Timeline of Russian / Soviet History, 1914-1939

1914: World War I breaks out in the Balkans, pitting Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, USA and Japan against Austria, Germany and Turkey (400,000 Russian soldiers die in 1914 alone)

1916: Russia has already suffered almost two million deaths in WWI

Mar 1917: Bending to riots by women, striking workers and defecting soldiers, Czar Nicholas II abdicates, thereby ending the Romanov dynasty ("february revolution")

1917: Aleksandr Kerensky is appointed by the Duma as prime minister of the provisional government

1917: Bolsheviks overthrow the Kerensky government and install Lenin as leader of Russia ("October Revolution")

1918: Czar Nicholas II, his wife and their children are killed by the secret police of the Bolsheviks

1918: The Bolshevik government introduces a policy of food requisition and peasant revolts break out throughout Russia

1918: Lenin orders the secret police to arrest and/or kill the anarchists

1918: Lenin signs a truce with Germany and accepts territorial losses

1918: Lenin nationalizes the factories, collectivizes the farms and outlaws the church

1918: Civil war erupts between the Red Army of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks (helped by Britain, Japan, USA)

1918: Lenin changes the name of the Bolshevik party to Russian Communist Party

January 1919: The Bolshevik government enacts a policy of extermination of the Cossacks (8,000 are executed in the next two months)

March 1919: The Comintern (or "Third International") is founded in Moscow with the aim of spreading the revolution all over the world

December 1920: The ruble has lost 96% of its pre-war value; Industrial production has fallen to 10% of its 1913 level

1921: The civil war ends with Lenin's victory (millions have died of starvation, the population of Petrograd has dropped from 2.5 million in 1917 to 0.6 in 1920)

1921: Lenin enacts the New Economic Policy (sometimes called “state capitalism”)

1922: The Soviet Union is created by uniting Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Transcaucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbajan)

December 1922: Five million people have died during two years of famine, mostly in the lower Volga; the anti-religious campaign has killed 2691 priests, 1962 monks and 3447 nuns in 1922

1924: The Soviet Union adopts a constitution based on the dictatorship of the proletariat

1924: Lenin dies and is succeeded by Joseph Stalin

1927: The Soviet Union launches a campaign of eradication of Islam

1928: Stalin enacts the first Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union

1929: Stalin calls for full collectivization and orders the persecution of "kulaks" (rich farmers), 15 million peasants are deported to the Arctic regions and 6.5 million die

December 1929: 1,778,000 people are convicted of crimes in 1929

1930: More than 20,000 people are sentenced to death in the Soviet Union in 1930

1932: one million people in Kazakhstan die of famine (caused by forced collectivization)

1933: five million people in Ukraine die of famine (caused by forced collectivization)

1934: Stalin's main advisor, Sergei Kirov, is assassinated, prompting Stalin to begin the "Great Purge" of the Communist Party (thousands of communists are deported to "gulags"); 2.5 million Soviet citizens are arrested and 700,000 are executed over the next three years

December 1935: The Gulag has 800,000 prisoners in camps and 300,000 in work colonies

1936: The first show trial against communist leaders is held in Moscow (the defendants "confess")

May 1937: Stalin begins the purge of the Red Army (in 18 months 3 out of 5 marshals, 13 out of 15 army generals, 8 out of 9 admirals and a total of 35,000 officers are liquidated)

1939: Stalin and Hitler sign a non-aggression pact including the partition of Poland (and assigns the Baltic states to the Soviet Union); World War II begins when Germany invades Poland on September 1; Soviet union invades Poland September 17

(based on http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/russians.html)