Russia/Soviet Union By joshuabowyer Period: 1914 to 1918 World War I 1916 Grigori Rasputin is assassinated in Russia Period: 1917 to 1923 Start of russian Civil war march 8, 1917, Vladimer Lenin starts a revolution Period: 1919 to 1921 Polish Soviet war starts, First red scare in America 1922 USSR forms in russia 1927 joseph stalin rises to power 1929 First Russian gulag opens 1938 The great purge ends after nearly 700,000 executions Period: 1939 to 1945 World War II 1943 Battle of Stalingrad fails Period: 1947 to 1989 Cold War 1951 soviet union creates atomic bombs 1953 Death a Joseph Stalin 1954 Soviets first to generate nuclear power 1955 Warsaw pact signed Period: 1955 to 1975 Vietnam war 1957 Sputnik launch 1959 End of most Russian gulags 1960 U-2 incedent causes tensions 1961 Rise of the Berlin wall 1962 Cuban missle crisis starts and ends 1964 Leonid Brezhnev ousts Khrushchev and assumes power in the Soviet Union 1964 Leonid Brezhnev ousts Khrushchev and assumes power in the Soviet Union 1970 Ratification of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Period: 1979 to 1989 Soviet Afghanistan war 1991 Independence of the former 15 soviet states 1991 Dissolution of the soviet union