December 30/January 12: Central Powers recognize Rada as government of the Ukraine.
Late December: Generals Alekseev and Kornilov found Volunteer Army.
1918
January 1: Attempt on Lenin’s life.
January 5/18: One-day session of Constituent Assembly; demonstration in its support fired upon and dispersed. Workers’ “plenipotentiaries” hold first meeting; Trotsky returns from Brest to Petrograd.
January 6: Constituent Assembly closed.
January 8: Opening of Bolshevik-sponsored Third Congress of Soviets; it passes “Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Masses” and proclaims Soviet Russian Republic.
January 15/28: Trotsky returns to Brest, talks resume.
January 21: Soviet Russia repudiates foreign and domestic debts.
January 28: Rada proclaims Ukrainian independence.
February 9: Central Powers sign separate peace with Ukraine; Kaiser orders German delegation at Brest to give Russians ultimatum.
February 17–18: Disputes among Bolsheviks about German peace demands; Lenin secures barest majority for their acceptance.
February 18: German and Austrian troops resume offensive against Russia.
February 21: Trotsky requests French military help.
February 21–22: Lenin’s decree “The Socialist Fatherland in Danger!” authorizes summary execution of opponents.
February 23: German ultimatum arrives with fresh territorial demands.
February 24–25: Germans occupy Dorpat, Revel, and Borisov.
March 1: Russian delegation returns to Brest; two days later signs German text of the peace treaty.
Early March: Bolshevik government transfers to Moscow.
March 5: Murmansk Soviet requests and receives from Moscow authorization to have Allies land troops to protect it.
March 6–8: Seventh Congress of Bolshevik Party.
March: People’s Courts introduced.
March 9: First Allied contingent lands in Murmansk.
March 14: Soviet Congress ratifies Brest Treaty; Left SRs leave Sovnarkom.
Night of March 10–11: Lenin moves to Moscow.
March 16: Grand dukes ordered to register with Cheka; subsequently exiled to the Urals.
April 4: First Japanese landings in Vladivostok.
April 13: Kornilov killed by stray shell; General Denikin assumes command of Volunteer Army.
Apriclass="underline" Soviet Russia and Germany exchange diplomatic missions.
April 20: Decree outlawing purchase and leasing of industrial and commercial enterprises; all securities and bonds to be registered with government.
April 22: Transcaucasian Federation proclaims independence.
April 26: Nicholas, wife, and one daughter depart under guard from Tobolsk for Ekaterinburg; they arrive there April 30 and are imprisoned.
May 1: Inheritance abolished.
May 8–9: Sovnarkom decides to launch assault on the rural areas.
May 9: Bolsheviks fire on worker demonstrators at Kolpino.
May 13: Declaration of war on “peasant bourgeoisie” in decree giving Commissar of Supply extraordinary powers.
May 14: Altercation between Czech Legion and Magyar POWs in Cheliabinsk.
May 20: Decree creating “food supply detachments.”
May 22: Czech Legion refuses to surrender arms; Trotsky orders it disarmed by force. Czech rebellion begins.
May 26: Transcaucasian Federation falls apart into independent republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
May–June: Elections to urban soviets in Russia; Bolsheviks lose majorities in all cities, reimpose them by force.
Early June: British landings at Archangel.
June 8: Czechs occupy Samara, following which Committee of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) formed.
June 11: Decree ordering formation in the villages of Committees of the Poor (kombedy).
Night of June 12–13: Grand Duke Michael and companion murdered near Perm.
June 16: Introduction of capital punishment.
June 26: Council of Workers’ Plenipotentiaries calls for one-day political strike on July 2.
June 28: Kaiser Wilhelm II decides to continue support of Bolsheviks; Soviet Government orders large industrial enterprises nationalized.
Summer: Civil war in the countryside as peasants resist Bolshevik expropriations of grain.
July 1: Government of Western Siberia proclaimed in Omsk.
July 2: Unsuccessful anti-Bolshevik strike in Petrograd; probable date when Bolshevik leaders decide to execute ex-Tsar.
July 4: Fifth Congress of Soviets opens in Moscow; approves Soviet Constitution.
Night of July 5–6: Savinkov’s uprising at Iaroslavl, followed by risings at Murom and Rybinsk.
July 6: Murder of Mirbach followed by Left SR uprising in Moscow.
July 7: Latvian troops suppress Left SR rebellion.
Night of July 16–17: Murder of Nicholas II, family, and servants in Ekaterinburg.
July 17: Massacre at Alapaevsk of several grand dukes and their companions.
July 21: Savinkov’s forces surrender at Iaroslavl; massacre of 350 officers and civilians.
July 29: Compulsory military training introduced; officers of Imperial Army ordered to register.
August 1–2: Additional Allied forces land at Archangel and Murmansk; Bolsheviks request German help against Allies and the White (Volunteer) forces in the south.
August 6: Berlin recalls German Ambassador from Moscow, follows by closing embassy there.
August: Lenin calls on workers to exterminate “kulaks.”
August 24: Urban real estate nationalized.
August 27: Supplementary Russo-German Treaty signed, with secret clauses.
August 30: Early in the day, M. S. Uritskii, head of Petrograd Cheka, assassinated; in the evening, Fannie Kaplan shoots Lenin.
September 4: Instruction ordering the taking of hostages.
September 5: Red Terror officially launched; massacres of prisoners and hostages throughout Bolshevik-controlled Russia.
October 21: All able-bodied Soviet citizens required to register with government employment agencies.
October 30: 10-billion-ruble contribution imposed on the urban and village “bourgeoisie.”
Early November: Soviet Embassy expelled from Berlin.
November 13: Soviet Government renounces Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Supplementary Treaty.
December 2: Committees of the Poor dissolved.
December 10: “Labor Code” issued.
1919
January: Tax in kind (prodrazvërstka) introduced for peasants.
January 7: Uezd Chekas abolished.
February 17: Dzerzhinskii announces changes in operations of the Cheka: calls for creation of concentration camps.
March: New party program adopted; party renamed Russian Communist Party; creation of Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat.
March 16: Consumer communes introduced.
April 11: Regulations concerning concentration camps.
May 15: Government authorizes People’s Bank to issue as many bank notes as required.
December 27: Commission on Labor Obligation created under Trotsky: beginning of “militarization of labor.”
NOTES
Chapter 1
1. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden (New York, 1941), vii–viii.
2. Otto Hoetzsch, Russland (Göttingen, 1915), 309–11.
3. NV, No. 8, 240 (February 4, 1899), 3.
4. On these events, see Samuel Kassow, The Russian University in Crisis: 1899–1911, Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1976, 130–47; Byloe, No. 16 (1921), 125–28, and M. Mogilianskii, Byloe, No. 24 (1924), 117–25.
5. Byloe, No. 16, 127; N. Cherevanin in OD, I, 267.
6. Kassow, The Russian University, 135.
7. Ibid., 141–43.
8. Byloe, No. 16, 127–28.
9. Ibid., 128.