Timeline Russia 1945-1987
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1945 Jan 12,
Soviet forces began a huge offensive against the Germans in Eastern
Europe.
(AP, 1/12/98)
1945 Jan 13, The Red Army opened
an offensive in South Poland, crashing 25 miles through the German
lines.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1945 Jan 17, Soviet and Polish
forces liberated Warsaw during World War II.
(AP, 1/17/98)(HN, 1/17/99)
1945 Jan 17, Swedish diplomat
Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews,
disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody. Raoul Wallenberg was
jailed by the Soviets who believed that he was an American spy. He had
saved more than 20,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps. Wallenberg
was a graduate of the Univ. of Michigan and studied there from
1931-1935. In 2000 a Kremlin commission believed that he was shot in a
KGB prison.
(SFC, 5/5/96, p.A-7)(AP, 1/17/98)(MT, Spg. ‘99,
p.18)(SFC, 11/28/00, p.A18)
1945 Jan 19, The Red Army captured
Lodz, Krakow, and Tarnow.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1945 Jan 24, A German attempt to
relieve the besieged city of Budapest was finally halted by the Soviets.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1945 Jan 26, Soviet forces
liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. [see Jan 27]
(PC, 1992 ed, p.894)
1945 Jan 27, The Soviet army
arrived at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland, and found the Nazi
concentration camp and crematorium where 1.1 - 1.5 million people were
murdered. It is now believed that 1 million Jews were murdered here, up
to 75,000 Polish Christians, 21,000 Gypsies, and 15,000 Soviet
prisoners of war.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(AP, 1/27/98)
1945 Jan 28, The Red Army captured
Klaipeda, the last German-held Lithuanian city.
(LHC, 1/28/03)
1945 Feb 4-12, President
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader
Josef Stalin began a wartime conference at Yalta, in the southern
Ukraine.
(AP, 2/4/97)(WUD, 1994, p.1653)
1945 Feb 6, Russian Red Army
crossed the river Oder.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1945 Feb 11, President Roosevelt,
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin
signed the Yalta Agreement during World War II and adjourned.
(HN, 2/11/97)(AP, 2/11/97)
1945 Feb 13, During World War II,
the Soviets captured Budapest, Hungary, from the Germans ending a
50-day siege in which 159,000 people died.
(HN, 2/13/98)(AP, 2/13/98)(MC, 2/13/02)
1945 Feb 14, The siege of Budapest
ended as the Soviets took the city. Only 785 German and Hungarian
soldiers managed to escape.
(HN, 2/14/99)
1945 Feb 19, Ivan Kozhedub of the
Ukraine became the only Soviet pilot to shoot down a Messerschmitt
Me-262 jet fighter and, on April 19, 1945, he downed two Focke-Wulf
Fw-190s to bring his final tally to 62--the top Allied ace of the war.
He was the Allies’ top ace and one of only two Soviet fighter pilots to
be awarded the Gold Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union three times
during World War II. Ironically prevented from fighting because his
skill as a pilot made him more useful as an instructor, Kozhedub did
not fly his first combat mission until March 26, 1943.
(HNQ, 4//01)
1945 Mar 12, USSR returned
Transylvania to Romania.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Mar 30, The Soviet Union
invaded Austria during World War II.
(AP, 3/30/97) (HN, 3/30/98)
1945 Apr 9, The Red Army was
repulsed at the Seelow Heights on the outskirts of Berlin.
(HN, 4/9/00)
1945 Apr 10, In their second
attempt to take the Seelow Heights, near Berlin, the Red Army launched
numerous attacks against the defending Germans. The Soviets gain one
mile at the cost of 3,000 men killed and 368 tanks destroyed.
(HN, 4/10/00)
1945 Apr 11, After two frustrating
days of being repulsed and absorbing tremendous casualties, the Red
Army finally took the Seelow Heights north of Berlin.
(HN, 4/11/00)
1945 Apr 13, Vienna fell to Soviet
troops.
(HN, 4/13/99)
1945 Apr 15, The deadly battle for
Berlin began. The Seelow Heights posed the last natural barrier to
Berlin in April 1945 from an advancing Red Army. The rolling plains and
plateaus of the Seelow Heights were only 35 miles from the German
capital and were well defended. The battle, which raged for a week, was
extremely costly to both sides, leaving some 30,000 Red Army soldiers
and at least 80,000 Germans killed.
(HNQ, 4/16/99)
1945 Apr 21, Russian army arrived
at outskirts of Berlin.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1945 Apr 22, Soviet troops
liberated the concentration Camp at Sachsenhausen. Soviet secret police
then used the camp just north of Berlin to imprison many Nazis as well
as critics of the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany after the defeat
of Adolf Hitler's regime. In all, an estimated 60,000 people were sent
to "Special Camp No. 1" in 1945-50. In 2008 researchers finished
compiling a list of 11,890 Germans who died there.
(AP, 4/17/05)(AP, 3/6/08)
1945 Apr 23, The Soviet Army
fought its way into Berlin.
(HN, 4/23/99)
1945 Apr 25, During World War II,
U.S. and Soviet forces linked up at Torgau, on the Elbe River, in
central Europe, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany.
(AP, 4/25/97)(HN, 4/25/98)
1945 Apr 30, Red Army opened an
attack on German Reichstag building in Berlin.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1945 Apr 30, The Russian Army
freed the Ravensbrueck concentration camp. They found 3,000 sickly
prisoners who had been unable to make the march north under the SS.
(AP, 4/17/05)
1945 May 2, The Soviet Union
announced the fall of Berlin and the Allies announced the surrender of
Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria. The Russians took Berlin
after 12 days of fierce house-to-house fighting. Yevgeny Khaldei
(d.1997 at 80), soldier-photographer, made pictures of Soviet soldiers
hoisting the red flag over the Reichstag in Berlin.
(HFA, '96, p.30)(AP, 5/2/97) (SFC, 10/11/97,
p.A19)(HN, 5/2/98)
1945 May 8, Germany surrendered
and Victory in Europe was achieved by the allies. Marshal Wilhelm
Keitel surrenders to Marshal Zhukov. The day is commemorated as V-E
Day. President Truman announced in a radio address that World War II
had ended in Europe.
(WSJ, 5/5/95, p.A-12)(AP, 5/8/97)(MC, 5/8/02)
1945 May 9, Soviet citizens
celebrated their WW II victory in Europe at Red Square. This became an
annual holiday to commemorate the 27 million Soviet citizens who died
in the war.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.45)
1945 May 10, Russian troops
occupied Prague.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1945 Jun 4, US, Russia, England
& France agreed to split occupied Germany.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1945 Jun 29, Ruthenia, formerly in
Czechoslovakia, became part of Ukrainian SSR.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1945 Aug 2, President Truman,
Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee
concluded the Potsdam conference.
(AP, 8/2/97)
1945 Aug 8, The Soviet Union
declared war against Japan. 1.5 million Soviet troops launched a
massive surprise attack (August Storm) against Japanese occupation
forces in northern China and Korea. Within days, Tokyo's million-man
army in the region had collapsed in one of the greatest military
defeats in history.
(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A19)(AP, 8/8/97)(AP, 8/6/05)
1945 Aug 16, The communist
dominated Polish government signed a treaty with the USSR to formally
cede eastern territories, including Galicia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_areas_annexed_by_the_Soviet_Union)(Econ,
7/7/07, p.51)
1945 Aug 22, Soviet troops landed
at Port Arthur and Dairen on the Kwangtung Peninsula in China.
(HN, 8/22/98)
1945 Sep 8, Korea was partitioned
by the Soviet Union and the United States.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1945 Nov 30, Russian forces took
Danzig, and invaded Austria.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1945 The Red Army took
Koenigsberg, dynamited the city and killed or expelled the German
population. They renamed it Kaliningrad after Mikhail Kalinin, the
Soviet figurehead president.
(Econ, 11/22/03, p.7S)
1945 Russian code clerk Igor
Gouzenko defected to Canada and Elizabeth Bentley changed her role from
Soviet courier to FBI informant. They helped the West gain an
understanding of Soviet spy rings in North America. In 2003 Lauren
Kessler authored "Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered
in the McCarthy Era."
(WSJ, 9/22/99, p.A22)(SSFC, 8/17/03, p.M2)
1945 Russia’s Operation
Tarantella, designed to reach emigres who fled after the Communist
takeover, turned Viktor Bogomolets back to Moscow. He became a double
agent passing British secrets to top-tier Soviet operatives. This was
made public in 2007.
(Reuters, 4/2/07)
1945 The Soviet Union seized the
Kurile islands from Japan.
(SFC, 8/14/01, p.A7)
1945 The Soviets presented
American ambassador Averell Harriman a plaque that contained a
listening device designed by Leon Theremin. Harriman hung the seal over
his desk and the implanted device was not discovered until 1952.
(ON, 11/01, p.8)
1945 The Soviet Army adopted the
SKS-45, a semi-automatic rifle adopted. It fired the same 7.62x39mm
round as the AK-47, which was a shortened, lighter round that was the
standard Soviet cartridge of World War II. This meant the rifle firing
the round could be lighter, and the soldier could carry more
ammunition. Although Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA)
soldiers in Vietnam preferred the fully-automatic AK-47, the SKS was an
effective weapon that many of them carried during the Vietnam war.
(HNQ, 6/3/02)
1946 Feb 9, Stalin announced the
new five-year plan for the U.S.S.R., calling for production boosts of
50 percent.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1946 Feb 22, George Kennan
(1904-2005) sent his “Long Telegram,” actually 5 separate cables, from
Moscow to the US State Dept. in Washington explaining that the Soviet
regime was among other things fundamentally insecure, opposed to the
US, and held designs on the world for violent destabilization.
(Econ, 3/26/05, p.85)
1946 Jul 8, Aleksander V.
Aleksandrov (63), Russian composer, conductor, died.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1946 Aug 21, Lev Alburt, USSR
International Chess Master (1976), was born.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1946 Oct 28, German rocket
engineers began work in the USSR.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1947 Feb 5, The Soviet Union and
Great Britain rejected terms for an American trusteeship over Japanese
Pacific Isles.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1947 Feb 17, The Voice of America
began broadcasting to the Soviet Union.
(AP, 2/17/98)
1947 Mar 10, The Big Four met in
Moscow to discuss Germany.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1947 May 31, Communists grabbed
power in Hungary.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1947 Jun 16, Pravda denounced the
Marshall Plan.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1947 cJun Raoul Wallenberg, jailed
by the Soviets who believed that he was an American spy, was executed
at the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. He had saved more than 20,000
Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps. A 2001 Swedish report failed to
confirm his death.
(SFC, 5/5/96, p.A-7)(SFC, 12/23/00, p.A12)(SFC,
1/13/01, p.A14)
1947 Jul 3, Soviet Union didn't
partake in the Marshall Plan.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1947 Jul, George Kennan in his
article "The Sources of Soviet Conflict" in the quarterly Foreign
Affairs, which he signed "X," set out the U.S. policy of containment of
the Soviet Union. Kennan, born in Milwaukee on February 16, 1904,
stated in the article: "It is clear the main element of any U.S. policy
towards the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm
and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies…"
(HNQ, 6/17/98)(WSJ, 2/3/04, p.A1)
1947 Nov 26, France expelled 19
Soviet citizens, charging intervention in internal affairs.
(HN, 11/26/98)
1947 In Russia Sgt. Mikhail
Kalashnikov (b.1919) created the AK-47 automatic rifle. In 2008 Michael
Hodges authored AK 47: The Story of a Gun.”
(SFC,11/3/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 6/3/08, p.A19)
1947 Isaiah Oggins, American-born
graduate of Columbia Univ. and Soviet spy, was executed under the
direction of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. In 2008 Andrew Meier
authored “The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s Secret Service.”
(WSJ, 9/25/08, p.A19)
1948 Jan 16, Anatoli Yakovlevich
Solovyov, cosmonaut (TM-5,9,15,26, STS 71), was born in Riga, Latvia.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1948 Jan 23, The Soviets refused
UN entry into North Korea to administer elections.
(HN, 1/23/99)
1948 Feb 11, Sergei Eisenstein
(b.1898 in Latvia), Russian film director, died. He pioneered the
dialectic montage where 2 films shots were arranged to clash in order
to produce an emotional or intellectual response in the viewer. In 1999
Ronald Bergan published the biography: "Sergei Eisenstein: A Life In
Conflict."
(SFEC, 5/2/99, BR p.1,10)(MC, 2/11/02)
1948 Mar 31, Soviets, in Germany,
began controlling the Western trains headed toward Berlin.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1948 Jun 7, The Communists
completed their takeover of Czechoslovakia with the resignation of
President Eduard Benes.
(AP, 6/7/97)
1948 Jun 19, USSR blocked access
road to West Berlin.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.A10)(DT, 6/19/97)
1948 Jun 24, Communist forces with
30 military divisions cut off all land and water routes between West
Germany and West Berlin, prompting the United States to organize the
massive Berlin airlift. Gen’l. Lucius Clay, the local American
commander, ordered an air supply effort.
