Russia and the Revolution

The Political History
Political Chronology
- 1861
- Emancipation Edict - Czar abolishes serfdom and frees Russian peasants.
- 1881
- March 1 - Czar Alexander II assassinated with a bomb.
- 1891-1892
- Famine in Russia; estimated 375,000 to 400,000 fatalities.
- 1901
- February - Minister of Education Bogolepov assassinated.
- 1902
- April 2 - Interior Minister Sipiagin assassinated.
- 1903
July-August - Second Congress of Russian Social-Democratic Party
Party splits into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions.
- 1904
- February 8 - Russo-Japanese War begins with Japanese attack on Port Arthur.
- July 15 - Interior Minister Plehve assassinated with bomb.
- December 20 - Port Arthur surrenders to Japanese.
- 1905
- January 7-8 - Major industrial strike in St. Petersburg.
- January 9 - Bloody Sunday
- January 10 - Industrial strikes throughout Russia.
- January 18 - Government agrees to convoke Duma.
- June - Riots and massacres in Odessa.
- September - Strike activity.
- October 12-18 - Constitutional-Democratic (Kadet) Party formed.
- October 13 - St. Petersburg central strike committee formed, to be renamed St. Petersburg Soviet.
- October 14 - Strikes paralyze St. Petersburg.
- November 21 - Moscow Soviet formed.
- December 6 - General strike ordered by St. Petersburg Soviet.
- December 8 - Government orders troops in against Moscow insurgents.
- December 18 - Executive Committee of Moscow Soviet capitulates.
Over 1,000 are believed to have died in the uprising.
- 1906
- April 27 - Duma (First) opens.
- July 8 - Nicholas dissolves Duma.
Stolypin appointed Chairman of Council of Ministers.
- August 12 - Attempted assassination of Stolypin.
- August 12 - Stolypin's first agrarian reforms.
- November 9 - Reform of communal landholding.
- 1907
- February 20 - Second Duma opens.
- June 2 - Second Duma dissolved.
- November 7 - Third Duma opens. Session lasts until 1912.
- 1911
- September 1 - Stolypin assassinated.
- 1912
- November 15 - Fourth Duma opens.
- 1914
- July - Russia mobilizes for war.
- July 19/August 1 - Germany declares war on Russia.
- August - Russia invades East Prussia and Austrian Galicia.
- 1915
- April 15 - Germany conducts operations in Poland.
- July 9 - Russia begins withdrawal from Poland.
- July 19 - Duma reconvened for six weeks.
- August 22 - Nicholas assumes personal command of army.
- September 3 - Duma prorogued.
- 1916
- November 1 - Duma reconvenes.
- December 17 - Murder of Rasputin.
- 1917
- February 14 - Duma reconvenes.
- February 23-24 - Demonstrations in Petrograd for International Women's Day.
Strike over food shortages.
- February 25 - Demonstrations turn violent.
- February 26 - Volynskii Regiment fires on crowd; 40 killed.
- February 28 - Provisional Committee formed from Duma Council of Elders.
Moscow experiences disturbances.
- March 2 - Nicholas abdicates.
- March 4 - Provisional Government abolishes Police Department.
- March 5 - Provisional Government dismisses governors and deputies.
- April 21 - Bolshevik demonstrations in Petrograd and Moscow.
- April 28 - Bolsheviks organize Red Guard.
- June 3 - First All-Russian Congress of Soviets opens.
- July 11 - Kerensky becomes Prime Minister.
- August 9 - Elections to Constituent Assembly scheduled.
- October 10 - Bolshevik Central Committee votes in favor of armed seizure of power.
- October 24 - Bolsheviks take over Petrograd in response to government actions.
- October 25 - Lenin declares Provisional Government deposed.
- October 25-26 (Night) - Fall of Winter Palace.
- November 2 - Pro-government troops in Moscow surrender to Bolsheviks following 3 days of fighting.
- November 17 - Bolshevik troops forcibly take 5 million rubles from State Bank.
- December 7 (December 20) - Cheka (secret police) established.
- 1918
- January 1 - Assassination attempt on Lenin.
- January 6 - Constituent Assembly closed.
- January 8 - Third Congress of Soviets opens.
- February 21-22 - Lenin issues decree authorizing summary execution of opposition.
- March 14 - Soviet Congress ratifies Brest Treaty with Germany.
- May 9 - Worker demonstrators fired on by Bolshevik troops at Kolpino.
- June - Beginning of "War Communism." Industry nationalized and grain forcibly requisitioned. (Ends in March 1921).
- July 16-17 (night) - Nicholas II, family and servants murdered in Ekaterinburg.
- July 21 - Bolsheviks massacre 350 prisoners following revolt at Iaroslavl.
- July - Bolshevik authorities execute 1,115.
- August 30 - Head of Petrograd Cheka assassinated; Assassination attempt on Lenin.
- September 5 - Bolsheviks launch Red Terror; Prisoners and hostages massacred.
- 1919
- February 6 - Red Army takes Kiev.
- February 17 - Dzerzhinskii, head of Cheka, calls for creation of concentration camps.
