State Socialism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba

  • Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet State

  • Vladimir I. Lenin, chairman of Council of People’s Commissars

  • War Communism or Civil War (1918-1921)

    Expropriation of private business and the nationalization of industry throughout Soviet Russia, and the forced requisition of surplus grain and other food products from the peasantry by the state.
    https://www.britannica.com/event/War-Communism
  • Soviet New Economic Policy (NEP) (1921-1928)

    Return to private ownership and management of most agriculture, retail trade, and small-scale light industry. The state retained control of heavy industry, transport, banking, and foreign trade. Money was reintroduced into the economy in 1922 (it had been abolished under War Communism). The peasantry were allowed to own and cultivate their own land, while paying taxes to the state.
    https://www.britannica.com/event/New-Economic-Policy-Soviet-history
  • Stalin, general secretary, Communist Party

  • Soviet Union or USSR

  • Lenin's death

  • Stalin consolidates power

  • Stalinist policy

    Centralised command economy, industrialisation, and collectivisation.
  • Famine (1932-1933)

  • Stalinist purges (1934-1939)

  • Second World War (1939-1945)

  • Cold War (1947-1989)

  • German Democratic Republic (GDR)

  • Stalin's death

  • Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary, Communist Party (1953-1964) and Soviet premier (1958-1964)

  • Janos Kadar, president of Hungary

  • Khrushchev's Secret Speech

    denounces Stalin's crimes
  • Cuban Revolution

  • Fidel Castro, Cuban Prime Minister

  • Cuba endorses socialism

  • Berlin Wall

  • Leonid Brezhnev, first secretary Communist Party (1964-1982)

  • Cuba's Sovietization (1971-1985)

  • Cuban elections

    In 1975, the Cuban Communist Party celebrates its first congress, gathers in a constituent assembly, and calls for elections, for the first time since 1952.
  • Yuri Andropov, Soviet premier (1982-1984)

  • Konstantin Chernenko, Soviet premier (1984-1985)

  • Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet Premier (1985-1991)

  • Cuba's Rectification Campaign

  • Cuba's Special Period