(AP, 6/24/97)(SFC, 5/12/98, p.A12)
1948 Jun 25, The Soviet Union
tightened its blockade of Berlin by intercepting river barges heading
for the city.
(HN, 6/25/98)
1948 July 2, At a meeting in Paris
among the foreign ministers of Great Britain, France and the Soviet
Union, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov walked out of the meeting and
called the Marshall Plan—an American proposal for economic aid—an
"imperialist" plot for the enslavement of Europe. Put forward by
Secretary of State George E. Marshall, the Marshall Plan was a
comprehensive European recovery program supported by the U.S. The
Soviets and their satellites did not attend the Marshall Plan
Conference that convened July 12 in Paris. It was attended by 16
European nations and established the Committee for European Economic
Cooperation.
(HNQ, 9/28/99)
1948 Jul 8, The 500th anniversary
of the Russian orthodox church was celebrated in Moscow.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1948 Jul, In the USSR Solomon
Mikhoels, Yiddish actor and head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
(JAC), was assassinated on orders from Stalin. In Nov. the JAC was
disbanded.
(WSJ, 5/8/01, p.A24)(WSJ, 1/19/08, p.W8)
1948 Aug 20, The United States
ordered the expulsion of the Soviet Consul General in New York, Jacob
Lomakin, accusing him of attempting to return two consular employees to
the Soviet Union against their will.
(AP, 8/20/98)
1948 Sep 19, Moscow announced it
would withdraw all soldiers from Korea by the end of the year.
(HN, 9/19/98)
1948 Oct 6, A 7.3 earthquake hit
Ashgebat, Turkeminstan, and killed an estimated 110,000 people.
Stalinist media at the time claimed only 35,000 deaths.
(http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/eqsmosde.html)
1948 Oct 16, Moscow Jews held a
demonstration honoring Israeli ambassador Golda Meir.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1948 Nov 30, Communists completed
the division of Berlin, installing the government in the Soviet sector.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1948 In the Leningrad Affair a
group of high officials was purged following the death of Andrei
Zdhanov.
(SFC, 6/10/00, p.A12)
1948 Russian engineers from Ozersk
in the Chelyabinsk region dumped radioactive waste into the Techa River
contaminating 100,000 people in farming villages downstream.
(WSJ, 9/26/05, p.A16)
1948 The Mayak plant in the
Chelyabinsk region of the southern Urals began processing weapons grade
plutonium. By 1997 it had released more than 5 times the radioactivity
of all above-ground atomic tests put together. Substances such as
strontium-90 and cesium-137 had seeped into waterways and ground water
and traces were detected in the Arctic Ocean over 600 miles away.
(SFC,12/27/97, p.A15)(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A8)
1949 Jan 25, "Comecon," or the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, was the Soviet Union’s attempt
to create a program that would be the Communist equivalent of the
Marshall Plan, an American program to rebuild postwar western Europe.
After the formal division of Germany into east and west, the Soviets
attempted to create the organization to replicate for Eastern Europe
what the Marshall Plan was to do for the west. The Soviet-backed
organization started with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland,
and Romania becoming founding members (in addition to the Soviet
Union). Albania and East Germany joined shortly thereafter. Comecon was
never able to match the effectiveness of the American program because
of the lack of resources in the weaker Communist countries and
inflexible Soviet leadership concerned primarily with strengthening the
Soviet Union. The organization, which sought coordination between the
nations’ centrally-planned economies lasted until 1990 when the
democratization movements in eastern Europe made Comecon's purpose
moot. In 1991, Comecon was renamed the Organization for International
Economic Cooperation.
(HNQ, 6/30/99)(HNQ, 1/22/01)
1949 Feb 14, The United States
charged the U.S.S.R. with interning up to 14 million in labor camps.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1949 Mar 4, In the USSR foreign
minister V.M. Molotov was replaced by A. Vishinsky and Minister of
Defense Marshal N.A. Bulganin was replaced by Marshal A.M.
Vassilievsky. Molotov and Bulganin continued as members of the
politburo.
(EWH, 1968, p.1197)(TOH, 1982, p.1949)
1949 Mar 19, The Soviet People's
Council signed the constitution of the German Democratic Republic, and
declared that the North Atlantic Treaty was merely a war weapon.
(HN, 3/19/98)
1949 Mar 25, Soviet occupiers of
Lithuania began Operation "Priboj," a 2nd major deportation program
(Mar 25-28).
(LHC, 3/25/03)
1949 Mar, Some 20,000 Estonian
civilians were rounded up and deported to Siberia under orders from
Joseph Stalin.
(SFC, 4/3/04, p.A10)
1949 May 12, The Soviet Union
announced an end to the Berlin blockade. [see Sep 30, 1949]
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.A10)(HN,
5/12/98)
1949 May 27, Russians stopped
train traffic to and from West Berlin.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1949 Jul 2, Premier Georgi
Dimitrov, the founding leader of Bulgarian communism, died in Moscow
while undergoing medical treatment. His remains were placed in a marble
mausoleum in Sophia. He was succeeded by Vassil Kolarov. In 2003 Ivo
Banac edited "The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov."
(EWH, 1968, p.1194)(SFC, 9/10/99, p.A12)(WSJ,
6/6/03, p.W9)
1949 Aug
29, The USSR successfully detonated its first atomic bomb at
Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. It was a copy of the Fat Man bomb and had
a yield of 21 kilotons.
(www.atomicarchive.com/Timeline/Time1940.shtml)
1949 Sep 3, A US Air Force B-29
detected a radioactive cloud over the Pacific, which indicated that the
Soviets had detonated an atomic device.
(WSJ, 10/11/05, p.D8)
1949 Sep 12, Irina Rodnina, USSR,
pairs figure skater (Olympic-gold-1972, 76, 80), was born.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1949 Sep 23, US Pres. Truman
announced that the Soviet Union was exploding atomic bombs thus
breaking the US atomic monopoly.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)
1949 Sep 27, The USSR repudiated
its 1945 treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia.
(EWH, 1968, p.1197)
1949 Sep 30, The Berlin airlift
ended its operation after 277,264 flights. Through accidents 31
Americans lost their lives in support of the airlift. The Berlin
Airlift, which began on June 26, 1948, and lasted 321 days, consisted
of 272,264 flights by British and American airmen. They transported
some 2.3 million tons of food to supply the 2.1 million residents of
the blockaded portion of the city.
(EWH, 1968, p.1180)(AP, 9/30/97)(SFC, 5/12/98,
p.A14)(HNQ, 7/9/98)
1949 Oct 2, USSR recognized the
People's Republic of China.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1949 Nov 25, [Boris] Alexander
Godunov, dancer and actor (Die Hard), was born in Sakhalin, USSR.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1949 Dec 16, Chinese Communist
leader Mao Tse-tung was received at the Kremlin in Moscow.
(HN, 12/16/98)
1949 Dec 31, Stalin’s 70th
birthday was the occasion for a world-wide Communist celebration.
Several Stalin "Peace prizes" were announced as part of the Soviet
"peace offensive" of the cold war.
(EWH, 1968, p.1197)
1949 George Orwell wrote his novel
"Nineteen Eighty-Four." He was inspired by the Russian author Yevgeny
Zamyatin, who wrote an antiutopian novel warning against intoxication
with technology.
(TOH, 1982, p.1949)(WSJ, 11/4/98, p.A12)
1949-1951 The Mayak nuclear plant in the Chelyabinsk
region of the southern Urals dumped some 228 million cubic feet of
toxic nuclear waste into the Techa River. People in the region started
dying in the early 1950s and dumping stopped.
(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A8)
1949-1951 In Moldova SSR 2 waves of deportations were
carried out, with some 40,000 Moldovans sent to Siberia and what is now
Kazakhstan.
(AP, 6/13/06)
1949-1956 Four major Soviet nuclear tests were
carried out near Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. Higher than expected
mutation rates on families in the area and their children were reported
in 2002.
(SFC, 2/8/02, p.A14)
1949-1989 Nuclear tests were carried out by the
Soviets and reportedly contaminated some 500,000 local people. It was
feared that nuclear waste left in boreholes and cavities beneath the
surface may contaminate ground water and affect agriculture.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A19)
1950 Feb 15, Joseph Stalin and Mao
Tse-tung signed a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1950 Mar 1, USSR issued golden
rubles.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1950 Mar 8, Marshall Voroshilov of
the USSR announced the Soviet Union had developed an atomic bomb. [see
August 29, 1949]
(PC, 1992 ed, p.922)
1950 Mar 16, Acheson called for a
seven-point cooperation plan with the Russians.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1950 Apr 8, A US Navy Privateer
airplane flew from Wiesbaden, West Germany, to spy over the Soviet
Union with 10 people on board. Soviet reconnaissance spotted the plane
over Latvia and shot it down.
(SFEC,12/21/97,
p.A26)(www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/baltic_incident.html)
1950 May 8, The US Government
convinced that neither national independence nor democratic evolution
exist in any area dominated by Soviet imperialism, considers the
situation to be such as to warrant its according economic aid and
military equipment to the Associated State of Indochina and to France
in order to assist them in restoring stability and permitting these
states to pursue their peaceful and democratic development.
(www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent1.html)
1950 Aug 8, Nicolai Yakovlevich
Miaskovsky (b.1891), Russian composer, died.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0583975/)
1950 Oct 2, Mao Tse Tung sent a
telegram to Stalin. China intervened in Korea.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1950 Joel Barr (d.1998 at 82), an
electronics engineer, defected to Czechoslovakia and later settled in
the Soviet Union. He was linked to Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg and was
suspected of passing secret technology information to the Soviets.
Alfred Sarant, another electronics engineer, also defected and the two
men were instrumental in developing microelectronics and the computer
industry in the Soviet Union.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.D10)
1950 The NSC-68 document by Paul
Nitze (1907-2004) called for containment of the Soviet Union and the
building up of American nuclear forces. The 1958 document laid the
foundation for the strategy of global containment.
(WSJ, 1/21/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 11/28/99, BR p.3)(SFC,
10/21/04, p.B7)
1951 Feb 16, Stalin contended that
the U.N. was becoming the weapon of aggressive war.
(HN, 2/16/98)
1951 May 23, Anatoli Karpov, world
chess champion (1975-85), was born in the USSR.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1951 Jun 23, Soviet U.N. delegate
Jacob Malik proposed cease-fire discussions in the Korean War.
(HN, 6/23/98)
1951 Jun 23, British diplomats and
Soviet spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean fled to the USSR.
(MC, 6/23/02)
1951 Jun 26, The Soviet Union
proposed a cease-fire in the Korean War.
(HN, 6/26/98)
1951 Jun 29, The United States
invited the Soviet Union to the Korean peace talks on a ship in Wonson
Harbor.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1951 Sep 24, The Soviet Union
conducted its 2nd nuclear test.
(http://zvis.com/nuclear/ndb/ussrnuks.shtml)
1951 Oct 6, Stalin proclaimed
Russia has an atom bomb.
(MC, 10/6/01)
1951 The nuclear weapons research
facility near Nizhzny Novgorod was established by Yuli Khariton
(1904-1996).
(SFC, 12/20/96, p.B6)
1951-1956 There were 9 US reconnaissance aircraft
lost and believed shot down by Soviet forces in and near the Russian
Far East during this period with 77 crew members lost.
(AP, 9/10/07)
1952 Mar 25, The U.S., Britain,
and France rejected the Soviet proposal for an armed, reunified,
neutral Germany.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1952 Jun 16, Soviet Fighters shot
down a Swedish Catalina reconnaissance flight.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1952 Aug 12, In the USSR 13 former
members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) were executed
following mock trials.
(WSJ, 1/19/08,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Anti-Fascist_Committee)
1952 Aug 20, Russia's Stalin met
China's Chou Enlai.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1952 Oct 7, Vladimir Putin,
president of Russia (2000-), was born in Leningrad. He became aide to
reformist Leningrad Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, then deputy mayor in 1994.
Became President Boris Yeltsin's deputy chief of staff in 1996; in 1998
became head of Federal Security Service, KGB's main successor.
Appointed prime minister in August 1999.
(AP, 3/14/04)
1952 A trail was held for 15
leading Jewish writers, intellectuals and scientists, who were
associated with the Anti-Fascist Committee. In 2001 Joshua Rubenstein
and Vladimir P. Naumov edited the transcripts and published "Stalin’s
Secret Pogrom."
(WSJ, 5/8/01, p.A24)
1953 Jan, In Russia leaders of the
alleged Jewish "Doctor’s Plot" were arrested. They were accused of
conspiring to murder the Soviet leadership. In 2003 Jonathan Brent and
Vladimir P. Naumov authored "Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the
Jewish Doctors."
