Soviet Empire (jul 20, 1917 – dec 12, 1991)

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1920

Apl 24 The Bolsheviks are fighting to establish Soviet republics among the Poles, Ukrainians and Lithuanians, with help from communists among each ethnicity.

May 7 In the ongoing war between Polish and Soviet troops, Polish troops occupy Kiev.

Aug 13-25 An anti-Soviet Polish army decisively defeats and routes the Soviet Red Army in the Battle of Warsaw, to be remembered by Poles as the "Miracle on the Vistula." Stalin, age 41, was there as a political commissar and would resent the defeat for the rest of his life. (Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain, p 41)

1921

Feb12 Lenin has given his consent to move against rule in Georgia by his old opponents within the socialist movement, the Social Democrats (Mensheviks). The Republic of Georgia is invaded by the Red Army

Feb 25 The Red Army enters the Georgian capital Tbilisi and installs a Moscow-directed government.

Mar 7 Hardship and Bolshevik authoritarianism is accompanied by rebellion among the sailors at Russia's Kronstadt naval base. The sailors call for "real Soviet power." After several days of fighting the Red Army will crush the rebellion and chase surviving rebels across the border into Finland.

Mar 16 The Soviets have decided to pursue trade opportunities with the Western powers. A trade agreement is concluded with Britain.

Mar 18 The Bolsheviks want an end to the Polish-Soviet War. They sign the Treaty of Riga, a settlement favorable to the Poles that puts many Ukrainians and Byelorussians inside Poland. The treaty is to be undone following the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

Mar 21 For Lenin the Kronstadt rebellion is a sign of the need to ease up wartime government authoritarianism. He begins what is called the New Economic Policy. Lenin allows some free Markets to reappear and small-scale capitalist industries to function. The Soviet government stops forced confiscations of grain and allows peasants to sell their surplus grain on the opened market.

Jul 13 Famine in raging in Russia's Volga-Urals region. Russia population this year will fall 3.8 percent. There will be reports of cannibalism. The writer Maxim Gorky publishes an appeal "to all honorable people" in the world for food and medicine.

Aug 21 After three weeks of difficult negotiations, the Soviet Union agrees to allow the American Relief Administration to function with some independence. Participants will include Herbert Hoover's American Relief Administration, the American Friends Service Committee and the International Save the Children Union. The first feeding center will open in October.

Oct 1 An agreement concluded between the Soviet and the Norwegian governments that regulates their relations, signed on September 2, goes into effect. The Communist Party no longer faces an acute military threat to its existence. The civil war in effect is over. Russia is exhausted and its Great Famine continues, to last into the spring of 1922.

1922

Apr 3 Communist Party leadership chooses their comrade Joseph Stalin as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union's Communist Party, a position that Lenin wanted created, with the recommendation that it be filled by Stalin.

Apr 16 The Treaty of Rapallo marks a rapprochement between the Germany's Weimar Republic and Bolshevik Russia. Each renounces all territorial and financial claims against the other. They agree to normalise their diplomatic relations and to co-operate in meeting the economic needs of both countries.

May 26 Lenin suffers his first stroke.


1923

Mar 9 Vladimir Lenin suffers his third stroke, which renders him bedridden and unable to speak. He will now be retired from his position as Chairman of the Soviet government.

1924


Jan 21 Vladimir Lenin, age 53, has been mute and bedridden since March last year. Today he dies.

Jan 23 Russia changes Petrograd to Leningrad.

Jan 23 Lenin is moved from Petrograd to Moscow. Mourners gather at every station along the way. His body will be put on display at the House of Trade Unions, and in the coming days a million mourners from across the Soviet Union will wait in line for hours in the freezing cold.

Jan 27 Lenin's body is put in a wooden tomb by the Kremlin Wall in Moscow's Red Square. A granite Mausoleum will soon be built, in which Lenin's head and hands will be visible to visitors.

Jan 31 A constitution is ratified by the Congress of Soviets. It is a treaty that embodies separate nations – Belorussian, Ukrainian, Transcaucasian – into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Feb 1 The new British labour government, led by Ramsey McDonald, recognizes the Soviet Union.

Feb 7 Prime Minister Mussolini's government recognizes the Soviet Union.

1924

May 31 Lenin's widow has mailed his testament to the Communist Party's Central Committee. Contrary to Lenin's wishes before his final stroke, a Party Congress ends without the document having been read to the delegates. The document is critical of Stalin and his allies Kamenev and Zinoviev. These three, the most influential members of the Party, are protecting their status in the Party by keeping the document secret. It will be published in 1925 in the United States by Max Eastman, an admirer of Stalin's rival, Leon Trotsky.

Aug 28 In Georgia, one of the republics within the Soviet Union, an insurrection against Soviet rule has been organized across the country. In one area the rising starts today, a day early, and alarms Moscow. Stalin, a Georgian, immediately sends the Red Army against the insurgents. A book published in 1999, The Black Book of Communism, by Harvard University Press, will describe the Soviet regime as having killed 12,578 between August 29 and September 5 and as having deported about 20,000 people to Siberia and Central Asian deserts. The failed insurrection will leave pro-independence Georgians either exterminated or powerless. Georgia's Tiflis University will be purged of "unreliable" elements and placed under the complete control of the Communist Party, with substantial changes made to its curriculum.

Dec 1 A coup attempt in Estonia staged by Communists, most of them from the Soviet Union, fails. Of the 279 actively participating in the coup, 125 are killed in action. Later, more than 500 people will be arrested. Government forces lose 26 killed.

Dec 31 Earlier this year, Stalin wrote a book titled Foundations of Leninism, supporting Lenin's position that the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 needs revolutions in other countries. A second edition of the book is published that deviates from Lenin's position. Stalin goes along with a Party theoretician, Nikolai Bukharin, who is arguing that socialism could be built in a single country, even an underdeveloped one like Russia. Stalin would rather have better relations with capitalist powers rather than antagonize them with Soviet sponsored subversion. Stalin favors Communist Parties in capitalist countries joining forces with non-communist "bourgeois" parties. This puts him opposite Leon Trotsky, who will be the champion of "Permanent Revolution".

1927

Nov 12 The battle for toleration of continued disagreement and more Party democracy has been defeated. The "Left Opposition" within the party, including Leon Trotsky, has lost. Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev are expelled from the Communist Party.

Dec 19 A Communist Party Congress in December closes. Party delegates have condemned all deviation from what the Party in general has chosen as its positions and policies – a belief in closing ranks and in group-think. Party members who have supported the Opposition have been expelled from the Party. They are now to be seen as traitors and as threats to the development of proper ideas. Expelled Party members are to be fired from their regular jobs and their families are to be hounded. Trotsky will soon be sent into exile. Joseph Stalin has emerged as the Party's undisputed leader.

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