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Soviet Union (USSR)

 
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Soviet Union [USSR]

Table A. Chronology of Important Events


Period
 Description


NINTH CENTURY
 
ca. 860
     Rurik, a Varangian, according to earliest chronicle of Kievan
     Rus', rules Novgorod and founds Rurikid Dynasty.

ca. 880
     Prince Oleg, a Varangian, first historically verified ruler of
     Kievan Rus'. 

TENTH CENTURY

911
     Prince Oleg, after attacking Constantinople, concludes treaty
     with Byzantine Empire favorable to Kievan Rus'.

944
     Prince Igor' compelled by Constantinople to sign treaty
     adverse to Kievan Rus'.

ca. 955
     Princess Olga, while regent of Kievan Rus', converts to
     Christianity.

971
     Prince Sviatoslav makes peace with Byzantine Empire.

988
     Prince Vladimir converts Kievan Rus' to Christianity.

ELEVENTH CENTURY

1015
     Prince Vladimir's death leads Rurikid princes into fratricidal
     war that continues until 1036.

1019
     Prince Iaroslav (the Wise) of Novgorod assumes throne of
     Kievan Rus'.

1036
     Prince Iaroslav the Wise ends fratricidal war and later
     codifies laws of Kievan Rus' into Ruska Pravda
     (Rus' Justice).

1037
     Prince Iaroslav the Wise defeats Pechenegs; construction
     begins on St. Sofia Cathedral in Kiev.

1051
     Ilarion becomes first native metropolitan of Orthodox Church
     in Kievan Rus'.

TWELFTH CENTURY

1113-25
     Kievan Rus' experiences revival under Grand Prince Vladimir
     Monomakh.

1136
     Republic of Novgorod gains independence from Kievan Rus'.

1147
     Moscow first mentioned in chronicles.

1156
     Novgorod acquires its own archbishop.

1169
     Armies of Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii of Vladimir-Suzdal' sack
     Kiev; Andrei assumes title "Grand Prince of Kiev and all Rus'"
     but chooses to reside in Suzdal'.

THIRTEENTH CENTURY

1219-41
     Mongols invade: Kiev falls in 1240; Novgorod and Moscow submit
     to Mongol "yoke" without resisting.

1242
     Aleksandr Nevskii successfully defends Novgorod against
     Teutonic attack.

1253
     Prince Daniil of Galicia-Volhynia accepts royal crown of
     Kievan Rus' from pope.

FOURTEENTH CENTURY 

1327
     Ivan, prince of Moscow, nicknamed Kalita ("Money Bags"),
     affirmed as "Grand Prince of Vladimir" by Mongols; Moscow
     becomes seat of metropolitan of Russian Orthodox Church.

1380
     Dmitrii Donskoi defeats Golden Horde at Battle of Kulikovo,
     but Mongol domination continues until 1480.

FIFTEENTH CENTURY

1462
     Ivan III becomes grand prince of Muscovy and first Muscovite
     ruler to use titles of tsar and "Ruler of all Rus'.

1478
     Muscovy defeats Novgorod.

1485
     Muscovy conquers Tver'. 

SIXTEENTH CENTURY

1505
     Vasilii III becomes grand prince of Muscovy.

1510
     Muscovy conquers Pskov.

1533
     Grand Prince Ivan IV named ruler of Muscovy at age three.

1547
     Ivan IV (the Terrible or the Dread) crowned tsar of Muscovy.

1552
     Ivan IV conquers Kazan' Khanate.

1556
     Ivan IV conquers Astrakhan' Khanate.

1565
     Oprichnina of Ivan IV creates a state within the state.

1571
     Tatars raid Moscow.

1581
     Ermak begins conquest of Siberia.

1584
     Fedor I crowned tsar.

1589
     Patriarchate of Moscow established.

1596
     Union of Brest establishes Uniate Church.

1598
     Rurikid Dynasty ends with death of Fedor; Boris Godunov named
     tsar; Time of Troubles begins.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

1601
     Three years of famine begin.

1605
     Fedor II crowned tsar; First False Dmitrii subsequently named
     tsar after Fedor II's murder.

1606
     Vasilii Shuiskii named tsar.

1606-07
     Bolotnikov leads revolt.

1610
     Second False Dmitrii proclaimed tsar.

1610-13
     Poles occupy Moscow.

1611-12
     Minin and Pozharskii organize counterattack against Poles.

