Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev

• About N.S. Khrushchev

• Mikoyan, Kozlov, and Khrushchev visit USA
• Khrushchev launches his corn campaign
• 21st Party Congress

• Seven-Year Plan
• "Anti-Party Group" denounced

• Khrushchev at UN Assembly in New York
• Boris Pasternak dies

• Yurii Gagarin becomes the first man in space (August)
• The Berlin Wall is built October
• 22nd Party Congress
• New Party program and rules
• Stalin's remains removed from Lenin Mausoleum
• Berlin Wall is built

• Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

• Cuban Missile Crisis  

• Russo-Chinese split deepens
• Central Committee Conference on Ideology
• Ehrenburg, Evtushenko and others attacked for non-conformity
• US-USSR "hotline" established    August
• US/USSR/Britain sign nuclear test ban treaty
• Founding of the Taganka Theater

• Joseph Brodsky trial (February-March)    October
• Khrushchev ousted; Brezhnev First Secretary
• Kosygin become Premier

• About L.I. Brezhnev [1] [2] [3]

• Demonstrations in Moscow against US air-raids in North Vietnam
• Mikhail Sholokhov wins Nobel Prize in literature

• 23rd Party Congress (February)
• Andrei Sinyavski & Yulii Daniel trial for publishing abroad

• Eighth Five-Year Plan

• Outer Space Treaty
• Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter, defects

• Andropov becomes head of the KGB
• Fiftieth anniversary of Bolshevik Revolution

• Moscow-NY commercial airline service (PanAm and Aeroflot)
• Prague Spring; Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
• Dissident (inakomyshlyashchii) movement begins

• Preliminary round of SALT talks

• US-Soviet Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
• US-USSR cultural exchange
• Centenary of Lenin's birth
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn wins Nobel Prize for literature

• SALT talks

• Khrushchev dies (February)
• Solzhenitsyn deported from USSR
• 24th Party Congress

• Ninth Five-Year Plan

• Nixon in Moscow for summit
• SALT Treaty signed
• Restrictions on Jewish emigration; Jackson-Vanik amendment
• SALT II negotiations begin
• Fiftieth anniversary of USSR

• Solzhenitsyn expelled to West Germany
• Third Moscow summit

• Apollo-Soyuz Mission
• Sakharov wins Nobel Peace Prize; visa to attend ceremonies denied

• 25th Party Congress

• Tenth Five-Year Plan

• Dissidents Ginzburg, Rudenko, Orlov, Shcharinskii arrested
• Master and Margarita staged at Taganka Theater

• Brezhnev Constitution ratified

• Soviet UN Undersecretary for Political and Security Council Affairs defects to US (June 8)
• Solzhenytsin's Harvard speech

• Gorbachev is made a candidate member of Politburo (December)
• Soviets invade Afghanistan

• US grain embargo to protest invasion of Afghanistan
• Sakharov exiled
• 64 countries boycott Moscow Summer Olympics to protest Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
• Gorbachev promoted to full member of Politburo
• Death of Vladimir Vysotsky

• 26th Party Congress

• Eleventh Five-Year Plan

• Andropov promoted to Secretariat Brezhnev dies; Andropov becomes General Secretary

• About Yuri Andropov

• Korean airliner shot down by Soviets

• About Konstantin Chernenko

• Andropov dies; Chernenko becomes general secretary
• Soviets withdraw from Summer Olympics in Los Angeles
• Tarkovsky emigrates to Italy

• Chernenko dies; Gorbachev becomes General Secretary
• Anti-alcoholism program ('dry law') initiated
• Gorbachev calls for economic reforms (Perestroika)

Mikhail Gorbachev

• About M.S. Gorbachev

• 27th Party Congress; April 26 Chernobyl disaster
• US/Soviet summit in Reykjavik (Reagan and Gorbachev)
• Gorbachev's anticorruption campaign

Twelfth Five-Year Plan

• Sakharov freed from 7 years of exile in Gorky
• Moscow showing of Abuladze's Repentance
• Mikhail Gorbachev TIME "Man of the Year"
• Josef Brodsky awarded Nobel Prize for literature
• Mathias Rust, 19 years old, lands his Cessna 172 in Red Square; Air-defense commander Koldunov removed
• Gorbachev sets 1991 as deadline for overhaul of the economy
• Soviet diplomats go to Israel for first official visit since 1967
• US/Soviet summit in Washington

• Ethnic unrest in the Baltic republics

• Nagorno-Karabakh soviet declares the region under Armenian control

• Azerbaijani massacre of 32 Armenians in Sumgait suburb of Baku

• Nina Andreeva's anti-Perestroika letter published in Sovetskaja Rossija

• USSR begins pullout from Afghanistan
• US/Soviet summit in Moscow
• Trial of Churbanov, Brezhnev's son-in-law, for bribery and extortion

• Second Party Conference. New Congress of Peoples' Deputies with elected seats announced
• Kremlin sends troops to Nagorno-Karabakh
• Gorbachev becomes president
• Gorbachev's speech at U.N. announcing significant cuts in Soviet military strength
• Armenian earthquake, over 150,000 killed
• Doctor Zhivago first published in Russia

• Gorbachev takes control of Nagorno-Karabakh

• Yuri Levada's questionnaire in Lit gazeta
• Completion of Soviet pullout of Afghanistan

• First multi-candidate elections; several uncontested candidates defeated,
• Yeltsin and Sakharov overwhelmingly win seats in the Congress of People's Deputies

• Protesters in Georgia demand independence, Soviet troops move in
• Purging of "dead souls" in the Central Committee
• Soviet-Chinese summit in Beijing    May
• Coal miners strike in Siberia, Ukraine, Central Asia
• Demonstrations in Baltics for independence
• RUKH (Popular Movement of the Ukraine) demands independence

• I. Congress of Peoples Deputies of the USSR begins political reforms

• Coal miners strike in Vorkutka, Karaganda, Siberia and the Ukraine

• Azerbaijani Popular Front imposes blockade on 85% of freight entering Armenia

• Armenia and Azerbaijani engaged in civil war

• The Berlin Wall comes down

• Andrei Sakharov dies

• Mikhail Gorbachev awarded Nobel Prize for peace

• Elections of regional deputies of the Russian Federation
• Lithuania declares independence

• 28th Party Congress
• Yeltsin announces resignation from CP
• Supreme Soviet passes law to lift censorship from the press

• I Congress of Peoples Deputies of RSFSR passes "Declaration of State Sovereignty of Russia" (Independence Day)

• Law on Peasant Farms allows kolkhozniks to own private farms
• CFE Treaty signed in Paris