Russia. A History

‘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