1613
     Mikhail Romanov crowned tsar, founding Romanov Dynasty.

1631
     Metropolitan Mohila founds academy in Kiev.

1645
     Alexis crowned tsar.

1648
     Ukrainian Cossacks, led by Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi, revolt
     against Polish landowners and gentry.

1649
     Serfdom fully established by law.

1654
     Treaty of Pereyaslavl' places Ukraine under tsarist rule.

1667
     Church council in Moscow anathemizes Old Belief but removes
     Patriarch Nikon; Treaty of Andrusovo ends war with Poland.

1670-71
     Stenka Razin leads revolt.

1676
     Fedor III crowned tsar.

1682
     Half brothers Ivan V and Peter I named co- tsars; Peter's half
     sister, Sofia, becomes regent.

1689
     Peter I (the Great) forces Sofia to resign regency; Treaty of
     Nerchinsk ends period of conflict with China.

1696
     Ivan V dies, leaving Peter the Great sole tsar; port of Azov
     captured from Ottoman Empire.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

1700 
     Calendar reformed; war with Sweden begins.

1703
     St. Petersburg founded; becomes capital of Russia in 1713.

1705-11
     Bashkirs revolt.

1708
     First Russian newspaper published.

1709
     Swedes defeated at Battle of Poltava.

1710
     Cyrillic alphabet reformed.

1721
     Treaty of Nystad ends Great Northern War with Sweden and
     establishes Russian presence on Baltic Sea; Peter the Great
     proclaims Muscovy the Russian Empire; Holy Synod replaces
     patriarchate.

1722
     Table of Ranks established.

1723-32
     Russia gains control of southern shore of Caspian Sea.

1725
     Catherine I crowned empress of Russia.

1727
     Peter II crowned emperor of Russia.

1730
     Anna crowned empress of Russia.

1740
     Ivan VI crowned emperor of Russia.

1741
     Elizabeth crowned empress of Russia.

1762
     Peter III crowned emperor of Russia; abolishes compulsory
     state service for the gentry; Catherine II (the Great) crowned
     empress of Russia.

1768-74
     War with Ottoman Empire ends with Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji.

1772
     Russia participates in first partition of Poland.

1773-74
     Emelian Pugachev leads peasant revolt.

1785
     Catherine II confirms nobility's privileges in Charter to the
     Nobility.

1787-92
     War with Ottoman Empire ends with Treaty of Jassy; Ottomans
     recognize 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea.

1793 and 1795
     Russia participates in second and third partitions of Poland.

1796
     Paul crowned emperor of Russia; establishes new law of
     succession.

NINETEENTH CENTURY

1801
     Alexander I crowned emperor; conquest of Caucasus region
     begins.

1809
     Finland annexed from Sweden and awarded autonomous status.

1812
     Napoleon's army occupies Moscow but is then driven out of
     Russia.

1817-19
     Baltic peasants liberated from serfdom but given no land.

1825
     "Decembrists' revolt" fails; Nicholas I crowned emperor.

1830
     Polish uprising crushed.

1833
     "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and nationality" accepted as guiding
     principles by regime.

1837
     First Russian railroad, from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoe Selo,
     opens; Aleksandr Pushkin, foremost Russian writer, dies in
     duel.

1840s and 1850s
     Slavophiles debate Westernizers over Russia's future.

1849
     Russia helps to put down anti-Habsburg Hungarian rebellion at
     Austria's request.

1853-56
     Russia fights Britain, France, Sardinia, and Ottoman Empire in
     Crimean War; Russia forced to accept peace settlement dictated
     by its opponents.

1855
     Alexander II crowned emperor.

1858
     Treaty of Aigun signed with China; northern bank of Amur River
     ceded to Russia.

1860
     Treaty of Beijing signed with China; Ussuri River region
     awarded to Russia.

1861
     Alexander II emancipates serfs. 

1863
     Polish rebellion unsuccessful.

1864
     Judicial system reformed; zemstvos created.

1869
     War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910) published.

1873-74
     Army reformed; Russian youths go "to the people."

1875
     Kuril Islands yielded to Japan in exchange for southern
     Sakhalin.

1877-78
     War with Ottoman Empire ends with Treaty of San Stefano;
     independent Bulgaria proclaimed.