(WSJ, 5/8/01, p.A24)(Econ, 7/26/03, p.78)
1953 Feb 12, The Soviets broke off
diplomatic relations with Israel after the bombing of Soviet legation.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1953 Feb 28, Stalin met with
Beria, Bulganin, Khrushchev & Malenkov.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1953 Mar 5, Russian Premier Joseph
Stalin died at age 73 after 29 years in power. After his death the
Chechens were allowed to return home. In 1973 Prof. Adam B. Ulam of
Harvard Univ. authored "Stalin: The Man and His Era." In 2003 Simon
Sebag Montefiore authored "Stalin : The court of the Red Tsar." In 2004
Robert Service authored “Stalin: A Biography.”
(AP, 3/5/98)(SFC, 4/1/00, p.A26)(Econ, 7/26/03,
p.78)(Econ, 1/8/05, p.74)
1953 Mar 5, Sergei Prokofiev (61),
Russian composer (Peter and the wolf), died in Moscow.
(AP, 3/5/04)
1953 Mar 6, Georgi Malenkov
(b.1902) took over as premier of the USSR. Leadership was actually in
the hands of a collective presidium that included Lavrenti P. Beria
(b.1899), Vyacheslav Molotov (b.1890), Nikolai A. Bulganin (b.1895) and
Lazar M. Kaganovich (b.1893).
(HN, 3/6/98)(WUD, 1994, p.1684)
1953 Mar 9, Josef Stalin was
buried in Moscow.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1953 Mar 14, Nikita Khrushchev
succeeded Malenkov as secretary of the Communist Party. [see Mar 20]
(MC, 3/14/02)
1953 Mar 20, Khrushchev replaced
Malenkov as the Secretary of the Communist Party. [see Mar 14]
(HN, 3/20/98)
1953 Jun 26, Lavrenti Beria,
Russian vice-premier, interior minister, intelligence chief, was
arrested. [see Jul 10]
(MC, 6/26/02)
1953 Jul 10, Pravda reported that
Lavrenti P. Beria, Stalin's ruthless chief of intelligence and member
of the Soviet Presidium (1899-1953), had been ousted and arrested. [see
Jun 26]
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(MC, 7/10/02)
1953 Jul 20, USSR and Israel
recovered diplomatic relations.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1953 Aug 8, In Russia Georgi
Malenkov reported the possession of hydrogen bomb.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1953 Aug 12, The Soviet Union
conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
(AP, 8/12/97)
1953 Aug 20, The Soviet Union
publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
(AP, 8/20/97)
1953 Sep 12, Nikita Khrushchev
became the 1st Secretary of USSR Communist Party. His glass and marble
Palace of Congresses obliterated the last vestiges of the 17th century
palace of Tsarina Natalie Kirilovna Naryshkina, the mother of Peter the
Great.
(MC, 9/12/01)(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.33)
1953 Sep 13, Nikita Khrushchev
(b.1894) was elected First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s
Central Committee. [see Sep 12]
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)
1953 Dec 23, Lavrenti P. Beria,
Soviet minister of internal security, was executed.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1953 USSR Lt. Gen’l. Pavel
Sudoplatov, spy, was arrested after the death of Stalin and sent to the
Gulag.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A21)
1953 Olga Ivinskaya was released
from prison and moved near to Boris Pasternak’s dacha in the writer’s
colony Peredelkino and became his secretary and literary agent.
(SFC,11/27/97, p.B3)
1954 Apr 21, Gyorgy Malenkov
became premier of USSR.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1954 May 7, US, Great-Britain and
France rejected Russian membership in NATO.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1954 Jun 27, The 1st atomic power
station opened near Moscow at Obninsk, Russia.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1954 Sep 6, A US plane was shot
down above Siberia.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1954 Nov 2, Andrei Y. Vishinsky
(b. 1883) died. Jacob A. Malik succeeded him as the chief Soviet
delegate to the UN and as First Deputy Foreign Minister of the USSR.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)
1954 Nov 26, Jonas Zemaitis
(b.1909), a founder of the Lithuanian independence movement and
presidium head, was shot to death in Moscow.
(LHC, 3/15/03)
1954 The Soviet Union and Iran
negotiated the Astara-Hosseingholi line to mark their boundary on the
Caspian Sea.
(WSJ, 8/3/01, p.A2)
1954 Russian conducted the Totsk
nuclear test involving ground troops.
(SFEC, 10/27/96, p.A17)
1954 In Uzbekistan the Soviet
Union established a biological weapons test site on Vozrozhdeniye
Island in the Aral Sea.
(SFC, 6/2/99, p.A11)
1954 The Crimea was ceded to
Ukraine as a gift from Russia by Nikita Khrushchev. In 2004 ethnic
Russian made up a majority of the population.
(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.A8)(WSJ, 12/21/04, p.A14)
1954 The Cheka was reorganized as
the KGB.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.5)
1954 In Australia Evdokia Petrov
(d.2002), Soviet Union spy, was abducted by Soviet agents after she and
her husband Vladimir Petrov (d.1991), the third secretary at the Soviet
embassy in Australia, defected. Australian police snatched her back as
her plane stopped for fuel in Darwin.
(AP, 7/26/02)
1955 Jan 31, A document thus dated
stated that Yuri Rastvorov, a Soviet defector, told Eisenhower
administration officials in a private Jan 28 meeting that US and other
UN POWs were held in Siberia during the 1950-1953 Korean War.
(SFEC, 5/5/96, World p.1)
1955 Feb 8, Malenkov resigned as
USSR premier. Bulganin replaced him.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1955 Mar 25, E. Germany was
granted full sovereignty by occupying power, USSR.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1955 May 14, Representatives from
eight Communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, signed the
Warsaw Pact in Poland.
(AP, 5/14/97)
1955 May 26, Khrushchev arrived in
Belgrade.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1955 Jun 24, Soviet MIG’s down a
lightly armed US Navy patrol plane over the Bering Strait. Russia’s
foreign minister V.M. Molotov expressed his country’s regrets the next
day.
(HN, 6/24/98)(SFC, 6/24/05, p.F7)
1955 Jun 29, The Soviet Union sent
tanks to Pozan, Poland, to put down anti-Communist demonstrations.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1955 Jul 21, During the Geneva
summit, President Eisenhower presented his "open skies" proposal under
which the United States and the Soviet Union would trade information on
each other's military facilities and allow aerial reconnaissance.
(AP, 7/21/07)
1955 Aug 25, Last Soviet forces
left Austria.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1955 Oct 26, Austria, under
request by Russia, promulgated a constitutional law of perpetual
neutrality.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-33385/Austria)(Econ,
11/24/07, SR p.8)
1955 Marshal Georgi
Konstantinovich Zhukov (d.1974) was named defense minister. After
Stalin‘s death in 1953 he was brought back to power as deputy defense
minister. He is best known for his overall command of the Soviet army
in World War II. Zhukov played a major role in the defeat of Germany
and was in direct command of the forces that repulsed German army
attacks on Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, and the forces that
captured Berlin. Zhukov served in the czar‘s army in WWI and was
decorated for bravery. In the civil war that followed the 1917 Russian
Revolution, he served in the Bolsheviks‘ Red Army. After WWII he fell
out of Josef Stalin‘s favor and was given minor commands.
(HNQ, 10/13/99)
1955 The USSR lifted a ban on
abortion that had been imposed by Stalin in 1936.
(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.A11)
1955-1958 Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bulganin served as
Premier.
(WUD, 1994, p.195)
1956 Jan 25, Khrushchev said that
he believed that Eisenhower was sincere in his efforts to abolish war.
(HN, 1/25/99)
1956 Feb 8, U.S. banned the
launching of weather balloons because of Soviet complaints.
(HN, 2/8/98)
1956 Feb 14-25, Khrushchev
denounced Stalin at the 20th Communist Party Congress at Moscow. [see
Feb 23, 25]
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(TOH, 1982, p.1956)(EWH, 1968,
p.1198)
1956 Feb 23, Russian party leader
Nikita Khrushchev attacked the memory of Stalin. [see Feb 14, 25]
(MC, 2/23/02)
1956 Feb 25, Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev harshly criticized the late Josef Stalin in a speech before
a Communist Party congress in Moscow. Stalin was secretly disavowed by
Khrushchev at a party congress for promoting the "cult of the
individual." [see Feb 14, 23]
(AP, 2/25/98)(HN, 2/25/01)
1956 Mar 20, Mount Bezymianny on
Kamchatka Peninsula, USSR, exploded.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1956 Mar 23, Soviet students
protested the campaign to desanctify Stalin.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1956 Jun 4, A speech by Khrushchev
blasting Stalin was made public.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1956 Oct 23, An anti-Stalinist
revolt began in Hungary. As the revolution spread, Soviet forces
started entering the country, and the uprising was put down within
weeks. In 2001 Bela Liptak authored "A Testament of Revolution." In
2006 three books were published that covered Hungary’s October
Revolution: “Failed Illusions” by Charles Gati; “Journey to a
Revolution” by Michael Korda; and Viktor Sebestyen’s “Twelve Days: The
Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.”
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.A8)(WSJ, 6/19/01, p.A20)(WSJ,
10/20/06, p.W4)(Econ, 10/21/06, p.94)(AP, 10/23/07)
1956 Oct 24, Soviet troops invaded
Hungary and Imre Nagy became PM of Hungary.
(http://tinyurl.com/yydkfe)
1956 Nov 2, Hungary appealed for
UN assistance against Soviet invasion. The Soviets chose Janos Kadar to
form a counter-government.
(http://tinyurl.com/yydkfe)
1956 Nov 4, Russian troops and
tanks attacked Budapest and crushed the Hungarian revolt under Premier
Imre Nagy. Soviet troops marched into the country. Martial law was
proclaimed and mass arrests followed. The UN censured the USSR. The
repression was organized by Yuri Andropov who later became Chief of the
KGB in 1967. 25,000 people were killed. Janos Kadar was installed by
the Soviet Union as head of Hungary's Communist Party.
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-12)(SFC, 10/23/96, p.A8)(WSJ,
12/27/96, p.A5)(AP, 5/22/98)
1956 Nov 8, UN demanded USSR leave
Hungary.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1956 Nov 17, Soviet Sec. Gen.
Nikita Khrushchev told Western diplomats "We will bury you." A later
translation of his statement quoted the phrase as “be present at the
funeral” of the West.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F3)(Econ, 8/11/07, p.14)
1956 Khrushchev unveiled the city
of Dubna and its Joint Institute for Nuclear Studies as the locus of
basic research into atomic physics.
(SFC, 12/31/00, p.B5)
1956 Yuri Andropov organized the
repression of the Hungarian Revolution.
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-12)
1956-58 The Soviet Union provided intermediate-range
ballistic missile to China for study.
(AP, 10/15/03)
1957 Feb 15, Andrei Gromyko
replaced Dmitri T. Shepilov as the Soviet Foreign Minister.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1957 Mar 12, German DR accepted 22
Russian armed divisions.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1957 Jul 14, Soviet steamer
"Eshghbad" sank in Caspian Sea and 270 drowned.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1957 Jul 26, USSR launched the 1st
intercontinental multistage ballistic missile.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1957 Aug 26, The Soviet Union
announced it had successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic
missile.
(AP, 8/26/97)
1957 Oct 4, The Space Age and
"space race" began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik (traveler), the
first man-made space satellite. The satellite, built by Valentin
Glushko, weighed 184 pounds and was launched by a converted
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Sputnik, developed under the
chief scientist Sergei Korolyov, orbited the earth every 96 minutes at
a maximum height of 584 miles. The event was timed to celebrate the
40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. In 1958, it reentered the
earth's atmosphere and burned up. It was followed by 9 other Sputnik
spacecraft.
(WSJ, 10/7/96, p.B4)(SFC, 8/2/97, p.A12)(SFEC,
9/28/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 10/3/97, p.A8)(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(AP,
10/1/07)
1957 Oct 26, The Russian
government announced that Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the nation's most
prominent military hero, had been relieved of his duties as Minister of
Defense. Khrushchev accused Zhukov of promoting his own "cult of
personality" and saw him as a threat to his own popularity.
(AP, 10/26/97)(HN, 10/26/98)
1957 Nov 3, The Soviet Union
launched into orbit Sputnik Two, the second manmade satellite; a dog on
board named Laika, the first animal in space, was sacrificed in the
experiment. Sputnik 2 remained in orbit another 162 days before burning
up. Safe reentry process had not yet been developed.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)(AP, 11/3/97)(HN, 11/3/98)(MC,
11/3/01)
1957 Nov 15, Soviet Premier
Khrushchev asserted Soviet superiority in missiles, challenging the
U.S. to a rocket-range shooting match.
(HN, 11/15/98)
1957 Dmitri Shostakovich composed
his 11th Symphony: "The Year 1905," a reflection on the brutality
leading to the 1905 revolution.
(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.D7)
1957 East-West Games were held in
Moscow.
(SFC, 9/21/04, p.B7)
1957 Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev allowed the Chechens back to the Caucasus and the
Checheno-Ingush republic was set up.
