
Click Here for historical changes map of Baltic States
(Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, also Kaliningrad). Note border changes for
former north-eastern Poland also marked here.
See also Caucasus (Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia)
See also Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan listed here)
See also Eastern Europe (Index here for Eastern European
countries)
See also Romania
(Moldova listed here)
See also Poland
See below for Belarus
Click here for map of St
Petersburg 1700 � pre development.
Click here for map of St
Petersburg 1721, Source, pp.208-9, Great City Maps, ed Sam Atkinson, Dorren
Kindersley, London 2016
Click here for map of St
Petersburg 1885, Source p.211, Great City Maps, ed Sam Atkinson, Dorren
Kindersley, London 2016
Click here for map of St
Petersburg 1897, Source p.33, The World-Wide Atlas, Johnston, London, 1897.
Box index:-
13.0,
Ukranian Crisis 2021-
12.0,
Ukrainian Crisis, 2013-18
11.0,
Murder of Alexander Litvinenko,
2006
10.0,
Ukrainian elections, disputed,
2004-05
9.0,
Chechen Conflict 1991 - 2004
8.0,
Crackdown on dissent in
Russia, 2001-03
7.0,
Putin�s rise to power, 1998-2004
6.0,
Westernisation of Russia 1993-97
5.0,
Continued reform in
Russia, formation of CIS, end of Warsaw Pact, 1991-95
4.0,
Soviet resistance to
secession of Lithuania, 1991-92
2.0,
Gorbachev, Perestroika,
prelude to breakdown of Iron Curtain, 1985-89
1.0,
Dissident Solzhenitsyn, 1970-74
0.2, Gary Powers incident 1960-62
-1.0, Soviet military, nuclear tests,
1958-61
-2.0, Khruschev 1953-58
-3.0, Russia in World War Two, 1939-47
-4.0, Stalinist Purges, 1933-38
-5.0, Soviet agriculture and industry
1928�38
-6.0, Trotsky purged 1924-40
-7.0, Soviet Russia struggles for, gains,
international recognition 1920-34
-8.0, Death of Lenin; Stalin wins power
struggle against Trotsky 1922-24
-9.0, Start of the Soviet State; plan for
industrial recovery 1920-22
-10.0, Russian economic problems, 1921
-11.0, Mutiny at Kronstadt, suppressed, 1921
-12,0, End of the Russian civil watr; Communists
triumphant, 1919-22
-13.0, Russian Civil War 1918-19
-14.0, Disintegration of Russian Empire
amidst Revolutionary chaos, 1917-18
-15.0, Death of the last Russian Tsar, 1917-18
-16.0, Russian Tsarist Government
collapses; Communist Revolution, 1917-18
-17.0, Russia in World War One, 1915-16
-18.0, Rasputin 1869-1916
-19.0, Continued civil strife in Russia,
heavy State repression, 1910-12
-20.0, Duma meets, fails to achieve liberal
reform, 1907
-21.0, Ongoing civil strife in Russia;
Government concessions but retains autocratic power, 1905-07
-22.0, Russia turns back its
liberalisation, 1905; Mutiny on the Potemkin
-23.0, Russian liberalisation, 1905
-24.0, Civil disorder in Russia, 1905
-25.0, Russo-Japanese War 1904
-26.0, Russian expansionism;
Trans-Siberian Railway opened, 1858-1903
-27.0, Civil unrest in Russia; Future
Communist leaders, 1900-04
-29.0, Crimean War, 1853-56
-30.0, Marx, Engels, born. They meet, Marx
moves to England, 1818-1849
30 August 2022, Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader
of the USSR who oversaw its break up, died aged 91 (born 2 March 1931)
13.0, Ukranian Crisis 2021-
8 October 2022, The bridge linking Crimea
to Russia, built 2018, was blown up
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 27th 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 20th 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 300th 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
4th 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 7th 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 14th 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.
See also China for more details of Russian
activities in Manchuria.
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.
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 9th 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 5th 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 4th
Term.
3/2006, Lukashenko won a 3rd 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.