1879
     Revolutionary society Land and Liberty splits; People's Will
     and Black Repartition formed.

1879-80
  The Brothers Karamazov by Fedor Dostoevskii (1821-81)
     published.

1881
     Alexander II assassinated; Alexander III crowned emperor.

1894
     Nicholas II crowned emperor.

1898
     Russian Social Democratic Labor Party established and holds
     first congress in March; Vladimir I. Lenin one of organizers
     of party.

TWENTIETH CENTURY

1903
     Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits into Bolshevik
     and Menshevik factions.

1904-05
     Russo-Japanese War ends with Russian defeat; southern Sakhalin
     ceded to Japan.

1905
     "Bloody Sunday" massacre in January begins Revolution of 1905,
     a year of labor and ethnic unrest; government issues so-called
     October Manifesto, calling for parliamentary elections.

1906
     First Duma (parliament) elected.

1911
     Stolypin, chief minister since 1906, assassinated.

1914
     World War I begins.

1916
     Rasputin murdered.

1917
     March: (February, according to Julian calendar) February
     Revolution, in which workers riot in Petrograd; Petrograd
     Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies formed; Provisional
     Government formed; Emperor Nicholas II abdicates; Petrograd
     Soviet issues "Order No. 1."

     April: Demonstrations lead to Aleksandr Kerensky's assuming
     leadership in government; Lenin returns to Petrograd from
     Switzerland.

     July: Bolsheviks outlawed after attempt to topple government
     fails.

     September: Lavr Kornilov putsch attempt fails.

     November: (October, according to Julian calendar) Bolsheviks
     seize power from Provisional Government; Lenin, as leader of
     Bolsheviks, becomes head of state; Russian Soviet Federated
     Socialist Republic (Russian Republic) formed; Constituent
     Assembly elected.

     December: Vecheka (secret police) created; Finns and
     Moldavians declare independence from Russia; Japanese occupy
     Vladivostok.

1918
     January: Constituent Assembly dissolved; Ukraine declares its
     independence, followed, in subsequent months, by Armenia,
     Azerbaydzhan, Belorussia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, and
     Lithuania.

     February: Basmachi Rebellion begins in Central Asia; calendar
     changed from Julian to Gregorian.

     March: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed with Germany; Russia
     loses Poland, Finland, Baltic lands, Ukraine, and other areas;
     Russian Social Democratic Labor Party becomes Russian
     Communist Party (Bolshevik).

     April: Civil War begins.

     June: Concentration camps established.

     July: Constitution of Russian Republic promulgated; imperial
     family murdered.

     Summer: War communism established; intervention in Civil War
     by foreign expeditionary forces-- including those of Britain,
     France, and United States--begins.

     August: Attempt to assassinate Lenin fails; Red Terror begins.

     November: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk repudiated by Soviet
     government after Germany defeated by Allied Powers.

1919
     January: Belorussia established as theoretically independent
     Soviet republic.

     March: Communist International (Comintern) formally founded at
     congress in Moscow; Ukraine established as Soviet republic.

1920
     January: Blockade of Russian Republic lifted by Britain and
     other Allies.

     February: Peace agreement signed with Estonia; agreements with
     Latvia and Lithuania follow.

     April: War with Poland begins; Azerbaydzhan established as
     Soviet republic.

     July: Trade agreement signed with Britain.

     October: Truce reached with Poland.

     November: Red Army defeats Wrangel's army in Crimea; Armenia
     established as Soviet republic.

1921
     March: War with Poland ends with Treaty of Riga; Red Army
     crushes Kronshtadt naval mutiny; New Economic Policy
     proclaimed; Georgia established as Soviet republic.

     Summer: Famine breaks out in Volga region.

     August: Aleksandr Blok, foremost poet of Russian Silver Age,
     dies; large number of intellectuals exiled.

1922
     March: Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
     formed, uniting Armenian, Azerbaydzhan, and Georgian
     republics.

     April: Joseph V. Stalin made general secretary of party;
     Treaty of Rapallo signed with Germany.

     May: Lenin suffers his first stroke.

     June: Socialist Revolutionary Party members put on trial by
     State Political Administration; Glavlit organized with
     censorship function.

     December: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union)
     established, comprising Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and
     Transcaucasian republics.

1924
     January: Lenin dies; constitution of Soviet Union put into
     force.

     February: Britain recognizes Soviet Union; other European
     countries follow suit later in year.

