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Death of Lenin. Stalin survives the reading of the testament by the Central Commitee
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Trotsky was forced to resign his military offices.
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The Fourteenth Party Congress endorsed the leadership of Stalin and his rightist ally Nikolai Bukharin, soundly defeating the New Opposition faction of Kamenev and Zinoviev.
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Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Communist Party.
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First Five Year Plan: Stalin announced the beginning of state industrialisation of the Soviet economy.
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Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo.
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The Gulag was officially established.
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First Five-Year Plan: It was announced that the plan had been fulfilled.
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Elections to the Central Committee at the Seventeenth Party Congress revealed Sergey Kirov, the chief of the Leningrad Party, to be the most popular member.
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Kirov was murdered by Leonid Nikolaev, possibly at the behest of Stalin.
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Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov was reported to have mined over one hundred tons of coal in a single shift, sowing the seeds of the Stakhanovite movement.
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Moscow Trials: The Trial of the Sixteen, in which Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev were the primary defendants, began.
Moscow Trials: The defendants in the Trial of the Sixteen were executed. -
Moscow Trials: The Second Trial ended. Of seventeen defendants, all but four were sentenced to death.
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Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization: Tukhachevsky was executed, with eight other military leaders
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Great Purge: NKVD Order № 00447 was issued. The order established a new judicial method, the NKVD troika, and set nationwide quotas for the execution and enslavement of "anti-Soviet elements."
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Trial of the Twenty One: The third Moscow Trial, at which Bukharin was the primary defendant, began.
Trial of the Twenty One: The defendants were executed. -
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, promising mutual non-aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and agreeing to a division of much of Europe between those two countries.
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Soviet invasion of Poland (1939): The Red Army invaded Poland.
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Trotsky assassinated, by Stalin's agents, in Mexico City.
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Operation Barbarossa: Three million Axis soldiers invaded the Soviet Union.
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Siege of Leningrad: The German army cut the last land tie to Leningrad.
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Battle of Stalingrad: The German Luftwaffe began a bombing raid against Stalingrad.
Operation Uranus: The Soviet army began a pincer movement against the German forces besieging Stalingrad.
Operation Uranus: The German Sixth Army was surrounded. -
Operation Spark (1943): The Soviet army launched a military offensive to break the Siege of Leningrad.
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Battle of Stalingrad: The German Sixth Army surrendered.
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Stalin meets with Roosevelt and Churchill in Teheran
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Stalin meets with Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta
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Battle of Berlin: The defenders of Berlin surrendered to the Soviet Union.
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Soviets blockade East Berlin.
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Soviets explode their first atomic bomb.
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Sino-Soviet Treaty signed
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Announcement of Jewish "Doctors' Plot" against Stalin, plans for new wave of terror.
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Death of Stalin