(SFC, 5/13/97, p.A12)
1957 A nuclear waste container
exploded at the Mayak plant in the Chelyabinsk region of the southern
Urals and 20 million curies of deadly strontium and cesium were
released. This was about 40% of the amount later released at Chernobyl.
Some 9,200 square miles were contaminated.
(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A8)(SFC, 8/18/01, p.E1)
1958 Jan 6, Moscow announced a
reduction in its armed forces by 300,000.
(HN, 1/6/99)
1958 Jan 21, The Soviet Union
called for a ban on nuclear arms in Baghdad Pact countries.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1958 Mar 31, Moscow declared a
halt on all atomic tests and asked other nations to follow.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1958 Apr 13, Van Cliburn became
the first American to win the Tchaikovsky International Piano Contest
in Moscow. Lev Vlasenko (1929-1996) took 2nd place.
(SFC, 7/6/96, p.E3) (TMC, 1994, p.1958) (SFC,
8/27/96, p.A17)(AP, 4/13/97)
1958 Apr 14, Sputnik 2 (with dog
Laika) burned up in the atmosphere.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1958 May 1, Russia’s new steel
mill at Cherepovets produced its 1st ingot.
(WSJ, 6/9/04, p.A8)
1958 May 15, Sputnik III, the
first space laboratory, was launched in the Soviet Union.
(HN, 5/15/99)
1958 Jun 16, Imre Nagy (b.1896),
former Hungarian premier (1956) and symbol of the 1956 uprising against
Soviet rule, was hanged by the Communist government of Janos Kadar.
(www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/nagy/)(Econ, 10/21/06,
p.95)
1958 Jul, Soviet fighter planes
shot down an RB-50G US reconnaissance plane over the east coast of the
USSR. In 2002 William E. Burrows authored "by Any Means Necessary:
America’s Secret Air War in the Cold War."
(AH, 6/02, p.70)
1958 Aug 27, USSR launched Sputnik
3 with 2 dogs aboard.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1958 Oct 23, Boris Pasternak won
the Nobel Prize in literature. However, Soviet authorities pressured
Pasternak into relinquishing the award.
(SFC,11/27/97, p.B3)(AP, 10/23/99)
1958 Oct 23, USSR lent money to
UAR to build Aswan High Dam.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1958 Oct 29, Boris Pasternak
refused the Nobel prize for literature. Pasternak's novel "Dr. Zhivago"
was on the best seller list in the west.
(WSJ, 10/10/95, p.A-14)(MC, 10/29/01)
1958 Nov 21, A Soviet-East German
commission met in East Berlin to discuss the transfer to East German
control of Soviet functions and end its occupation status in Berlin.
(AP, 11/21/02)
1958 Dec 14, The United States,
Britain and France rejected Soviet demands that they withdraw their
troops from West Berlin and agreed to liquidate the Allied occupation
in West Berlin.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1958 Russia’s Premier Nikita
Khrushchev decided to establish a town devoted entirely to science.
This resulted in the construction of Akademgorodok, 20 miles from
Novosibirsk.
(WSJ, 3/20/07, p.B10)
1958 In central Moscow Detsky Mir
(Children's World), a new huge toy store, opened. In 2008 the hulking
block-long building across from the KGB's notorious Lubyanka
headquarters closed for a 3-year, $200 million renovation project.
(AP, 7/2/08)
1959 Feb 24, Khrushchev rejected
the Western plan for the Big Four meeting on Germany.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1959 May 10, Soviet forces arrived
in Afghanistan.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1959 May 25, Khrushchev visited
Angola.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1959 Jul 23, Vice President
Richard M. Nixon flew to Moscow to open the US Trade and Cultural Fair
in Sokolniki Park, organized as a goodwill gesture by the USSR.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1959 Jul 24, During a visit to the
Soviet Union, VP Richard M. Nixon got into a "kitchen debate" with
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at a US exhibition. Nixon correctly
said that the $100-a-month mortgage for the model ranch house was well
within the reach of a typical American steelworker.
(AP, 7/24/97)(Econ, 5/26/07, p.33)
1959 Sep 12, The Luna 2, a Soviet
space probe, was launched for the moon.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)
1959 Sep 14, The Soviet space
probe Luna 2 became the first man-made object to reach the moon as it
crashed onto the lunar surface.
(AP, 9/14/97)
1959 Sep 15, Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev arrived in the United States to begin a 13-day visit.
(AP, 9/15/97)
1959 Sep 19, Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev reacted angrily during a visit to Los Angeles upon being
told that, for security reasons, he wouldn't be allowed to visit
Disneyland.
(AP, 9/19/97)
1959 Sep 25, President Eisenhower
and Soviet Premier Khrushchev began Camp David talks.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1959 Sep, Khrushchev visited the
US and debated with Richard Nixon. He saw the filming of Can Can and
the found the dance immoral.
(TMC, 1994, p.1959)(SFEC, 9/15/96, C10)
1959 Sep, Nikita Khrushchev
visited the San Francisco Bay Area.
(SFC, 4/24/97, p.26)
1959 Oct 31, The USSR and Egypt
signed contracts for building the Aswan Dam.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1959 In Russia Alexander I.
Ginzburg (1936-2002), poet, attracted the attention of the authorities
with a typewritten magazine called Syntax, that reflected anger and
disillusionment with the Soviet Union. It became the 1st samizdat
(self-published journal). After 3 issues Ginzburg was put into Lubyanka
Prison.
(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.A27)
1959 Prokofiev’s opera "War and
Peace" was performed in its entirety for the 1st time.
(WSJ, 2/21/02, p.A16)
1960 Feb 26, Soviet premier
Khrushchev voiced support for Indonesia.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1960 Feb 27, The U.S. Olympic
hockey team defeated the Soviets, 3-2, at the Winter Games in Squaw
Valley, Calif. The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.
(AP, 2/27/98)
1960 Apr 2, Cuba bought oil from
USSR.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1960 May 7, Leonid Brezhnev
replaced Marshal Kliment Voroshilov as president of the Presidium of
the Supreme Soviet.
(AP, 5/7/08)
1960 May 9, US sent a U-2 over
USSR.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1960 May 16, A Big Four summit
conference in Paris collapsed on its opening day as the Soviet Union
leveled spy charges against the United States in the wake of the U-2
incident.
(HN, 5/16/98)(AP, 5/16/99)
1960 May 26, UN Ambassador Henry
Cabot Lodge accused the Soviets of hiding a microphone inside a wood
carving of the Great Seal of the United States that they presented to
the U.S. embassy in Moscow.
(AP, 5/26/99)
1960 May 30, Boris Pasternak
(b.1890), Russian poet, novelist (Dr Zhivago) and translator, died at
age 70.
(WUD, 1994, p.1055)(MC, 5/30/02)
1960 Jul 1, USSR shot down a US
RB-47 reconnaissance plane.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1960 Jul 8, The Soviet Union
charged Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the
country, with espionage.
(HN, 7/8/98)
1960 Jul 9, Khrushchev threatened
to use rockets to protect Cuba from the US.
(PC, 1992, p.973)
1960 Jul 17, Francis Gary Powers
pleaded guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court after his U-2 spy
plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.
(HN, 7/17/98)
1960 Aug 13, The Soviet Union
withdrew advisors, aid and other support from China.
(SFC, 10/1/99, p.A14)(MC, 8/13/02)
1960 Aug 17, American Francis Gary
Powers pleaded guilty at his Moscow trial for spying over the Soviet
Union in a U-2 plane.
(HN, 8/17/98)
1960 Aug 19, A tribunal in Moscow
convicted American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage. About 18
months later, the Soviets agreed to release him in exchange for
Rudolph Abel, a Soviet spy convicted 5 years earlier. The CIA and the
Senate cleared Powers of any personal blame for the incident.
(AP, 8/19/97)(MC, 8/19/02)
1960 Aug 19, Korabl-Sputnik-2
(Spaceship Satellite-2), also known as Sputnik 5, was launched. On
board were the dogs Belka ( Squirrel) and Strelka (Little Arrow). Also
on board were 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants. After a day in
orbit, the spacecraft's retrorocket was fired and the landing capsule
and the dogs were safely recovered. They were the first living animals
to survive orbital flight.
(www.spacetoday.org/Astronauts/Animals/Dogs.html)
1960 Oct 10, The Mars 1960A Probe
failed to reach Earth orbit.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1960 Oct 12, Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev disrupted a UN General Assembly session by pounding his desk
with a shoe when a speaker criticized his country.
(AP, 10/12/07)
1960 Oct 14, The Mars 1960B Probe
failed to reach Earth orbit.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1960 Dec 4, The USSR vetoed
Mauritania's application for UN membership.
(EWH, 4th ed., p.1233)
1960s-1970s Vladimir Soloukhin, writer, published a
series of essays lamenting the loss of ancient monuments. His essays
sparked a grassroot interest in preserving the past and the formation
of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Monuments of History
and Culture (VOOPIK).
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.34)
1961 Feb 5, The Soviets launched
Sputnik V, the heaviest satellite at 7.1 tons.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1961 Feb 9, Grigory Levenfish
(70), Int’l. chess grandmaster from Russia, died.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1961 Mar
9, Korabl-Sputnik-4, also known as Sputnik 9, was launched with a dog
named Chernushka (Blackie) on a one orbit mission. Also onboard the
spacecraft was a dummy cosmonaut, mice and a guinea pig.
(www.spacetoday.org/Astronauts/Animals/Dogs.html)
1961 Mar 10, Olga Ivinskaya
(d.1995 at 83), the woman who was the model for Lara in Pasternak’s
"Dr. Zhivago" wrote a letter to authorities in her own defense while a
prisoner in a Soviet gulag. She was arrested for smuggling foreign
currency shortly after Pasternak’s death and served 4 years.
(SFC,11/27/97, p.B3)
1961 Mar 25, Sputnik 10 carried a
dog into Earth orbit; later recovered.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1961 Apr 14, The Soviet Union made
its first live television broadcast.
(HN, 4/14/98)
1961 April 12, Yuri Gagarin,
Russian cosmonaut, experienced the weightlessness of space for 108
minutes. The Russians rocketed Yuri Gagarin, the first man into space.
His ship, Vostok I, was guided entirely from the ground.
(EnRoute, 11/'95, p.111) (TMC, 1994, p.1961)(SFC,
2/16/97, z-1 p.6)
1961 Apr 30, Premier Fidel Castro
of Cuba received the Lenin Peace Prize.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1961 Jun 3, JFK and Khrushchev met
in Vienna.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1961 Jun 4, A Soviet K-19 nuclear
submarine with 139 crew members experienced a nuclear accident. 22
later died from radiation poisoning. In 2001 the US film "K-19: The
Widowmaker" loosely depicted the accident.
(SFC, 4/20/01, p.A14)(WSJ, 4/3/02, p.A20)
1961 Jun 17, Soviet ballet star
Rudolf Nureyev (d.1993) defected from the Soviet Union at the Paris Le
Bourget airport while traveling with the Leningrad Kirov Ballet. In
1998 Diane Solway covered this event in her biography: "Nureyev."
(WSJ, 10/1/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 11/1/98, p.A17)(AP,
6/17/08)
1961 Aug 7, Soviet premier
Khrushchev predicted that the USSR economy would surpass that of the US.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1961 Aug, The Soviets launched
Vostok-2 with cosmonaut Gherman Titov (d.2000 at 65). He circled the
planet 17 times in a 25-hour flight.
(SFC, 9/22/00, p.D7)
1961 Sep 1, The Soviet Union ended
a moratorium on atomic testing with an above-ground nuclear explosion
in central Asia.
(AP, 9/1/01)
1961 Sep, Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(b.1933), Russian poet, published his poem “Babi Yar” at the height of
the Khrushchev thaw. It recalled the 1941 massacre of over 33,000 Jews
at ravine in Kiev, Ukraine.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar)
1961 Oct 30, The Soviet Union
tested a hydrogen bomb, the "Tsar Bomba," with a force estimated at
about 50 megatons. This was the largest explosion ever recorded and
broke a 3-year nuclear test moratorium.
(AP, 10/30/06)(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A22)
1961 Oct 30, The Soviet Party
Congress unanimously approved a resolution ordering the removal of
Josef Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb.
(AP, 10/30/97)
1961 Nov 11, Molotov, Malenkov
& Kaganovich were kicked out of Russia's communist party.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1961 Nov 11, Stalingrad was
renamed Volgograd.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1961 Nov 30, Soviets vetoed a UN
seat for Kuwait, pleasing Iraq.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1961 Svyatoslav Richter, concert
pianist, was named a People’s Artist of the USSR, the highest Soviet
honor for a performing artist.
(SFC, 8/2/97, p.A21)
1961 Albanian leader Enver Hoxha
broke with Nikita Khrushchev over Khrushchev’s repudiation of Stalin’s
legacy. Diplomatic relations were severed and Soviet aid to Albania was
ended. For a time Albania found an ally in China.
