Back in the USSR : A Warning from History
A Short History of the Soviet Union
February 1917 Popular revolution overthrows 370 years of rule by Russian Tsars.
October 1917 Lenin's Bolshevik Party overthrows the provisional government.
1917-1923 Civil war. Russia cedes large tracts of land. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan proclaim their independence.
January 1918 Bolsheviks invade Ukraine.
July 1918 Russian Imperial Family executed.
1919-1921 War with Poland.
1919-1922 Food policies lead to half a million deaths from famine in Kazakhstan.
1922 USSR is founded with the unification of Russian, Transcaucasian (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics.
1924 A constitution is adopted stipulating public ownership of land and the means of production.
1928 Collectivisation of agriculture begins. Millions of peasant households are eliminated and their property confiscated.
1929-1938 100,000 Ingrian Finns are subject to genocide.
1932-1933 Collectivisation brings famine which kills 3 million Ukrainians, 2 million Russians and 1 million Kazhaks.
1936-1938 Half a million suspected political opponents are arrested and shot, including party leaders, officers, intellectuals, westerners, gulag inmates and Mongolian Buddhists.
August 1939 The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact leads Hitler to invade Poland.
September 1939 USSR also invades Poland, leading to the arrest of 100,000 Polish citizens.
October 1939 Soviet troops enter Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
November 1939 USSR invades Finland. 20,000 Finns die.
1940 Parts of Karelia and Salla are annexed from Finland and ethnic Finns are deported.
March 1940 USSR executes 22,000 Polish officers near Katyn.
June 1940 USSR occupies Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, deporting or killing 160,000.
June 1940 Moldova is annexed from Romania.
1939-1941 Soviet-occupied territories are converted into republics of the Soviet Union. 250,000 civilians die.
April 1941 USSR and Japan sign a non-aggression pact.
1941-1942 A million ethnic Germans are banished from European Russia to Central Asia and Siberia.
1942 Russians are required to defend Stalingrad at all costs.
1943 USSR wins the Battle of Kursk, the biggest tank battle in history, ending Nazi offensive capability on the Eastern Front.
July 1943 The Ukrainian Insurgent Army massacres Polish civilians.
February 1944 Deportation of Chechen and Ingush populations of the North Caucasus to Central Asia.
May 1944 Deportation of Crimean Tatars brings ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide.
September 1944 Bulgaria invaded and the entire government (which had refused to support Hitler) is executed.
November 1944 Carpathian Ruthenia annexed from Czechoslovakia.
1944-45 100,000 Germans are captured and deported to labour camps, mostly in the Donbas region of Ukraine.
1944-45 Half a million Hungarians are deported to labour camps in the Soviet Union.
February 1945 At the Yalta Conference, Stalin agrees to enter the war against Japan in exchange for recognition of Soviet territorial claims in Asia.
1945 USSR enters Nazi Germany. Hundreds of thousands of German women are raped.
August 1945 USSR attacks Japan. The occupation of Manchuria and Korean Peninsula is a factor in the rise of Chinese Communists and shapes the Korean War.
1945 1000 Japanese women and children refugees are killed by Soviets in the Gegenmiao massacre.
1945 Kaliningrad annexed from Germany.
1945 East Poland is incorporated into Belarus and Ukraine.
1945-1991 The Iron Curtain isolates Eastern Bloc countries, establishes barriers between East and West, and halts the movement of people between them.
1946-1969 USSR casts 93% of United Nations vetoes.
1948-1949 USSR attempts to block Berlin and prevent supplies reaching sectors occupied by Western forces.
1954 Russia transfers Crimea to Ukraine.
1956 Soviet tanks invade Hungary.
1962 USSR policy in Cuba threatens nuclear war.
1968 Soviet tanks invade Czechoslovakia.
1979 USSR invades Afghanistan.
1980 USSR vetoes U.N. discussion on Afghanistan.
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev promotes reforms leading to the withdrawal of half a million Soviet troops from Central and Eastern Europe.
1989 Starting in Poland, revolutions topple Soviet-imposed regimes across Europe.
April 1991 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia refuse to endorse a new Soviet constitution.
24 August 1991 Ukraine declares independence, followed by all other states of the USSR except Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
29 August 1991 The Supreme Soviet indefinitely suspends all Communist Party activity, effectively ending Communist rule.
8 December Russia, Ukraine and Belarus agree the USSR no longer exists, repudiating the 1922 treaty that established the Soviet Union.
25 December 1991 At the Kremlin, the hammer and sickle flag of the Soviet Union is replaced by the flag of Russia.
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Back in the U.S.S.R. (2009) by Paul McCartney