     Fall: Regime begins to delimit territories of Central Asian
     nationalities; Turkmenia and Uzbekistan elevated to Soviet
     republic status.

1925
     April: Nikolai I. Bukharin calls for peasants to enrich
     themselves.

     November: Poet Sergei Esenin commits suicide.

     December: Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) becomes All-
     Union Communist Party (Bolshevik).

1926
     April: Grigorii V. Zinov'ev ousted from Politburo.

     October: Leon Trotsky and Lev B. Kamenev ousted from
     Politburo.

1927
     Fall: Peasants sell government less grain than demanded
     because of low prices; peasant discontent increases; grain
     crisis begins.

     December: Fifteenth Party Congress calls for large-scale
     collectivization of agriculture.

1928
     January: Trotsky exiled to Alma-Ata.

     May: Shakhty trial begins; first executions for "economic
     crimes" follows.

     July: Sixth Congress of Comintern names socialist parties main
     enemy of communists.

     October: Implementation of First Five-Year Plan begins.

1929
     January: Trotsky forced to leave Soviet Union.

     April: Law on religious associations requires registration of
     religious groups, authorizes church closings, and bans
     religious teaching.

     Fall: Red Army skirmishes with Chinese forces in Manchuria.

     October: Tadzhistan splits from Uzbek Republic to form
     separate Soviet republic.

     November: Bukharin ousted from Politburo.

     December: Stalin formally declares end of New Economic Policy
     and calls for elimination of kulaks; forced industrialization
     intensifies, and collectivization begins.

1930
     March: Collectivization slows temporarily.

     April: Poet Vladimir Maiakovskii commits suicide.

     November: "Industrial Party" put on trial.

1931
     March: Mensheviks put on trial.

     August: School system reformed.

1932
     May: Five-year plan against religion declared.

     December: Internal passports introduced for domestic travel;
     peasants not issued passports.

1932-33
     Terror: and forced famine rage in countryside, primarily in
     southeastern Ukrainian Republic and northern Caucasus.

1933
     November: Diplomatic relations with United States established.

1934
     August: Union of Writers holds its First Congress.

     September: Soviet Union admitted to League of Nations.

     December: Sergei Kirov assassinated in Leningrad; Great Terror
     begins, causing intense fear among general populace, and peaks
     in 1937 and 1938 before subsiding in latter year.

1935
     February: Party cards exchanged; many members purged from
     party ranks.

     May: Treaties signed with France and Czechoslovakia.

     Summer: Seventh Congress of Comintern calls for "united front"
     of political parties against fascism.

     August: Stakhanovite movement to increase worker productivity
     begins.

     September: New system of ranks issued for Red Army.

1936
     June: Restrictive laws on family and marriage issued.

     August: Zinov'ev, Kamenev, and other high-level officials put
     on trial for alleged political crimes.

     
     September: Nikolai Ezhov replaces Genrikh Iagoda as head of
     NKVD (police); purge of party deepens.

     October: Soviet Union begins support for antifascists in
     Spanish Civil War.

     December: New constitution proclaimed; Kazakhstan and Kirgizia
     become Soviet republics; Transcaucasian Soviet Federated
     Socialist Republic spits into Armenian, Azerbaydzhan, and
     Georgian Soviet republics.

1937
     January: Trial of "Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Center."

     June: Marshal Mikhail N. Tukhachevskii and other military
     leaders executed.

1938
     March: Russian language required in all schools in Soviet
     Union.

     July: Soviet and Japanese forces fight at Lake Khasan.

     December: Lavrenty Beria replaces Ezhov; Great Terror
     diminishes.

1939
     May: Viacheslav Molotov replaces Maksim M. Litvinov as
     commissar of foreign affairs; armed conflict with Japan at
     Halhin Gol in Mongolia continues until August.

     August: Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact signed; pact includes
     secret protocol.

     September: Stalin joins Adolf Hitler in partitioning Poland.

     October: Soviet forces enter Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

     November: Remaining (western) portions of Ukraine and
     Belorussia incorporated into Soviet Union; Soviet forces
     invade Finland. 

     December: Soviet Union expelled from League of Nations.

1940
     March: Finland sues for peace with Soviet Union.

     April: Polish officers massacred in Katyn Forest by Soviet
     troops.

     June: New strict labor laws enacted; northern Bukovina and
     Bessarabia seized from Romania and subsequently incorporated
     into Ukrainian Republics and newly created Moldavian Republic,
     respectively.