1962 Jan 23, British spy Kim
Philby defected to USSR.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1962 Feb 4, Russian newspaper
Izvestia reported baseball is an old Russian game.
(MC, 2/4/02)
1962 Feb 10, The Soviet Union
exchanged captured American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph
Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.
(AP, 2/10/97)
1962 Feb 22, A Soviet bid for new
Geneva arms talks was turned down by the U.S.
(HN, 2/22/98)
1962 Mar 17, Moscow asked the U.S.
to pull out of South Vietnam.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1962 Jul 20, Dmitri Shostakovitch
completed his 13th Symphony.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1962 cAug 5, Russia set off a
40-megaton atomic bomb as part of a new test series.
(SFC, 8/6/99, p.A1)(SFC, 11/24/99, p.E9)
1962 Aug 11, The Soviet Union
launched cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev on a 94-hour flight.
(AP, 8/11/97)
1962 Aug 12, A day after launching
Andrian Nikolayev into orbit, the Soviet Union launched Vostok 4 with
cosmonaut Pavel Popovich; both men landed safely on Aug 15.
(AP, 8/12/02)
1962 Aug 25, USSR performed
a nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya, Eastern Kazakh, Semipalitinsk.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1962 Oct 14, The American CIA U-2
mission detected Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba.
(SFC, 9/17/97, p.A3)
1962 Oct 16-1962 Oct 29, The Cuban
missile crises. Russia under Khrushchev removed its missiles from Cuba.
The 13-day missile crises was in part recorded by Kennedy on tape and
published in 1997: "The Kennedy Tapes," ed. by Ernest R. May and Philip
D. Zelikow.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, Parade p.6)(TMC, 1994, p.1962)(WSJ,
9/23/97, p.A20)
1962 Oct 18, JFK met Russian
minister of Foreign affairs Andrei Gromyko.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1962 Oct 22, President John F.
Kennedy announced that missile bases had been discovered in Cuba and
they had the potential to attack the United States with nuclear
warheads. Kennedy ordered a naval and air blockade on further shipment
of military equipment to Cuba. The Russians had previously agreed not
to bring new offensive weapons into Cuba, but after hearing Kennedy's
announcement, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev refused to cooperate
with the quarantine. Following a confrontation that threatened nuclear
war, Kennedy and Khrushchev agree on October 28 on a formula to end the
crisis. On November 2 Kennedy reported that Soviet missile bases in
Cuba are being dismantled.
(AP, 10/22/97)(HNPD, 10/22/98)(HN, 10/22/02)
1962 Oct 24, The Mars 1962A Flyby
failed to leave Earth orbit after the final rocket stage exploded.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1962 Oct 25, U.S. ambassador Adlai
E. Stevenson presented photographic evidence of Soviet missile bases in
Cuba to the UN Security Council. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson demanded
USSR and Zorin answer regarding Cuban missile bases saying "I am
prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over."
(AP, 10/25/97)(MC, 10/25/01)
1962 Oct 26, JFK warned Russia
that the US would not allow Soviet missiles to remain in Cuba.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1962 Oct 26, Nikita Khrushchev
sent note to JFK offering to withdraw his missiles from Cuba if US
closed its bases in Turkey. The offer was rejected.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1962 Oct 27, Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev offered to remove Soviet missile bases in Cuba if the U.S.
removed its missile bases in Turkey. It was later learned that JFK had
secretly offered this option to Khrushchev.
(HN, 10/27/98)(MC, 10/27/01)(NPR, 2002)
1962 Oct 28, Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev informed the United States that he had ordered the
dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba. Radio Moscow reported
nuclear missiles in Cuba deactivated. Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed on
a formula to end the Cuban missile crisis: the Russians would dismantle
their bases and the United States would publicly promise not to invade
Cuba.
(AP, 10/28/97)(HN, 10/22/98)(HNPD, 10/22/98)(MC,
10/28/01)
1962 Nov 1, The Russian Mars 1
Flyby was launched but communications failed en route.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1962 Nov 2, Pres. Kennedy reported
that Soviet missile bases in Cuba were being dismantled.
(HN, 10/22/98)
1962 Nov 4, The Mars 1962B Lander
failed to leave Earth orbit.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1962 Nov 19, Fidel Castro accepted
the removal of Soviet weapons.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1962 Nov 20, USSR agreed to remove
bombers from Cuba and US lifted its blockade.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1962 Alexander Solzhenitsyn (43)
published "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch." It first appeared
in the Soviet magazine Novy Mir. In 1998 D.M. Thomas published the
biography: Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life." In 1985
Michael Scammell published his biography: "Solzhenitsyn."
(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.9)
1962 The Russian film
"Bootleggers" starred Georgy Vitsin and was directed by Leonid Gaidai.
(SFC, 10/25/01, p.A25)
1962 In Russia Alexander Lebed
(12) recalled seeing troops shoot striking laborers while growing up in
Novocherkassk. Workers there protested against falling wages and rising
prices with placards that read: “Cut up Khrushchev for sausages.”
(SFC, 10/18/96, A15)(Econ, 4/15/06, p.85)
1963 Jan 16, Nikita Khrushchev
claimed the USSR had a 100-megaton nuclear bomb.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1963 Jan 17, Soviet leader
Khrushchev visited the Berlin Wall. [see Feb 17]
(HN, 1/17/99)
1963 Feb 17, Soviet leader
Khrushchev visited the Berlin Wall. [see Jan 17]
(HN, 2/17/98)
1963 Feb 19, The Soviet Union
informed President Kennedy it would withdraw "several thousand" of an
estimated 17,000 Soviet troops in Cuba.
(AP, 2/19/98)
1963 Feb 20, Moscow offered to
allow on-site inspection of nuclear testing.
(HN, 2/20/98)
1963 Feb 22, Moscow warned the
U.S. that an attack on Cuba would mean war.
(HN, 2/22/98)
1963 Feb 27, The U.S.S.R. said
that 10,000 troops would remain in Cuba.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1963 Mar 13, China invited
Khrushchev to visit Peking.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1963 Apr 13, Gary Kimovich
Kasparov, world chess champion (1985-2000), was born in the USSR.
(MC, 4/13/02)(SFC, 1/16/04, p.D19)
1963 Apr 27, Cuban premier Fidel
Castro arrived in Moscow.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1963 Jun 16, The world's first
female space traveler, Valentina Tereshkova, was launched into orbit by
the Soviet Union aboard Vostok VI.
(AP, 6/16/98)
1963 Jun 19, Soviet cosmonaut
Valentina Tereshkova returned to Earth after spending nearly three days
as the first woman in space.
(DTnet, 6/19/97)(HN, 6/19/98)
1963 Jun 20, The United States and
Soviet Union signed an agreement in Geneva to set up a hot line
communications link between the two superpowers and a treaty was signed
limiting nuclear testing. It came about because of the Cuban missile
crises, which began on October 22, 1962. The Hot Line was not used
until the Six-Day War of 1967.
(TMC, 1994, p.1963)(AP, 6/20/97)(HN, 6/20/98)(HNPD,
10/18/99)
1963 Jul 25, The United States,
the Soviet Union and Britain initialed a treaty in Moscow prohibiting
the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in space or
underwater.
(AP, 7/25/97)
1963 Jun 28, Khrushchev visited
East-Berlin.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1963 Jul 30, British spy Kim
Philby was discovered in Moscow. Philby, writer for The Economist, who
spent six years filing dispatches from the Middle East, was discovered
to be a spy and defected to the Soviet Union.
(WSJ, 6/6/95, p.A-14)(MC, 7/30/02)
1963 Aug 5, The United States,
Britain and the Soviet Union signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty in Moscow
banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, space and underwater. Public
pressure helped JFK signed the ban on atmospheric atom bomb tests.
(AP, 8/5/97)(SFC, 11/26/01, p.A10)(SSFC, 7/15/07,
p.D1)
1963 Aug 30, The hot line, a rapid
communications link between Washington, D.C., and Moscow went into
operation to avoid miscalculations during an emergency.
(AP, 8/30/97)(HNPD, 10/30/99)
1963 Aug 30, Guy Burgess (b.1911),
British spy for the USSR, died in Moscow.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Burgess)
1963 Sep 18, USSR orders 58.5
million barrels of cereal from Australia.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1963 Oct 7, President Kennedy
signed the documents of ratification for a nuclear test ban treaty with
Britain and the Soviet Union.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1964 Jan 28, The Soviets downed a
U.S. jet over East Germany killing three.
(HN, 1/28/99)
1964 Feb 9, The U.S. embassy in
Moscow was stoned by Chinese and Vietnamese students.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1964 Feb, Yuri Nosenko
(1927-2008), Soviet KGB officer, defected under CIA guidance in Geneva.
He had begun passing information in June, 1962. He was incarcerated for
his first 3 years in the US and settled there under a new name in 1969.
(Econ, 9/6/08,
p.101)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Nosenko)
1964 May 9, Khrushchev visited
Egypt.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1964 May 14, Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev joined United Arab Republic President Gamel Abdel Nasser in
setting off charges, diverting the Nile River from the site of the
Aswan High Dam project.
(AP, 5/14/04)
1964 May 19, The State Department
announced the U.S. embassy in Moscow had been bugged. A network of more
than 40 microphones embedded in the walls had been found.
(AP, 5/19/97)(DTnet, 5/19/97)
1964 May 25, Vasily Andreyevich
Zolotaryov (92), composer, died.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1964 Sep 14, Vasily Grossman
(b.1905), Ukraine-born journalist and writer, died, His work included
the novel “Life and Fate,” a chronicle of the Battle of Stalingrad,
which wasn’t published until 1980.
(WSJ, 5/5/07,
p.P16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Grossman)
1964 Oct 12, The Soviet Union
launched a Voskhod space capsule with a three-man crew on the first
manned mission involving more than one crew member.
(AP, 10/12/97)
1964 Oct 15, It was announced that
Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev had been removed from office. He was
succeeded as premier by Alexei N. Kosygin and as Communist Party
secretary by Leonid I. Brezhnev. When he became First Secretary of the
Soviet Communist Party in 1964, Leonid Brezhnev shared power in a
"collective leadership" with Premier Aleksei Kosygin and President
Nikolai Podgorny. By the early 1970s Brezhnev had consolidated his
power as the Party General Secretary and President of the Presidium of
the Supreme Soviet. Born in the Ukraine in 1906, Brezhnev died while
still in office in 1982.
(TMC, 1994, p.1964)(AP, 10/15/97)(HNQ, 6/26/98)
1964 Nov 30, The ZOND 2 Flyby lost
contact enroute to Mars.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1964 In Afghanistan Soviet
engineers dug through the Hindu Kush to open trade routes and opened
the Salang tunnel. At 11,034 feet it was the world’s highest tunnel.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.A10)(SFC, 2/7/02, p.A20)
1965 Mar 3, USSR performed a
nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalitinsk, USSR.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1965 Mar 18, The first spacewalk
took place as Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov left his Voskhod 2
capsule and remained outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes, secured by
a tether.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.A26)(AP, 3/18/97)
1965 May 1, USSR launched Luna 5;
later lands on Moon.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1965 Sep 14, Dmitry Medvedev was
born in Leningrad. In 2008 with the backing of Vladimir Putin, he
became prime minister of Russia.
(WSJ, 2/28/08, p.A14)
1965 Dec 5, Several dozen
activists gathered in central Moscow to demand that the trial of two
Soviet writers charged with anti-Soviet activity in their
yet-unpublished writings, Andrei Sinyavsky (d.1997) and Yuliy Daniel,
be open. They were tried in 1966 and sentenced to 6 years in prison for
publishing anti-Soviet works. The rally, which was quickly dispersed,
was later regarded as the first pro-democracy demonstration in the
Soviet Union's history.
(SFC, 2/26/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 2/26/97, p.A1)(AP,
12/06/05)
1965 Dec 9, Nikolai V. Podgorny
replaced Anastas I. Mikoyan as president of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1965 The Russian film "Operation Y
and Other Adventures of Shurik" starred Georgy Vitsin and was directed
by Leonid Gaidai.
(SFC, 10/25/01, p.A25)
1966 Jan 10, The Tashkent
Agreement, was signed in the Soviet city of Tashkent, and officially
ended a 17-day war between Pakistan and India. It required that both
sides withdraw by February 26, 1966, to positions held prior to August
5, 1965, and observe the cease-fire line agreed to on June 30, 1965.
The agreement was brokered by Soviet premier Aleksey Kosygin and signed
by Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistan President
Ayub Khan. The Indian prime minister died the day after signing the
agreement.
(HNQ,
4/26/99)(www.onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1900s/yr65/fkashmir1965)
1966 Jan 31, The Soviets launched
Luna 9, the first spacecraft to land softly on the moon.
(HC, 2003, p.64)
1966 Feb 3, The Soviet probe Luna
9 became the first manmade object to make a soft landing on the moon.
