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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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Policy of "war communism" enunciated, with the state taking 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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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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The suppression of religion was one of the key parts in Stalin's 5-year plan. Religious property is confiscated, believers are harassed, and religion was ridiculed while atheism was propagated in schools.
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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. Collectivisation of agriculture begins; numerous relatively prosperous peasants, or Kulaks, killed; millions of peasant households eliminated and their property confiscated.
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Many believers of the Russian Orthodox Church had been killed or sent to labour camps. The number of churches had therefore reduced from 29,584 to fewer than 500.