     August: Soviet Union annexes Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania;
     Trotsky murdered in Mexico.

1941
     April: Neutrality pact signed with Japan.

     May: Stalin becomes chairman of Council of People's
     Commissars.

     June: Nazi Germany attacks Soviet Union ubder Operation
     Barbarossa. 

     August: Soviet and British troops enter Iran.

     November: Lend-Lease Law of United States applied to Soviet
     Union.

     December: Soviet counteroffensive against Germany begins.

1942
May Red Army routed at Khar'kov; Germans halt Soviet offensive;
treaty signed with Britain against Germany.

     July: Battle of Stalingrad begins.

     November: Red Army starts winter offensive.

1943
     February: German army units surrender at Stalingrad; 91,000
     prisoners taken.

     May: Comintern dissolved.

     July: Germans defeated in tank battle at Kursk.

     September: Stalin allows Russian Orthodox Church to appoint
     patriarch.

     November: Teheran Conference held.

1944
     January: Siege of Leningrad ends after 870 days. 

     May: Crimea liberated from German army.

     June: Red Army begins summer offensive.

     October: Tuva incorporated into Soviet Union; armed struggle
     against Soviet rule breaks out in western Ukrainian, western
     Belorussian, Lithuanian, and Latvian republics and continues
     for several years.

1945
     February: Stalin meets with Winston Churchill and Franklin D.
     Roosevelt at Yalta.

     April: Soviet Union renounces neutrality with Japan.

     May: Red Army captures Berlin.

     July-: Potsdam Conference attended by Stalin, Harry S August
     Truman, and Churchill, who is later replaced by Clement R.
     Attlee.

     August: Soviet Union declares war on Japan; Soviet forces
     enter Manchuria and Korea.

1946
     March: Regime abolishes Ukrainian Catholic Church (Uniate);
     Council of People's Commissars becomes Council of Ministers.

     Summer: Beginning of "Zhdanovshchina," a campaign against
     Western culture.

1947
     Famine: in southern and central regions of European part of
     Soviet Union.

     September: Cominform established to replace Comintern.

1948
     June: Blockade of Berlin by Soviet forces begins and lasts
     through May 1949.

     Summer: Trofim D. Lysenko begins his domination of fields of
     biology and genetics that continues until 1955.

1949
     January: Council for Mutual Economic Assistance formed;
     campaign against "cosmopolitanism" launched.

     August: Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb.

1952
     October: All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) becomes
     Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU); name of Polituro
     is changed to Presidium.

1953
     January: Kremlin "doctors' plot" exposed, signifying political
     infighting.

     March: Stalin dies; Georgii M. Malenkov, Beria, and Molotov
     form troika (triumvirate); title of party chief changes from
     general secretary to first secretary.

     April: "Doctors' plot" declared a provocation.

     July: Beria arrested and shot; Malenkov, Molotov, and Nikita
     S. Khrushchev form new troika.

     August: Soviet Union tests hydrogen bomb.

     September: Khrushchev chosen CPSU first secretary;
     rehabilitation of Stalin's victims begins.

1955
     February: Nikolai A. Bulganin replaces Malenkov as prime
     minister.

     May: Warsaw Pact organized.

1956
     February: Khrushchev's "secret speech" at Twentieth Party
     Congress exposes Stalin's crimes.

     September: Minimum wage established.

     November: Soviet forces crush Hungarian Revolution.

1957
     July: "Anti-party group" excluded from CPSU leadership.

     August: First Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile tested
     successfully.

     October: World's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I,
     launched.

1958
     March: Khrushchev named chairman of Council of Ministers.

     October: Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Boris
     Pasternak; campaign mounted against Pasternak, who refuses to
     accept award.

1959
     September: Khrushchev visits United States.

1960
     May: Soviet air defense downs United States U-2 reconnaissance
     aircraft over Soviet Union.

1961
     April: Cosmonaut Iurii Gagarin launched in world's first
     manned orbital space flight.

     July: Khrushchev meets with President John F. Kennedy in
     Vienna.

     August: Construction of Berlin Wall begins.

     October: Stalin's remains removed from Lenin Mausoleum.

1962
     June: Workers' riots break out in Novocherkassk.

     October: Cuban missile crisis begins, bringing United States
     and Soviet Union close to war.

     November: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of
     Ivan Denisovich published in Soviet journal.

