Overview of Russia
Timeline (U3)
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Learning Objectives
Timeline
Revolution (1917)
22-28 February
● Workers strike in Petrograd, kickstarting the February Revolution.
● The Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet form.
2 March
● Tsar Nicholas II abdicates as leader of Russia.
3 April
● Lenin returns to Russia and delivers his April Theses.
18 June
● The Kerensky Offensive takes place.
24-31 August
● The Kornilov Affair.
25 October
● The Bolsheviks seize power in the October Revolution.
26 October
● The Council of People’s Commissars (SOVNARKOM) is established.
December
● The Extraordinary Commission against Counter-Revolution, Sabotage and Speculation (Cheka) is created.
Civil War (1918-21)
March 1918
● The Bolsheviks sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to end Russian involvement in WWI.
● The Bolshevik Party is renamed the Communist Party.
● The capital is moved from Petrograd to Moscow.
● The Russian Civil War begins (between the Red and White Armies).
Mid-1918
● War Communism is introduced.
July 1918
● The Romanovs are murdered.
August 1918
● Assassination attempt on Lenin.
March 1921
● The Russian Civil War ends in Red victory.
Economic Turbulence (1921-28)
March 1921
● The Kronstadt Rebellion.
● The New Economic Policy is introduced.
February 1922
● The Cheka becomes the GPU.
March 1922
● Joseph Stalin becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party.
April 1922
● The Treaty of Rapallo is signed with Germany.
December 1922
● The USSR is created.
● Lenin dictates his Political Testament.
1924
● Lenin dies.
● The Bolshevik power struggle begins.
● Stalin announces Socialism in One Country.
1926
● Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev are expelled from the Politburo.
1927
Stalin expels Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky from the Politburo, becoming the sole leader of the USSR.
Stalinism (1928-39)
1929
● First Five Year Plan
● Mass collectivisation begins.
1931
● Stalin’s Cultural Revolution begins.
1932
● Famine in Ukraine kills millions.
1933
● Second Five Year Plan.
1936
● The Stalinist Constitution is created.
1937
● Third Five Year Plan.
1938
● Several old Bolsheviks (such as Bukharin and Rykov) are publicly tried and executed as part of Stalin’s Great Terror.
● Purges and show trials are common and ongoing throughout Stalin’s rule.
World War II (1939-45)
23 August 1939
● Stalin signs the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact with Germany.
September 1939
● Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II.
● Later in September, the USSR invades East Poland in line with the conditions mapped out in the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.
November 1939–March 1940
● The Russo-Finnish War.
June 1941
● Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
● Stalin joins forces with the USA and Britain to form the Grand Alliance.
1945
● WWII ends in Allied victory.