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Bolsheviks overthrow provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky, with workers and sailors capturing government buildings and the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, and eventually taking over Moscow.
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According to which Russia took large tracts of land to Germany; Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and many others.
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In northern Russia, British, French and US troops capture Murmansk and Archangel until 1919, while in the Russian Far East they occupy Vladivostok, which was held by the Japanese until 1922.
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The state takes control of the whole economy; millions of peasants in the Don region starve to death as the army confiscates grain for its own needs and the needs of urban dwellers.
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Union treaty formally joins Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasus - which were divided in 1936 into Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan - into the Soviet Union.
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Soviet Union adopts constitution based on the dictatorship of the proletariat and stipulating the public ownership of land and the means of production; Lenin dies and is replaced by Joseph Stalin.
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Adoption of first Five-Year Plan, with the state setting goals and priorities for the whole economy, signifies the end of the New Economic Policy.
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Soviet troops enter Poland, which is then divided between Germany and the USSR.
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Russian-Finnish war, which ends with Finland ceding territory to the USSR - the present Russian constituent republic of Karelia.
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Stalin dies and is succeeded by Georgi Malenkov as prime minister and by Nikita Khrushchev as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.