(AP, 2/3/08)
1966 Mar 1, Moscow reported that a
space probe had crashed on Venus. Venera 3 became the 1st man-made
object to impact on a planet (Venus).
(HN, 3/1/98)(SC, 3/1/02)
1966 Mar 5, Anna Akhmatova,
Russian poet, died in Leningrad. She was born in 1889 as Anna Gorenko
near Odessa, Ukraine. In 2005 Elaine Feinstein authored “Anna of All
the Russias: A Life of Anna Akhmatova.
(www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Anna_Akhmatova)(SSFC, 4/2/06, p.M3)
1966 Mar 29, Leonid Brezhnev
became First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. He denounced the
American policy in Vietnam and called it one of aggression.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1966 Apr 8, Leonid Brezhnev was
elected secretary-general of communist party. [see Mar 29]
(MC, 4/8/02)
1966 Sep 25, Dmitri
Shostakovitch's 2nd Cello Concert premiered in Moscow.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1966 Oct 22, The Soviet Union
launched Luna 12 for orbit around the moon.
(HN, 10/22/98)
1966 Dec 21, USSR launched Luna
13. It soft-landed on the Moon’s Oceanus Procellarum.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1966 Dec 24, Soviet research
station Luna 13 soft-landed on the moon.
(HN, 12/24/98)(MC, 12/24/01)
1966 The Russian film "Shadows of
Forgotten Ancestors" was directed by Sergei Paradjanov and featured in
the SF film festival.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, DB p.42)
1966 The Russian film “Andrei
Rublev” was made by Andrei Tarkovsky. It was an epic tale based on the
story of Rublev, a 15th century icon painter.
(DVD, Criterion, 1998)
1967 Jan 27, The US signed the
Outer Space Treaty with Russia. More than 60 nations signed a treaty
banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons. All weapons of mass
destruction were banned from orbit, as was military activity on the
moon and other celestial bodies.
(SFC, 1/28/67, p.A1)(AP, 1/27/98)(SSFC, 7/15/07,
p.D1)
1967 Feb 26, USSR performed an
underground nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalitinsk, USSR.
(http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/Monitoring/Arch/sts-table/sts-table.html)
1967 Mar 6, The daughter of Josef
Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva, appeared at the US Embassy in India and
announced her intention to defect to the West.
(AP, 3/6/07)
1967 Mar 9, Svetlana Alliluyeva
(Allilueva), Josef Stalin's daughter, requested political asylum at the
US Embassy in India. She arrived at New York in April and held a press
conference during which she denounced her father's regime.
(HN, 3/9/98)( http://tinyurl.com/bd6yq)
1967 Mar 31, President Lyndon
Johnson signed the Consular Treaty, the first bi-lateral pact with the
Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1967 Apr 23, Soyuz 1 was launched,
and Vladimir Komarov became the first in-flight casualty.
(AP, 4/23/98)
1967 May 19, The Soviet Union
ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain banning nuclear
weapons from outer space: "Treaty on Principles Governing the
Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space,
including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies." The Int’l. Outer Space
Treaty barred nations from appropriating celestial bodies but did not
mention individuals.
(AP, 5/19/97)(SFC, 6/25/97, p.A15)(SFEC, 7/13/97,
Par p.8)
1967 Jun 12, Venera 4, a space
probe of the Soviet Union, was launched. It transmitted information on
the atmosphere of Venus.
(SFEC, 9/28/97,
p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_4)
1967 Jun 23, President Johnson and
Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin held the first of two meetings in
Glassboro State College in New Jersey.
(AP, 6/23/07)
1967 Aug 31, Ilya G. Ehrenburg
(76), Russian poet and propagandist ("Russians, get your
German!"), died.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1967 Sep 23, Soviets signed a pact
to send more aid to Hanoi.
(HN, 9/23/98)
1967 Sep 27, Felix F. Yussupov,
litigious Russian monarchist and slayer of Rasputin, died at 80.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1967 Oct 18, A Russian unmanned
spacecraft made the first landing on the surface of Venus.
(HN, 10/18/98)
1967 Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn
met with Olga Andreyev Carlisle in Moscow. She agreed to get smuggled
copies of "The First Circle" and "The Gulag Archipelago" published in
the West. The novel, completed in 1964, was banned by Soviet officials.
A shortened version came out in English in 1968. After some years a
feud ensued when Solzhenitsyn accused Carlisle of being motivated only
by profit and personal acclaim. An unedited English version was
scheduled for publication in 2009.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A1)(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E6)
1967 The Russian film "Prisoner of
Caucasus" starred Georgy Vitsin (d.2001 at 83) and was directed by
Leonid Gaidai.
(SFC, 10/25/01, p.A25)
1967 The Ostankino television
tower was erected in Moscow to mark the 50th anniversary of the Soviet
revolution.
(SFC, 8/29/00, p.A7)
1967 Yuri Nikulin (1921-1997)
starred in the comedy film "Caucasian Prisoner" as the leader of an
incompetent bunch of crooks.
(SFC, 8/22/97, p.A24)
1967 Yuri Andropov became the
Chief of the Soviet KGB.
(WSJ, 12/14/95, p.A-12)
1967 David Burliuk, Russian
artist, died. His work included "A Cup of Sake" (1921), which fetched
$60,375 for the IRS in a 2003 auction.
(SSFC, 2/2/03, Par p.A19)
1968 Mar 2, USSR launched space
probe Zond 4. It failed to leave Earth orbit.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1968 Mar 11, The Russian K-129, a
Golf-II class, diesel-electric submarine armed with nuclear missiles
and 98 seamen aboard, sank in 16,000 feet of water northwest of the
Hawaiian island of Oahu. Russian officials suspected that the K-129 was
struck by an American submarine, the USS Swordfish. But the US Navy
said the vessel suffered a catastrophic internal explosion. A US sub,
the Halibut, found the Soviet vessel 6 months later and recovered 3
missiles with nuclear warheads, Soviet code books and an encryption
machine. In 1974 the CIA attempted to recover the sub. A 100 foot
section was pulled in by the Glomar Explorer with 2 nuclear tipped
torpedoes and the bodies of 6 Russian sailors. Claude Barnes
Capehart worked on the Howard Hughes’ deep-sea research vessel, Glomar
Explorer, that under CIA sponsorship raised a Soviet submarine from the
floor of the Pacific Ocean. Later in Chowchilla, Ca., he told his
girlfriend that he was in Texas when Kennedy was assassinated, and that
"Oswald wasn’t the only one involved." Just before a scheduled
interview in 1989, Capehart dropped dead of a heart attack.
(SFC, 7/15/96, p.A6)(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A19,21)(AP,
9/11/07)
1968 Mar 27, Yuri Gagarin (34),
Soviet cosmonaut (Vostok I) and the first man to orbit the Earth, died
in a plane crash.
(AP, 3/27/97)(MC, 3/27/02)
1968 Jul 15, Commercial air travel
began between US and USSR.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1968 Aug 20, Some 650,000 Soviet
Union and other Warsaw Pact troops began invading Czechoslovakia to
crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek's
regime.
(AP, 8/20/97)(SFC, 8/25/04, p.B7)
1968 Aug 20-Sep 11, The Soviets
invaded Czechoslovakia and crushed the "Prague Spring."
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Aug 21, After 5 years Russia
once again jammed Voice of America radio.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1968 Aug 21, The Soviet Union and
other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the
"Prague Spring" liberalization drive led by Alexander Dubcek.
(AP, 8/21/08)
1968 Aug 25, Seven dissidents
(Larisa Bogoraz (d.2004), Pavel Litvinov, Konstantin Babitskii,
Nataliya Gorbanevskaya, Viktor Fainberg, Vadim Delone and Vladimir
Dremlyuga) came out in the Red Square to protest against the invasion
of the soviet troops in Czechoslovakia and paid for it with years of
lagers, exile and "special" mental hospitals.
(Internet)(SFC, 4/8/04, p.B7)
1968 Sep, The Soviet spacecraft
Zond ("Probe") 5 became the first to loop around the moon and return to
Earth. The L-1, given the name Zond, was a spacecraft designed to carry
two cosmonauts on a single loop around the moon. The L-1 suffered
repeated failure and never flew with a crew. The unmanned L-1s traveled
to the moon five times under the Zond name.
(HNQ, 4/27/99)
1968 Nov 18, Soviets recovered the
Zond 6 spacecraft after a flight around the moon.
(HN, 11/18/98)
1968 Dec 31, The Soviet Union's
TU-144, similar in appearance to the Concorde, made its 1st flight. The
first Tu-144S production aircraft crashed at the 1973 Paris Air Show.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144)
1968 Yuri Nikulin (1921-1997)
starred in the comedy film "Diamond Arm" as a mild-mannered man caught
in a diamond smuggling scheme.
(SFC, 8/22/97, p.A24)
1968 Russia launched its Juliett
484 submarine. The diesel sub carried 4 nuclear missiles. In 1994 it
was taken from the Liepaja naval base in Latvia to Helsinki, Finland,
for use as a restaurant and bar. In 1998 it was towed to St. Petersburg
but failed as a tourist attraction. In 2001 she taken to Halifax for
use in the movie "K-19: The Widowmaker." In 2002 she was sold and taken
to Provincetown, Rhode Island, as an attraction to raise money for a
museum centered on the carrier USS Saratoga, yet to be acquired.
(WSJ, 5/24/02, p.A1)
1969 Jan 15, The Russian Soyuz 5
went into orbit. The crew then maneuvered to dock with Soyuz 4 and
Yevgeny Khrunov (d.2000 at 67) became the first astronaut to transfer
between linked capsules.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.A26)
1969 Feb 17, Russia and Peru
signed their first trade accord.
(www.historynet.com/tdih0217.htm)
1969 Mar 2, Dmitri Shostakovich,
Russian composer, completed his 14th Symphony.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._14_(Shostakovich))(http://tinyurl.com/66tpar)
1969 Mar 2, Chinese and Russian
soldiers clashed on Damansky Island and approximately 70 died. The
Soviet and Chinese border troops had been skirmishing since 1959 along
the 2,500 mile border. Recent skirmishes were along the Ussuri River
border. The Soviets used a full scale tank assault to repulse a Chinese
attack on the island of Damansky. A border treaty in the 1990s gave the
island to China.
(www.jstor.org/pss/1957173)(WSJ, 11/19/96,
p.A1)(SFC, 12/28/96, p.A13)(WSJ, 12/16/05,
p.A1)(www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1971/jul-aug/marks.html)
1969 Mar 15, A violent
Chinese-Russian border dispute left 100s dead.
(www.jstor.org/pss/1957173)
1969 Mar 26, Soviet weather
Satellite Meteor 1 was launched.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1969 May 16, Russia’s Venera 5
landed on Venus and returned data on atmosphere.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_5)
1969 Jun 11, Soviet and Chinese
troops clashed on Sinkiang border.
(AP, 6/11/03)
1969 Jun 21, The 14th Symphony by
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) premiered in Moscow.
(www.c4md.org/hancher/kremerata.html)
1969 Jul 4, The USSR performed
nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR.
(www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/Monitoring/Arch/sts-table/sts-table.html)
1969 Nov 4, Author Alexander
Solzhenitsyn was expelled from Soviet Writers Union.
(http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/66-1-414.shtml)
1969 Dec 2, Kliment J. Voroshilov
(b.1881), president USSR (1953-60), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kliment_Voroshilov)
1970 Mar 31, Semjon Timoshenko
(75), Russian marshal, inspector-general (WW II), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Timoshenko)
1970 May 27, USSR performs an
underground nuclear test.
(www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/Monitoring/Arch/sts-table/sts-table.html)
1970 Jun 11, Alexander F. Kerensky
(b.1881), Russian premier (1917), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Kerensky)
1970 Jun 19, A. Nikolayev and V.
Sevastyanov returned after 18 days in Russia’s Soyuz 9.
(www.astronautix.com/flights/soyuz9.htm)
1970 Aug 17, Venera 7 was launched
by USSR for a soft landing on Venus.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_7)
1970 Sep 12, The Soviet Union
launched its unmanned Soviet Luna 16. It was the first robotic probe to
land on the Moon and return a sample to Earth.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_16)
1970 Sep 20, The Soviet Luna 16
landed on Moon’s Mare Fecunditatis and drilled a core sample.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_16)
1970 Sep 24, The Soviet Luna 16
landed in Kazakhstan, completing the first unmanned round trip to the
moon.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_16)
1970 Oct 8, Soviet author
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was named winner of the Nobel Prize for
literature.
(AP, 10/8/97)
1970 Nov 4, Andre Sakharov,
Russian nuclear physicist, formed a Human Rights Committee.
(http://tinyurl.com/58dqt4)
1970 Nov 10, The Soviet Union
launched Luna 17, an unmanned space mission of the Luna program,
towards the moon.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_17)
1970 Nov 17, The Soviet Union
landed an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon, the Lunokhod
1. The spacecraft which carried Lunokhod 1 was named Luna 17.
(AP,
11/17/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1)
1970 Sep 4, Natalia Makarova
(b.1940), Russian ballet dancer, requested asylum while on tour in
Britain.
