Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime

CHRONOLOGY^*

1917

March 4: Ukrainian Rada formed

May 1: All-Russian Muslim Congress held in Moscow

June 10: Ukrainian Rada’s “Universal”

August 15: Council of Orthodox Church opens in the Moscow Kremlin

October: Tikhon elected Patriarch

November: Congress of Soviets of Turkestan bars Muslims from participation in government; Kokand government formed

December 6 (NS): Finland proclaims independence

December 11 (NS): Lithuania proclaims independence

December: Volunteer Army formed in the Don region

1918

January 12 (NS): Latvia proclaims independence

January 18: Soviet government repudiates all Russian debts

January 20: Communist decree on state-church relations

January 27 (February 9, NS): Tomsk Regional Council proclaims independence of Siberia

February 21: Volunteer Army begins “Ice March”

April 13: Kornilov killed, Denikin assumes command of Volunteer Army

April: National Center and Union for the Regeneration of Russia formed in Moscow

May: Volunteer Army recaptures Rostov and Novocherkassk; Communists begin partial conscription

May 30: Russia’s schools nationalized

June 8: Czech Legion captures Samara; Komuch formed

June 23: Volunteer Army begins Second Kuban campaign

July: Soviet government begins to draft ex-tsarist officers

July: non-Bolshevik newspapers and periodicals shut down

August 7: Czechs capture Kazan

September: formation of Directory; creation of Revvoensovet under Trotsky’s chairmanship

September 10: Latvians in Red service capture Kazan

October 8: Alekseev dies

October 24: SRs adopt “Chernov Manifesto”

October 26: Tikhon’s encyclical condemning Communist terror

November 17–18: Directory overthrown in Omsk; Kolchak proclaimed “Supreme Ruler”

November 23: first French and British landings in Novorossiisk

December: French landings in Odessa; Kolchak’s troops capture Perm

1919

January 3: Red Army takes Riga

January 5: Communist putsch in Germany

January–February: Mensheviks and SRs back Soviet regime against Whites and are readmitted to soviets

February 6: Red Army takes Kiev

March: beginning of Kolchak’s offensive; Bullitt mission

March 2–7: Communist International founded in Moscow

March: 9th Congress of Bolshevik party renamed (in 1918) Communist Party; creation of Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat

March 21: Communist regime installed in Hungary

April: French troops evacuate Russia; Kolchak’s troops approach Volga

April 28: beginning of Red counteroffensive against Kolchak

Spring: Volunteer Army occupies eastern Ukraine; first Iudenich offensive against Petrograd

June: Tukhachevskii’s Fifth Army penetrates Urals

June 12: Denikin recognizes Kolchak as Supreme Ruler

June 30: Wrangel captures Tsaritsyn

July: S. S. Kamenev appointed Commander of Red Army

July 3: Denikin’s “Moscow Directive”

July 24–25: Red Army takes Cheliabinsk

August: British cabinet reassesses aid to Whites

August 1: Communist regime in Hungary overthrown

August 31: Whites capture Kiev

August–September: Mamontov’s raid behind Red lines

August–September: worst anti-Jewish pogroms in the right-bank Ukraine

August–September: arrests and mass executions of National Center members

September 20: Whites capture Kursk

September–October: most Allied troops evacuate Murmansk and Archangel

October 7: “Final packet” of British aid to Denikin

October 11: Iudenich launches second offensive against Petrograd

October 13–14: Volunteer Army captures Orel

October 18–19: Red “Striking Force” attacks and mauls Volunteer divisions

October 20: Whites abandon Orel

October 21: Red counteroffensive against Iudenich begins

October 24: Budennyi’s cavalry captures Voronezh

November 8: Lloyd George’s Guildhall speech

November 14: Red Army enters Omsk; Kolchak departs for Irkutsk

November 15: Red cavalry captures Kastornoe

November 17: Whites abandon Kursk, begin disorganized retreat

November 26: decree on the “liquidation of illiteracy”

1920

Early January: socialists take over Irkutsk, declare Kolchak deposed, later that month turn city over to Bolsheviks

February 7: Kolchak executed

April 2: Denikin resigns, Wrangel takes command of southern White Army

April 6: Far Eastern Republic proclaimed

April 20: Kavbiuro formed

April 25: Polish invasion of the Ukraine

April 27: Communist coup in Baku: Azerbaijan sovietized

Spring: beginning of year-long, nationwide peasant rebellions

May: Krasin in London to open commercial negotiations

May 7: Poles take Kiev; Soviet government signs treaty with Georgia

June: Poles expelled from the Ukraine; Wrangel effects landings on the mainland

July 19: Second Congress of Comintern opens in Petrograd, then moves to Moscow

August: outbreak of anti-Communist rebellion in Tambov under Antonov mid-August: Red Army defeated at gates of Warsaw

September: Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku

October: autonomy of Proletkult abrogated

October 18: armistice with Poland

October 20: Red Army begins assault on the Crimea

November 14: Wrangel’s army evacuates to Constantinople

November 18: abortion legalized

December: Sovietization of Armenia

1921

February 9: outbreak of anti-Communist peasant rebellion in western Siberia

February 21: invasion of Georgia by Eleventh Red Army late February: mass strikes in Petrograd

February 28: mutiny at Kronshtadt

March: Tenth Congress of Communist Party; “factionalism” outlawed

March 15: abolition of prodrazvërstka

March 17: Kronshtadt captured by Red Army

Spring: beginning of secret collaboration between Red Army and the German Wehrmacht

May: Tukhachevskii pacifies Tambov

Summer–Fall: height of famine

August: Moscow requests foreign food aid; ARA begins relief

1922

February 6: Cheka renamed GPU

February 26: Moscow orders church to surrender consecrated vessels

March: Lenin orders all-out assault on church; Living Church created

April 3: Stalin appointed General Secretary of Communist Party

April–July: show “trials” of clergy in Moscow and Petrograd

April 16: Rapallo Treaty between Soviet Russia and Germany

May: Tikhon compelled to relinquish duties

May 25: Lenin suffers stroke

June 6: creation of central censorship bureau (Glavlit)

June 6–August 7: show trial of Socialists-Revolutionaries in Moscow

August 10: administrative exile reintroduced

August–September: hundreds of intellectuals exiled abroad

September 14: Politburo reprimands Trotsky

November: emission of gold-based chervonets

December: Fourth Congress of Comintern

December 15: Lenin suffers another stroke

Late December–early January: Lenin dictates “Testament” and “Notes on the Nationality Question”

1923

January-March: Lenin preoccupied with Georgia

March: trial of Catholic clergy in Petrograd

March 10: Lenin paralyzed

October 23: Trotsky reprimanded by Plenum of Party

December: Trotsky’s “New Course”

1924

January 21: Lenin’s death

^*Dates are given “Old Style” for events before February 1918, which in the twentieth century was thirteen days behind the Western calendar, and subsequently, “New Style,” which corresponds to the calendar in use in the West.