1883—Group for the Emancipation of Labor, first Russian Marxist group, formed in Geneva, Switzerland.
1903—Bolshevik (majority) and Menshevik (minority) factions resulted from split in Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, held in Brussels and London.
1905—December: Bolshevik Conference in Tammerfors (Tampere), Finland.
1914—Start of World War I.
1917—March: Provisional government formed in Russia. Czar Nicholas II abdicated.
1917—July 20: New revolutionary government formed with Kerensky as Prime Minister.
1917—October 23: Bolshevik Central Committee approved Lenin’s proposal for armed insurrection.
1917—November 7: “Red Guards” and revolutionary troops occupied Petrograd (Russian capital) and overthrew government (called October Revolution).
1917—December: Soviet government signed armistice with Germany and Austria at Brest-Litovsk to end hostilities.
1918—March 3: Russia signed Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, abandoning Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, the Baltic provinces, Finland, and Transcaucasia.
1918—March: Soviet government and Party headquarters moved to Moscow.
1921—March: Kronstadt sailors’ unsuccessful revolt against Lenin.
1921—March: Tenth Party Congress adopted Lenin’s New Economic Policy.
1922—March 27-April 2: Eleventh Party Congress elected Stalin General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
1925—December: Fourteenth Party Congress changed name to Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) or CPSU (B).
1927—December: Fifteenth Party Congress of CPSU (B) instructed preparation of first Five-Year Plan.
1929—Trotsky arrived in Turkey as exile from U.S.S.R.
1932-33—The Stalin Famine due, in part, to excesses of agrarian policy. Victims estimated from 4,000,000 to 10,000,000 dead.
1933—November 17: Soviet Russia recognized diplomatically by the United States.
1934—September 18: U.S.S.R. formally became member of League of Nations.
1934-48—Purges of Communist Party members and government and military officials as “counterrevolutionaries.”
1936—New constitution approved and adopted by the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets.
1939—August: Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact ratified.
1939—September 17: Soviet Russia invaded Poland.
1939—November 30: Soviet Russia invaded Finland.
1940—March: Soviet Russia and Finland signed peace terms.
1941—June 22: German armies invaded Russia.
1945—May 9: Stalin announced end of war to Russian people.
1953—March 5: Stalin died.
1953—December 23: Beria executed as “enemy of the people.”
1956—February: Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at which Stalin was denounced.
1957—June: Vyacheslav Molotov, Georgi Malenkov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Dmitri Shepilov denounced as “enemies of the Party.”
1957—October: Marshal Georgi Zhukov, Red Army hero, ousted as Soviet Defense Minister