1907–12 — Third State Duma
1909 — Publication of Vekhi (‘Signposts’)
1911 — Assassination of P. A. Stolypin (September)
1912 — Lena Goldfields massacre and ensuing strike wave (March-May)
1912–17 — Fourth State Duma
1914–1921 — War, Revolution, Civil War
1914 — Outbreak of First World War
1915 — Progressive Bloc and political crisis (August)
1916 — Central Asia rebellion; murder of Rasputin
1917 — February Revolution (23 February-1 March); establishment of Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers’ Deputies (1 March); abdication of Nicholas II (2 March); ‘Programme’ of the Provisional Government (8 March); Appeal to All the Peoples of the World’ by Petrograd Soviet (14 March); Lenin’s return to Russia (3 April) and the April crisis’ in the party; Petrograd crisis (23–4 April); coalition governments (May-October); first All-Russian Congress of Soviets’ (June); ‘July Days’; Kornilov mutiny (25–8 August); publication of Lenin’s State and Revolution; Bolshevik seizure of power (25 October); elections for Constituent Assembly (25 November); establishment of the Cheka (7 December)
1918 — Constituent Assembly meets (5–6 January); separation of Church and state; civil war commences; first Soviet constitution (July)
1919 — Height of White challenge (autumn 1919); establishment of the Comintern
1920 — Soviet-Polish War
1921–1929 — Era of the New Economic Policy (NEP)
1921 — Kronstadt revolt (2–17 March); Tenth Party Congress (8–16 March), which promulgated ‘New Economic Policy’
1921–2 — Famine
1922 — Eleventh Party Congress (27 March-2 April); Stalin elected General Secretary (3 April); Genoa Conference, with Soviet participation (April); German-Russian treaty at Rapallo; Lenin’s first stroke (26 May); Lenin’s second stroke (16 December); Lenin dictates ‘testament’ (25 December)
1923 — Lenin adds postscript to ‘testament’ calling for Stalin’s dismissal as General Secretary (4 January); Lenin’s third stroke (9 March)
1924 — Death of Lenin (21 January); party launches ‘Lenin Enrolment’ campaign (February); Stalin publicizes ‘Socialism in One Country’ (December)
1925 — Apogee of NEP (April)
1926 — ‘United Opposition’ of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev emerges in the Central Committee (6–9 April); Zinoviev removed from the Politburo (14–23 July); Trotsky and Kamenev removed from Politburo (23–6 October); Bukharin replaces Zinoviev as chairman of Comintern; Family Code to reform marriage and divorce
1927 — ‘War Scare’ with Great Britain (May-August); Trotsky and Zinoviev expelled from Central Committee (21–23 October); Trotsky and Zinoviev expelled from party (15 November); Fifteenth Party Congress, which approves Kamenev’s expulsion from the party (2–19 December); First Five-Year Plan
1928 — Trotsky exiled to Alma-Ata (16 January); Shakhty Trial (18 May-5 July) and beginning of the ‘cultural revolution’; first Five-Year Plan officially commenced (1 October)
1929–1940 — Stalin Revolution
1929 — Defeat of the ‘Right Opposition’ (Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomskii); ban on ‘religious associations’ and proselytizing (April); Stalin condemns ‘right deviation’ (21 August); Bukharin dropped from Politburo (10–17 November); celebration of Stalin’s fiftieth birthday and beginning of the ‘cult of the individual’ (21 December); Stalin calls for mass collectivization and liquidation of kulaks (27 December)
1930 — Mass collectivization launched (5 January); Stalin’s ‘Dizziness from Success’ published in Pravda (2 March)
1932 — Issue of internal passports (December)
1932–3 — Famine in Ukraine and elsewhere
1933 — Second Five-Year Plan (1 January 1933–December 1937)
1934 — Seventeenth Party Congress (January); first congress of Union of Soviet Writers (August); assassination of Sergei Kirov (December)
1935 — Model collective farm statute (February); Stakhanovite movement begun (September)
1936 — New family law restricting abortion and divorce (June); show trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others (August); Ezhov appointed head of NKVD (September); promulgation of Stalin Constitution (December)
1937 — Show trial of Radek, Piatakov, and others (January); execution of Marshal Tukhachevskii and Red Army officers (June); height of ‘Great Terror’ (to late 1938)
1938 — Third Five-Year Plan (1 January 1938–June 1941); trial of N. Bukharin, Rykov, and others (March); introduction of ‘labour book’ for workers (December); Beria succeeds Ezhov as head of NKVD (December)
1939 — Nazi–Soviet pact (August); Soviet invasion of eastern Poland (September); Soviet–Finnish ‘winter war’ (November 1939–March 1940)
1940 — Soviet annexation of Baltic states (June)
1941–1953 — Great Fatherland War and Post-War Stalinism
1941 — Nazi Germany invades USSR (22 June); formation of State Defence Committee (30 June); emergency legislation to mobilize labour, institute rationing, lengthen working day, and criminalize absenteeism (June-December); Stalin’s speech to the nation (3 July); Germans reach Smolensk (16 July); beginning of siege of Leningrad (July); fall of Kiev (19 September); battle for Moscow (November–December); USA approves Lend-Lease aid for the USSR (7 November); Soviet counter-offensive (December 1941–February 1942)
1942 — Anglo-Soviet alliance (May); fall of Sevastopol (July); Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942–February 1943)
1943 — Surrender of von Paulus at Stalingrad (31 January); battle of Kursk (July); Stalin eases restrictions on Russian Orthodox Church (September); Teheran Conference (November); beginning of deportations of nationalities from northern Caucasus
1944 — Siege of Leningrad broken (January); Belorussian operation and destruction of German army group ‘Centre’ (June-July); Soviet armies penetrate Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Hungary (July-December)
1945 — Soviet invasion of Germany (January); Yalta Conference (February); US and Soviet forces meet at the Elbe (25 April); German unconditional surrender (9 May); Potsdam Conference (July-August); Soviet invasion of Manchuria (9 August); formal Japanese surrender (2 September)
1946 — Stalin’s ‘electoral speech’ (February); attacks on leading intellectuals, onset of ‘Zhdanovshchina’; decree on collective farms (September).
1947 — Famine in Ukraine (1947–8); formation of Communist Information Bureau, or Cominform (September)
1948 — Communist coup in Czechoslovakia (February); start of Berlin blockade (May)
1949 — Leningrad affair; formation of NATO (April); end of Berlin blockade (May); Soviet atomic bomb test (August)
1950 — Outbreak of Korean War (25 June)
1951 — Nineteenth Party Congress
1952 — Doctors’ plot (January); death of Stalin (5 March)
1953–1985 — From Stalinism to Stagnation
1953 — G. Malenkov becomes head of state, Beria head of the NKVD and police, N. S. Khrushchev first secretary of the party; denunciation of doctors’ plot; arrest of L. Beria (26 June; executed in December); first hints of de-Stalinization and cultural ‘thaw’
1954 — Publication of I. Ehrenburg’s The Thaw; rehabilitation commission established (May); Khrushchev’s ‘Virgin Lands programme’ adopted
1955 — Malenkov replaced by Bulganin as head of state
1956 — Twentieth Party Congress (Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ denouncing Stalin); CC resolution ‘On Overcoming the Cult of the Individual and Its Consequences’ (30 June); Hungarian insurrection (November)