(WSJ, 10/1/98,
p.A20)(www.abt.org/education/archive/choreographers/makarova_n.html)
1971 Feb 14, Moscow publicized a
new five-year plan geared to expanding consumer production.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1971 Mar 23, USSR performed
underground nuclear test.
(www.atomicforum.org/russia/russiantesting.html)
1971 Apr 6, Igor
Stravinsky (b.1882), Russian-born composer, died in NYC.
(AP,
4/6/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Stravinsky)
1971 Apr 19, Russia launched its
first Salyut space station.
(HN, 4/19/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_1)
1971 Apr 23, The Soviet Union
launched Soyuz 10; the cosmonauts became the first in Salyut 1 space
station.
(HN, 4/23/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_10)
1971 May 10, The KOSMOS 419 Probe
failed to leave Earth orbit.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1971 May 19, The Mars 2 Orbiter
and Lander made it to Mars but the Lander crashed when braking rockets
failed. The orbiter returned in 1972.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1971 May 25, USSR performed a
nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalitinsk.
(www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/Monitoring/Arch/sts-table/sts-table.html)
1971 May 28, The Mars 3 Orbiter
and lander was launched successfully.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1971 Jun 7, Soviet Soyuz 11 crew
completed the 1st transfer to orbiting Salyut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_1)
1971 Jun 27, T. Smirnova, Russian
born astronomer, discovered asteroid #2121, Sevastopol.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_Mikhailovna_Smirnova)
1971 Jun 30, A Soviet space
mission ended in tragedy when three cosmonauts (Georgi Dobrovolsky,
Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev) aboard Soyuz 11 were found dead
inside their spacecraft after it returned to Earth.
(AP, 6/30/97)(SFC, 10/2/07, p.A6)
1971 Sep 3, The Quadripartite
Agreement on Berlin, between the United States, the Soviet Union, the
United Kingdom and France. ended a long time source of tension.
(WUD, 1994, p.
1688)(http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ga5-710903.htm)
1971 Sep 11, Former Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev died at age 77. In 2003 William Taubman authored
"Khrushchev: The Man and His Era." In 2006 Aleksandr Fursenko and
Timothy Naftali authored “Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an
American Adversary.”
(WUD, 1994, p. 1688)(AP, 9/11/97)(SSFC, 4/27/03,
M3)(Econ, 11/18/06, p.88)
1971 Sep 25, Over 100 Russian
officials were expelled from Britain for spying. Information from Oleg
Lyalin, supposedly a member of the USSR's trade delegation in the UK,
led to the expulsion of 105 Soviet officials from Britain.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/30/newsid_2523000/2523669.stm)
1971 Dec 2, The Mars 3 landed on
Mars and failed after 20 seconds of video data. The orbiter returned
date until August 1972.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1971 A Soviet field test of
weaponized smallpox caused an outbreak that killed 2 young children and
a woman at the port of Aralsk in the Kazak Republic. This was not made
public until 2002.
(SFC, 6/15/02, p.A8)
1972 Feb 26, Soviets recovered
Luna 20 with a cargo of moon rocks.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1972 Apr 10, The United States and
the Soviet Union joined some 70 nations in signing an agreement banning
biological warfare: The Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention (BWC).
A defector in 1990 revealed that the Soviet biological weapons program
was twice the size of the highest US intelligence estimates. The
convention banned the development, production, and stockpiling of
bacteriological and toxic weapons. In 1973 the Soviet Union created
Biopreparat, an ultra secret biological weapons program that involved
laboratories at a minimum of 47 sites across Russia.
(AP, 4/10/97)(WSJ, 7/21/97, p.A22)(SFEC, 8/10/97,
p.A3)(SFC, 8/28/97, p.C2)
1972 Apr, Iraq and the USSR signed
a Treaty of Friendship.
(www.heritage.org/research/MiddleEast/bg362.cfm)
1972 May 26, President Richard M.
Nixon and Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev signed in Moscow
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an arms reduction agreement that
became known as SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks). The US withdrew
from the treaty in 2002.
(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.B5)(AP, 5/26/07)
1972 Jun 5, Yugoslav president
Tito (1892-1980) visited the USSR and received the Order of Lenin, the
highest national order of the USSR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito)
1972 Jul 8, The US signed an
agreement to sell grain to USSR for $750 million. Soviet grain buyers
over 6 weeks purchased the US grain. This was later called the "great
grain robbery" and the privately-held agribusiness giant Cargill played
a major role. The story of Cargill was told in the 1998 book "Cargill
Going Global" by Wayne Broehl Jr.
(http://tinyurl.com/5qvx8c)(PC, 1992, p.1040)
1972 Jul 18, Egypt’s President
Sadat demanded that the USSR withdraw all military advisors from
Egypt.
(http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/67-5-236.shtml)
1972 Aug 3, The US Senate ratified
the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM treaty). It banned the
construction of systems to defend against ballistic missile attacks. It
had been signed in Moscow on May 26 and entered into force on October 3.
(SFC, 10/18/99, p.A5)(www.fas.org/nuke/control/abmt/)
1972 Aug 31, Olga Korbut (b.1955)
of Belarus, USSR, won Olympic gold medal in floor exercises and the
balance beam.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Korbut)(AP,
8/31/02)
1972 Sep 1, American Bobby Fischer
won the international chess crown in Reykjavik, Iceland, defeating
Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. In 2004 David Edmonds and John
Eidinow authored "Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the
Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time."
(AP, 9/1/97)(SSFC, 2/07/04, p.M1)
1972 Sep 10, At the Munich Summer
Olympics, the US Olympic basketball team lost to the Soviets, 51-50, in
a gold-medal match marked by controversy because officials ordered the
final three seconds of the game replayed, enabling the Soviets to win.
The US protested, to no avail. Frank Shorter of the United States won
the men's marathon at the Munich Olympics.
(AP,
9/10/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Summer_Olympics)
1972 Oct 13, Aeroflot Il-62
crashed in large pond outside Moscow and 176 died.
(http://tinyurl.com/5a6zlm)
1972 Vasili Motrokhin, a KGB agent
sympathetic to prominent dissidents, began his personal archive on the
KGB.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.5)
1972 The Soviets introduced the
Tu-154 airplane. It was their version of the Boeing 727. The
three-engine Tupolev 154 first flew passengers and has since become a
workhorse of fleets in Russia, the former Soviet bloc and China. The
jet can carry between 156 and 180 passengers and has a range of 2,400
miles at a maximum speed of 560 mph.
(SFC, 7/4/01, p.A10)(AP, 7/2/02)
1972 The Soviet Union began
producing more private cars than trucks.
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.94)
1973 Feb 15, The USSR launched
Prognoz 3 at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, to study solar flares.
(www.astronautix.com/craft/prognoz.htm)
1973 May 18, Russian party leader
Brezhnev visited West Germany.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1973-5/1973-05-18-CBS-12.html)
1973 Jun 3, A Soviet supersonic
Tupelov 144, nicknamed Concordski, exploded in flight at the Paris Air
Show and crashed into a nearby village, killing the six-man crew and
seven people on the ground. The plane beat the French and English
through the sound barrier.
(SFEC, 10/10/99, p.T4)(AP,
7/27/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144)
1973 Jun 19, Pres. Nixon met with
Russia’s leader Leonid Brezhnev at the White House.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Brezhnev)
1973 Jul 4, Leonid Stein (b.1934),
Soviet Grandmaster chess player from the Ukraine, died of a heart
attack.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Stein)
1973 Jul 21, The Russian Mars 4
Orbiter braking engine malfunctioned and it failed to go into orbit
around Mars.
(SFC, 11/19/96,
p.B1)(http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1973-047A)
1973 Jul 25, Russia launched its
Mars 5 Orbiter.
(http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1973-049A)
1973 Aug 5, Russia launched its
Mars 6 Orbiter.
(http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1973-052A)
1973 Aug 9, The Mars 7 Orbiter and
lander failed to go into orbit around Mars. The lander missed the
planet and both went into solar orbit.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1973 Aug 28, Princess Anne became
the first member of the British royal family to visit the Soviet Union
when she arrived in Kiev for an equestrian event.
(www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/this_day_in_history/this_day_August_28.php)
1973 Nov 11, The Soviet Union was
kicked out of World Cup soccer for refusing to play Chile.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=2481)
1973 Dec 21, Israel, Egypt, Syria,
Jordan, US and USSR leaders met in Geneva. The Geneva Conference of
1973 was an attempt to negotiate a solution to the Arab-Israeli
conflict as called for in UN Security Council Resolution 338 which was
passed after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conference_(1973))
1973 Dec 28, Alexander
Solzhenitsyn published "Gulag Archipelago" in Paris. It was an expose
of the Soviet prison system.
(AP, 12/28/97)(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W15)
1974 Feb 12, The Mars 5 Orbiter
entered orbit around Mars and relayed imaging data for the Mars 6 &
7 missions.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1974 Feb 13, Alexander
Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the USSR. He wrote his novel "First
Circle" based on experiences in a Moscow prison camp, where he met Lev
Kopelev (d.1997 at 85), a dissident author and Communist idealist. The
character Rubin in "First Circle" is based on Kopelev.
(TMC, 1994, p.1974)(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A18)(MC, 2/13/02)
1974 Mar 12, The Mars 6 went into
orbit and the lander transmitted atmospheric data during descent before
failing.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.B1)
1974 May, Major Abdel Jalloud,
Libya's second in command, traveled to Moscow and concluded the first
in a series of arms sales agreements that remain the largest ever
reached by the Soviets.
(www.heritage.org/research/MiddleEast/bg362.cfm)
1974 Jun 29, Russian ballet dancer
Mikhail Baryshnikov defected in Toronto, Canada.
(http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/dance/clips/13363/&ref=rss)
1974 Jul 25, T. Smirnova, Russian
astronomer, discovered asteroid #2345 Fucik.
(http://tinyurl.com/4lx b4w)
1974 Oct 24, David Oistrach
(b.1908), virtuoso Russian violinist, died of a heart attack in
Amsterdam.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Oistrakh)
1974 Nov 15, The 15th String
Quartet by Dmitri Shostakovitch (1906-1975) premiered in Leningrad.
(www.carnegiehall.org/textSite/box_office/events/evt_6301.html)
1974 Nov 23-1974 Nov 24, US Pres.
Gerald Ford attended a summit in Vladivostok, USSR, with Soviet Pres.
Brezhnev. They reached a tentative agreement to limit the number of
nuclear weapons.
(SFC, 12/26/06, p.A11)
1974 Nov 28, Konstantin Melnikov
(b.1890), Russian architect, died. His Melnikov House in Moscow was
built from 1927-1931 with fees from commissions.
(WSJ, 10/3/07,
p.D10)(www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Melnikov_House.html)
1974 Alexander Solzhenitsyn
published "The Gulag Archipelago." [see Dec 28, 1973]
(SFEC, 11/10/96, Z 1 p.2)
1974 Pepsi entered the market of
the Soviet Union.
(WSJ, 2/14/97, p.A9C)
1974 Soviet and Czech technicians
began carrying out what they called “chemical mining” for uranium below
the town of Straz pod Ralskem. By 1996 some 4.2 million tons of
sulphuric acid and other toxic chemicals were pumped in to leach out
the uranium. In 2008 a cleanup firm estimated that the site should be
stabilized by 2035.
(Econ, 5/31/08, SR p.11)
1975 Jan 3, President Gerald Ford
signed the Jackson-Vanik amendment into law, after both houses of the
United States Congress unanimously voted for its adoption. Congress had
passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment for economic sanctions on Russia to
pressure the Soviet Union to allow unfettered emigration for Soviet
Jews. Pres. Bush in 2001 proposed that it be lifted.
(WSJ, 11/5/01,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson-Vanik_amendment)
1975 Apr 19, India announced it
had launched its 1st satellite, from the Soviet Union atop a Soviet
rocket.
(AP, 4/19/05)
1975 Jul 15, Three American
astronauts blasted off aboard an Apollo spaceship hours after two
Soviet cosmonauts were launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft for a mission
that included a linkup of the two ships in orbit.
(AP, 7/15/97)
1975 Jul 17, An Apollo spaceship
docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit in the first superpower linkup
of its kind.
(AP, 7/17/97)
1975 Jul 19, The Apollo and Soyuz
space capsules that were linked in orbit for two days separated.
(AP, 7/19/97)
1975 Aug 9, Dimitri D.
Shostakovitch (b.1906) Soviet composer of 15 symphonies, died. His work
included Sun Over Motherland and the Violin Concerto No. 2. Symphony
No. 13, "Babi Yar," written to commemorate the massacre of Jews during
WW II. It premiered in the US in 1970. Symphony No. 12, "The Year
1917," was dedicated to the memory of Lenin. In 2004 Solomon Volkov
authored Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship
Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator."