- June 30 - Tsaritsyn captured by Wrangel.
- August 31 - Whites capture Kiev.
- September 20 - Kursk captured by Whites.
- October 13-14 - Whites advance against Moscow ends with capture of Orel.
- October 20 - Whites abandon Orel.
- November 17 - Whites abandon Kursk.
- 1920
- February 7 - Kolchak executed.
- April 25 - Poles invade Ukraine.
- October 20 - Red Army begins final push in Crimea to end war.
- November 14 - Wrangel evacuates army to Constantinople.
- December - Number of concentration camps reported to be 84.
- 1921
- February - Mass strikes in Petrograd.
- February 9 - Peasant uprising in western Siberia. Government forced to commit 50,000 regular army troops to end rebellion.
- February 28 - Garrison at Kronstadt fortress mutinies.
- March 17 - Red Army captures Kronstadt to end revolt.
- March 23 - Lenin announces policy which will become known as the New Economic Policy (NEP); Policy of War Communism ended.
- Spring - Drought strikes grain-growing regions.
- May 17 - Formal revocation of decree nationalizing small-scale industry.
- July 25 - Russian government agrees to accept U.S. offer of aid for famine.
- Summer - Fall - Famine
- October - State Bank created.
- November 10 - Rationing abolished.
- December - Party purges 259,000 from its membership.
- 1922
- February 6 - Cheka abolished. Renamed GPU.
- May 25 - Lenin suffers stroke.
- May - Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev informally rule Politburo in "troika" arrangement.
- June-August - Show trial of SR opposition. Death sentences commuted to prison terms.
- December 15 - Lenin suffers another stroke.
- 1923
- March 10 - Lenin paralyzed.
- April - Twelfth Party Congress reelects Stalin General Secretary.
- October - Number of concentration camps reaches 315.
- 1924
- January 21 - Lenin dies.
- 1925
- January 17-20 - Central Committee plenum removes Trotsky as Commissar of War.
- December - Fourteenth Party Congress announces industrialization plan.
Kamenev and Zinoviev defeated. Kamenev loses position on Politburo.
- Deaths among inmates of concentration camps reported to be 18,350 for the year.
- 1926
- July 26 - Zinoviev removed from Politburo.
- October - Trotsky expelled from Politburo.
- 1927
- NEP phased out as an economic policy.
- October - Stalin publicly assures Party that grain procurements going well.
November - Trotsky and Zinoviev expelled from Central Committee.
- December - Grain Crisis - Fifteenth Party Congress learns of catastrophic drop in grain collections.
- 1928
- January - February - Stalin's fact-finding trip to Siberia.
Government implements policy of forced grain requisitions.
- July - Politburo decides to end forced requisitioning.
- October 1 - First Five-Year Plan officially approved.
- 1929
- January - February - Politburo session confrontation between Stalin and Rykov, Bukharin, and Tomsky.
- February - Introduction of food rationing.
Trotsky expelled from Russia.
- Spring - First Five-Year Plan formally adopted.
- April - Sixteenth Party Conference adopts more aggressive collectivization policy.
- June - Government begins implementing collectivization.
Government figures show that over one million households had joined collectives.
- November - Bukharin removed from Politburo.
- December 27 - Stalin calls for dekulakization, the "liquidation of kulaks as a class."
- 1930
- March 2 - "Dizzy with Success" Pravda article.
Stalin publicly criticizes officials for "excesses" in collectivization campaign.
- September - Stalin pressures local officials to resume collectivization campaign.
48 officials of People's Commissariat of Trade executed for "sabotage of food supplies."
- 1932
- Fall - Famine lasting into 1933 begins. Estimated 5 to 8 million deaths.
- 1933
- January - Stalin declares First Five-Year Plan a success.
- 1934
- February - Second Five-Year Plan adopted (for 1933 to 1937).
- December 1 - Kirov assassinated in Smolny.
- December 5 - Military Collegium orders 39 executed in Leningrad; 29 executed in Moscow.
- December 30 - Execution of members of "Moscow Center" and "Leningrad Center" announced.
- 1935
- January - Political trials of former opposition leaders. Government sentences all to prison.
- 1936
- August 19 - 24 - "Trial of the sixteen." - First show trial of former opposition leaders.
- August 25 - Zinoviev, Kamenev and other defendants executed.
- September 25 - Yezhov appointed head of NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs).
- 1937
- January - Show trial in Moscow. 13 sentenced to death.
- Estimated number of victims killed for 1937: 353,000.
- 1938
- March 2 - Opening of last show trial.
- March 15 - Bukharin and Rykov shot.
- Estimated number of victims killed for 1938: 328,000.
- 1939
- Eighteenth Party Congress adopts Third Five-Year Plan.
- 1940
- July - Yezhov executed.
- August - Trotsky murdered in Mexico.
- 1941
- June 22 - German army begins invasion of Russia.
- 1949
- August 29 - Russia explodes an atomic bomb.
- 1953
- March 1-2 - Stalin suffers severe brain hemorrhage.
- March 5 - Stalin dies.
- 1989
- November 9 - Berlin Wall comes down.
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