1963
     August: Limited Test Ban Treaty signed with United States and
     Britain.

1964
     October: Khrushchev removed from power; Leonid I. Brezhnev
     becomes CPSU first secretary.

1965
     August: Volga Germans rehabilitated.

1966
     February: Dissident writers Andrei Siniavskii and Iuii Daniel
     tried and sentenced.

     April: Brezhnev's title changes from first secretary to
     general secretary; name of Presidium is changed back to
     Politburo.

1967
     April: Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Allilueva, defects to West.

     September: Crimean Tatars rehabilitated but not allowed to
     return home.

1968
     June: Andrei Sakharov's dissident writings published in
     samizdat.

     July: Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons signed
     by Soviet Union.

     August: Soviet-led Warsaw Pact armies invade Czechoslovakia.

1969
     March: Soviet and Chinese forces skirmish on Ussuri River.

     May: Major General Petr Grigorenko, a dissident, arrested and
     incarcerated in psychiatric hospital.

1970
     Jewish: emigration to avoid persecution begins to increase
     substantially.

     October: Solzhenitsyn awarded Nobel Prize for December
     Literature.

1972
     May: Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) result in signing
     of Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and Interim
     Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms;
     President Richard M. Nixon visits Moscow.

1973
     June: Brezhnev visits Washington.

1974
     February: Solzhenitsyn arrested and sent into foreign exile.

1975
     July: Apollo/Soiuz space mission held jointly with United
     States.

     August: Helsinki Accords signed, confirming East European
     borders and calling for enforcement of human rights.

     December: Sakharov awarded Nobel Prize for Peace.

1976
     Helsinki: watch groups formed to monitor human rights
     safeguards.

1977
     June: Brezhnev named chairman of Presidium of Supreme Soviet.

     October: New constitution promulgated for Soviet Union.

1979
     June: Second SALT agreement signed but not ratified by United
     States Senate.

     December: Soviet armed forces invade Afghanistan.

1980
     January: Sakharov exiled to Gor'kiy.

     August: Summer Olympics held in Moscow and boycotted by United
     States.

1981
     February: CPSU holds its Twenty-Sixth Party Congress.

1982
     June: Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) begin.

     November: Brezhnev dies; Iurii V. Andropov named general
     secretary.

1983
     September: Soviet fighter aircraft downs South Korean civilian
     airliner KAL 007 near Sakhalin.

1984
     February: Andropov dies; Konstantin U. Chernenko becomes
     general secretary.

1985
     March: Chernenko dies; Mikhail S. Gorbachev becomes general
     secretary.

     November: Gorbachev meets with President Ronald W. Reagan in
     Geneva.

1986
     February-March: CPSU holds its Twenty-Seventh Party Congress.

     April-May: Nuclear power plant disaster at Chernobyl' releases
     deadly radiation.

     October: Gorbachev and Reagan hold summit at Reykjavik.

     December: Ethnic riots break out in Alma-Ata.

1987
     December: Soviet Union and United States sign Intermediate-
     Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty). 

1988
     Winter: Ethnic disturbances begin in Caucasus.

     May: Soviet authorities stop jamming Voice of America
     broadcasts.

     May-June: Reagan visits Moscow.

     June: Millennium of establishment of Christianity in Kievan
     Rus' celebrated in Moscow.

     June-July: CPSU's Nineteenth Party Conference tests limits of
     glasnost' and perestroika in unprecedented
     discussions.

     October: Gorbachev replaces Andrei Gromyko as chairman of
     Presidium of Supreme Soviet; Gromyko and others removed from
     Politburo.

     December: Earthquake registering 6.9 on Richter scale strikes
     Armenian Republic, destroying much of cities of Leninakan and
     Spitak and resulting in 25,000 deaths.

1989
     February: Soviet combat forces complete withdrawal from
     Afghanistan.

     March-: Initial and runoff elections held for the 2,250 April
     seats in Congress of People's Deputies; some seats have more
     than one candidate running; about 87 percent of elected
     deputies CPSU members or candidate members.

     May: Congress of People's Deputies meets, openly criticizes
     past and present regimes before television audiences, and
     elects 542 members to serve in Supreme Soviet; Gorbachev
     elected by Congress of People's Deputies to new position of
     chairman of Supreme Soviet.

Data as of May 1989


Soviet Union [USSR] - TABLE OF CONTENTS


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