1830–1
Polish rebellion
1833
First modern law code (Svod zakonov) published, taking effect in 1835
1836
Publication of P. Ia. Chaadaev’s ‘Philosophical Letter’
1837–42
State peasant reforms under P. D. Kiselev
1842–51
Construction of first Russian railway line (St Petersburg-Moscow)
1847
Exchange between N. Gogol and V. Belinskii
1849
Petrashevskii circle
1853–6
Crimean War
1855–1890
Great Reforms and Counter-Reform
1855–81
Reign of Alexander II
1856
Peace of Paris, ending the Crimean War; Alexander’s speech to the nobility of Moscow, intimating the need to reform serfdom ‘from above’
1857
Secret commission for serf reform established (1 January); Nazimov Rescript (20 November) inviting nobility to collaborate in reform; ‘Chief Committee on Peasant Affairs’ under Rostovtsev established to oversee emancipation
1859–60
Noble deputations come to St Petersburg (August 1859; January 1860)
1861
Emancipation Manifesto (19 February)
1862
Publication of I. S. Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons
1863
Polish Rebellion; publication of N. G. Chernyshevskii’s What Is to Be Done?; University Statute issued
1864
Zemstvo (local self-government) established; judicial reform; elementary school reform
1865
Censorship reform (‘Temporary Regulations’)
1865–85
Conquest, absorption of Central Asia
1866
Assassination attempt on Alexander II
1867–9
Church reforms (abolition of caste in 1867; restructuring of seminary; reorganization of parishes in 1869)
1869
Publication of P. Lavrov’s Historical Letters and L. Tolstoy’s War and Peace
1870
City government reform
1872
Russian publication of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital
1874
Universal Military Training Act, culminating military reforms
1874
Populist ‘going to the people’
1876–9
Revolutionary populist organization, Land and Freedom
1877–8
Russo-Turkish War
1878
Peace of Berlin
1879
Terrorist organization, People’s Will, established to combat autocracy
1879–80
Publication of F. Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov
1879–81
‘Crisis of Autocracy’—terrorism, ‘dictatorship of the heart’
1881–94
Reign of Alexander III
1881
Temporary Regulations of 14 August 1881 (establishing ‘extraordinary’ police powers to combat revolutionary movement)
1881–2
Pogroms
1882
May laws (discriminating against Jews)
1882–4
Counter-reform in censorship (1882), education (1884), Church (1884)
1882–6
Reform acts to protect industrial labour
1884
First Marxist organization, under G. Plekhanov, established abroad
1885
Noble Land Bank established; abolition of poll-tax
1885–1900
Russification in borderlands
1889
New local state official, the ‘Land Captain’, established
1890–1914
Revolutionary Russia
1890
Zemstvo counter-reform (restricting autonomy and franchise)
1891–2
Famine
1891–1904
Construction of Trans-Siberian Railway
1892
City government counter-reform (restricting autonomy and franchise)
1892–1903
S. Iu. Witte as Minister of Finance
1894–1917
Reign of Nicholas II
1895
‘Senseless dreams’ speech by Nicholas II
1896–7
St Petersburg textile strikes; St Petersburg Union for the Liberation of Labour established
1897
Gold standard; first modern census
1898
Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party founded
1899
V. I. Lenin’s The Development of Capitalism in Russia published
1901–2;
Party of Social Revolutionaries (PSR) established
1902
Peasant disorders in Poltava and Kharkov (March-April); Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? published
1903
Union of Liberation (left-liberal organization) established; RSDWP splits into Bolshevik (under V. I. Lenin) and Menshevik (under Iu. Martov) factions; south Russian labour strikes (Rostov-on-the-Don and Odessa); Kishinev anti-Semitic pogroms
1904
Corporal punishment abolished
1904–5
Russo-Japanese War
1905–7
Revolution of 1905
1905
Bloody Sunday (9 January); October Manifesto (17 October) promising political reform and civil rights
1906
First State Duma; Stolypin land reforms
1907
Second State Duma; coup d’état of 3 June
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)
1957
Decentralization proposal (sovnarkhozy) adopted in May; anti-party group defeated (June); demotion of Marshal Zhukov (October); ‘Sputnik’ launched (October)
1958
Boris Pasternak awarded Nobel Prize for Doctor Zhivago; new penal code, eliminating category of ‘enemies of the people’ (December)
1959
Sino-Soviet split becomes public; Twenty-First Party Congress; Khrushchev launches maize campaign 1960 American reconnaissance plane, U-2, shot down inside Russia
1961
Capital punishment extended to economic crimes (May); Twenty-Second Party Congress (October); Stalin’s body removed from Kremlin (31 October); first manned space flight
1962
Publication of A. Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Novocherkassk disorders (June); Cuban missile crisis (October)
1963
Exceptionally poor harvest
1964
Removal of N. S. Khrushchev (14 October)
1965
CC approves plan for economic reform (September); publication of A. Nekrich’s 22 June 1941
1966
Trial of dissident writers Iu. Daniel and Andrei Siniavskii (February); Twenty-Third Party Congress (March) 1968 Demonstration by Crimean Tatars (April); invasion of Czechoslovakia (August); first issue of Chronicle of Current Events
1970
Establishment of Human Rights Committee (November)
1971
Jewish demonstration in Moscow, beginning of large-scale Jewish emigration
1972
SALT-I (arms limitations); Shevardnadze becomes party boss in Georgia
1974
Deportation of Solzhenitsyn from USSR
1975
Helsinki agreement on European Security and Co-operation; Sakharov awarded Nobel Prize for peace
1976
Twenty-fifth Party Congress
1977
New Soviet constitution; Brezhnev becomes President of the USSR
1978
Trial of Anatolii Shcharanskii
1979
SALT-II (arms limitation agreement); Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
1980
Exile of Sakharov to Gorky (January)
1981
Twenty-Sixth Party Congress
1982
Death of L. I. Brezhnev (10 November), replaced by Andropov
1984
Andropov dies, replaced by Chernenko (February)
1985
Chernenko’s death, replacement by Mikhail Gorbachev (11 March)
1985–1995
From Perestroika to Dissolution of the USSR
Russia A History Page 60