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.