Back to the USSR

Some events about the late Soviet Union from each decade of its existence

1918: The last Tsar Nikolai II and his family were murdered by Bolsheviks in

1918: The last Tsar Nikolai II and his family were murdered by Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg. The main reason for executions was the threat that the ‘whites’ would free him from during the civil war. Ekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk in 1924 in memory of Yakov Sverdlov, who was the main organizer of Tsar’s execution. The city reverted to the name of Ekaterinburg after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The city was founded as a fortress in 1721 and was named after the Empress Catherine I.

1922: was when Soviet Union was officially founded. Initially it comprised of 4 Republics initially. Those were Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SFSR, Byelorussian SSR and Transcaucasian SFSR. The latter consisted of what later became three separate SSRs of Armenia, Azerbaijan & Georgia in 1930. Five’ Central South’ republics were formed in 1920s and Baltic Republics and Moldova was annexed in 1940, to make the number of republics up to 15. From 1940-1956 there were also Finno-Karelian SSR in the area which the USSR annexed it from Finland, but It was dissolved due to the small number of inhabitants.

1934: Sergei Kirov a leading Communist was assassinated. This event acted as a trigger for the forthcoming purges in the Communist party. There were doubts about the assassination was organized by Stalin (no one has managed to prove it!). He used it as an excuse to create panic and to purge the Party, military and to instigate a reign of terror.

1940: Another assassination took place in Mexico, the victim was Leo Trotsky, Stalin’s former arch-rival in the communist party. His murderer was Ramon Mercader, who worked as his secretary. He was imprisoned for 20 years, and after that he was given his credits from Soviet Union- Hero of the USSR. Fanny Kaplan, Ukrainian Jewish woman, revolutionary and an early Soviet dissident tried to kill Lenin in 1918, but only managed to wound him. She was later executed in 1918.

1953: Two days after the death of Stalin, the Communist Party’s Newspaper ‘Pravda’ printed the members of the new Communist Committee by position. Earlier the members were listed Alphabetically. The 5 Marshals were:

1)     Georgy Malenkov-Chairman, who later organized a failed palace coup against Khurschev

2)     Lavrentiy Beria-most influential of Stalin’s secret police chiefs.

3)     Vyacheslav Molotov- Later Foreign Minister, who signed 373 lists of people condemned to execution during the ‘Great Purge’. The incendiary weapon Molotov Cocktail or Petrol Bomb is named after him

4)     Kliment Voroshilov-a close friend of Stalin and played an active role in the Russian Revolution. Series of tanks used in WW2 and 2 towns are named after him.

5)     Nikita Khurschev- who stunned the communist world with his denunciation of Stalin’s crimes and embarked on a policy of ‘de-Stalinization’.

1960: In the UN General Assembly Nikita Khurschev took off his shoes and repeatedly banged the desk with it. He first hit the desk with his watch, but it broke. Vodka drinking in public was in more in repertoire of Boris Yeltsin.

1972: The Moscow Summit meeting was between President Richard Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. It featured the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Treaty and Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.

1985-91: Mikhail Gorbachev was the eighth and final leader of Soviet Union. He believed significant reforms were necessary, withdrew from the Soviet-Afghan war, embarked on summits with the United States to limit nuclear weapons and to end the cold war. In 1988 he was awarded the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development. In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1991: There was an attempt to overthrow the government The ‘putschists’ made a deal with the first and only Vice President Gennady Yanayev for replacing him up as a substitute, during Gorbachev’s fictitious illness.

2003- Paul McCartney took the stage in Moscow’s Red Square and proceeded to rock the socks off Vladmir Putin and more than 20,000 Russians. The Beatles were not favored by the Communist Leaders as they were regarded as an example of ‘capitalist pop-culture’. Interestingly the song ‘Back in the U.S.S.R’ was the first track of the 1968 Double Album of the ‘The Beatles’, written by Paul McCartney and composed by John Lennon.

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