(WUD, 1994, p.1320)(SFC, 1/30/98, p.E5)(HN,
9/25/98)(WSJ, 6/29/99, p.A12)(SSFC, 3/28/04, p.M3)
1975 Oct 9, Soviet scientist
Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
(AP, 10/9/97)
1975 Nov 7, On the eve of the
anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution Capt. Valery Sablin (1939-1976)
seized control of the Storozhevoy (Vigilant), a Russian destroyer in
the Baltic, intending to proclaim a new revolution. The Russian air
force managed to disable the vessel and Sablin was executed for the
mutiny. This incident inspired Tom Clancy’s novel and the film “The
Hunt for Red October.”
(WSJ, 7/1/05,
p.W4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Sablin)
1975 Dec 26, The Soviet Union
inaugurated the world's first supersonic transport service with a
flight of its Tupolev-144 airliner from Moscow to Alma-Ata.
(AP, 12/26/99)
1975 Victor Astafyev (d.2001 at
77) won the State Prize of Russia for his novel "The Damned and the
Dead."
(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A27)
1975 In Russia Vladimir Putin
joined the Soviet KGB.
(WSJ, 2/23/05, p.A14)
1975 In 2005 Christopher Andrew
and Vasili Mitokhin, a former KGB officer, authored “The Mitokhin
Archive II: The KGB and the World," and said a high-ranking KGB officer
used agents to persuade PM Indira Gandhi to declare a state of
emergency in India in 1975. The officer was identified as Leonid
Shebarshin, who served in New Delhi in the mid-1970s.
(AP, 9/18/05)
1975 A Russian SL3 rocket body
began orbiting the Earth. It re-entered the atmosphere in 2001.
(SFC, 9/7/01, p.A12)
1976 Aug 3, Valeri Sablin, Soviet
Navy officer, was executed for mutiny. He was a character in the
1990 Hollywood film “Hunt for Red October.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Sablin)
1976 Aug 6, Gregor Piatigorsky
(b.1903), Russian cellist, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Piatigorsky)
1976 Sep 6, A Soviet pilot landed
his MIG-25 in Tokyo and asked for political asylum in the United States.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1976 The film "Blue Bird" starred
Elizabeth Taylor. It was shot in Russia and was the 1st film
collaboration between the US and the Soviet Union.
(SFC, 10/29/01, p.A18)
1976 The Supreme Soviet passed
legislation for the preservation of archeological sites.
(AM, 11/00, p.33)
1977 May 24, In a surprise move,
the Kremlin ousted Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny from the Communist
Party's ruling Politburo.
(AP, 5/24/97)
1977 May 29, USSR performed a
nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalitinsk, USSR.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_8.htm)
1977 Jun 1, The Soviet Union
formally charged Jewish human rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky with
treason. In 1978 he was convicted and imprisoned. In 1986 he was
released to the West.
(AP, 6/1/97)
1977 Jun 16, Soviet Communist
Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was named president of the
USSR, becoming the first person to hold both posts simultaneously.
(AP, 6/16/98)(HN, 6/16/98)
1977 Sep 18, Cosmos, a Soviet
nuclear-powered satellite, was launched. It fell onto Northern Canada
on Jan. 24, 1978.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.A1)
1977 Dec 10, On UN Human Rights
Day, the Soviet Union placed 20 prominent dissidents under house
arrest, cutting off telephones and threatening to break up a planned
silent demonstration in Moscow’s Pushkin Square.
(HN, 12/10/98)
1977 Yuri Nikulin (1921-1997)
starred in the film "Twenty Days Without War."
(SFC, 8/22/97, p.A24)
1977 Soviet dissident Anatoly B.
Sharansky was arrested. [see Jul 14, 1978]
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
1977 The Soviet constitution
adopted article 72, which granted each republic the right to secede
from the USSR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_the_Soviet_Union)
1977-1986 Oleg Troyanovsky (1919-2003) served as the
Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations.
(AP, 12/23/03)
1978 Jan 10, The Soviet Union
launched two cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule for a rendezvous with
the Salyut VI space laboratory.
(AP, 1/10/98)
1978 Jan 11, Two Soviet cosmonauts
aboard the Soyuz 27 capsule linked up with the Salyut 6 orbiting space
station, where the Soyuz 26 capsule was already docked.
(AP, 1/11/98)
1978 Jan 24, Cosmos 954, a
4-month-old nuclear-powered Soviet satellite plunged through Earth's
atmosphere and disintegrated, scattering radioactive debris over parts
of northern Canada.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.A1)(AP, 1/24/08)
1978 Mar 2, Soyuz 28 carried 2
cosmonauts to Salyut 6. Czech pilot Vladimir Remek became the first
non-Russian, non-American in space.
(HN, 3/2/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_28)
1978 Apr 10, Arkady Shevchenko, a
high-ranking Soviet citizen employed by the United Nations, sought
political asylum in the United States.
(AP, 4/10/03)
1978 Apr 20, A South Korean Air
Lines Boeing 707 crash-landed in northwestern Russia. Flight 902 was
fired on by a Soviet interceptor after entering Soviet airspace. 107
passengers and crew survived after the plane made an emergency landing
on a frozen lake and 2 passengers were killed.
(AP,
4/20/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_902)
1978 May 1, Aram Khachaturian
(b.1903), Georgia-born Armenian composer, died in Moscow.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aram_Khachaturian)
1978 May 18, Russian dissident
Yuri Orlov was sentenced to 7 years in a strict-regime labor camp. The
Russian physicist was arrested Feb 10, 1977.
(www.newyorker.com/search/query?keyword=Orlov%200044%20%20Yuri)
1978 May 20, US
counterintelligence authorities reported that the Soviet consulate in
San Francisco's Pacific heights has become a major base for espionage
activity.
(SFC, 5/16/03, p.E8)
1978 May 29, The USSR performed a
nuclear test at Semipalatinsk in Eastern Kazakhstan.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_8.htm)
1978 Jun 27, Soyuz 30 carried 2
cosmonauts (1 Polish) to the Salyut 6 space station.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_30)
1978 Jul 4, L.I. Chernykh
(b.1935), Russian astronomer, discovered asteroids #3332, #6110 &
#7730.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Chernykh)
1978 Jul 5, A Soviet Soyuz
spacecraft touched down safely in Soviet Kazakhstan with its two-member
crew, including the first Polish space traveler -- Major Miroslaw
Hermaszewski.
(AP, 7/5/98)
1978 Jul 14, Soviet dissident
Anatoly B. Sharansky was convicted of treasonous espionage and
anti-Soviet agitation, and sentenced to 13 years at hard labor. He was
released in 1986.
(AP, 7/14/98)
1978 Aug 26, Sigmund Jahn became
the first German in space when he blasted off aboard Russia’s Soyuz 31.
(RTH, 8/26/99)
1978 Sep 21, Two Soviet cosmonauts
set a space endurance record after 96 days in space.
(HN, 9/21/98)
1978 Dec 5, Afghan Pres. Nur
Mohammad Tarakai, head of People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA), signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)(www.eedi.org.ua/eem/7eng.html)
1978 Isaiah Berlin published
"Russian Thinkers."
(WSJ, 8/24/98, p.A10)
1978 In Russia Alexander I.
Ginzburg (1936-2002), poet, was sentenced to 8 years in prison for his
dissident activities. He served 8 months and then was then exchanged
with 4 others for 2 Soviet spies in the US.
(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.A27)
1978 US Marines discovered Soviet
agents burrowing a tunnel under the US Embassy.
(http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/03/05/russia.tunnel/index.html)
1979 Jan 15, The Soviet Union
vetoed a United Nations resolution and called for the withdrawal of all
Vietnamese troops from Cambodia.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1979 Mar 30, Anthrax spores leaked
from a secret germ-warfare plant and spread over Sverdlovsk
(Yekaterinburg), Russia. Over the course of 2 months at least 105
people died of anthrax poisoning. [see Apr 2] Reports did not emerge
until October.
(WSJ, 10/11/01,
p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_Anthrax_leak)
1979 Apr 2, Anthrax was found to
have leaked from the secret lab of Compound 19 in Sverdlovsk (later
renamed Yekaterinburg) in the Ural Mountains. It caused a local
epidemic that killed at least 64/66 people. Pres. Yeltsin acknowledged
the leak in 1992 and allowed a team of researchers to investigate the
site. In 2000 Jeanne Guillemin authored "Anthrax: The Investigation of
a Deadly Outbreak." [see Mar 30]
(SFC, 2/19/00, p.A14)(SFEC, 8/13/00, BR p.7)(WSJ,
9/18/01, p.B1)
1979 Apr 25, N. Chernykh,
Soviet-Russian, discovered asteroids #2656: Evenkia & #3653.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Stepanovich_Chernykh)
1979 Jun 18, President Carter and
Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev signed the SALT II strategic arms
limitation treaty in Vienna. The agreement set a ceiling on long-range
bombers and missiles and limited development to only one new land-base
missile system for the duration of the treaty.
(AP, 6/18/97)(HNQ, 11/15/99)
1979 Jul 19, Alexander I. Ginzburg
(1936-2002), Russian-born poet, was flown to the US as part of an
exchange for Soviet spies.
(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.A27)
1979 Aug 18, USSR performed a
nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh, Semipalitinsk, USSR.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_8.htm)
1979 Aug 28, Konstantin Simonov
(b.1915), Russian war correspondent and poet, died in Moscow. His poems
included “Wait For Me” (1942).
(www.simonov.co.uk/biography.htm)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Simonov)
1979 Sep 18, Bolshoi Ballet
dancers Leonid & Valentina Kozlov defected to the US.
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1083/is_9_73/ai_55739021)
1979 Sep 24, Russian ice skaters
Protopopov and Belousova asked for asylum in Switzerland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludmila_Belousova)
1979 Dec 25, Large numbers of
Soviet airborne forces joined stationed ground troops and began to land
in Kabul, Afghanistan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan)
1979 Dec 27, Soviet forces seized
control of Afghanistan after a 2nd leftist coup. A Soviet backed coup
ousted leftists and put a more pro-Moscow regime in power in Kabul.
Babrak Karmal (1929-1996) became the new puppet leader and Soviet
troops bolstered his rule against Muslim resistance fighters.
Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by
Babrak Karmal. Some 15,000 Soviet soldiers reportedly died.
(SFC, 9/23/96, A9)(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)(WSJ, 12/6/96,
p.A1)(WA, 1997,p.737)(AP, 12/27/97)
1979 Researchers at Moscow’s
Institute of Nanotechnology began working on an additive to improve
fuel efficiency in car engines. Italians moved the project forward by
using serpentine nanopowders and a product named Clap was expected to
hit markets in December, 2005.
(Econ, 10/8/05, p.88)
1979 The Soviet Union established
a brigade in Cuba.
(SSFC, 1/20/02, p.A7)
1979-1985 Victor Cherkashin served as the KGB chief
at the Soviet embassy in Washington. In 2004 he authored “Spy Handler:
The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich
Ames.”
(WSJ, 12/30/04, p.D8)
1980 Jan 2, President Carter asked
the Senate to delay the arms treaty ratification in response to Soviet
action in Afghanistan.
(HN, 1/2/99)
1980 Jan 14, UN voted 104-18 to
deplore the Soviet Afghan acts.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1980 Jan 20, President Jimmy
Carter announced the US boycott of Olympics in Moscow.
(www.kipnotes.com/James%20E.%20Carter.htm)
1980 Jan 22, Russian dissidents
Andrei Sakharov (b.1921) and his wife Jelena Bonner were banished from
Moscow to Gorky.
(www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=a_sakharov)
1980 Jan 24, In an action
obviously designed as another in a series of very strong reactions to
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, US officials announce that America
is ready to sell military equipment (excluding weapons) to communist
China. The surprise statement was part of the US effort to build a
closer relationship with the People's Republic of China for use as
leverage against possible Soviet aggression.
(http://tinyurl.com/8sx9u)
1980 Feb 22, In a stunning upset,
the U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets at Lake Placid, N.Y.,
4-3.
(AP, 2/22/99)
1980 Mar 21, President Carter
announced to the U.S. Olympic Team that they would not participate in
the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet
intervention in Afghanistan.
(www.cnn.com/resources/video.almanac/1980/index.html)
1980 Apr 12, The US Olympic
Committee endorsed a boycott of Moscow games.
(http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id98.htm)
1980 Jun 22, The Soviet Union
announced a partial withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan.
(HN, 6/22/98)
1980 Jul 19, The Moscow Summer
Olympics began, minus dozens of nations that were boycotting the games
because of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.
(AP, 7/19/00)
1980 Aug 3, Closing ceremonies
were held in Moscow for the 1980 Summer Olympic Games, which had been
boycotted by dozens of countries, including the United States.
(AP, 8/3/00)
1980 Oct 23, The resignation of
Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin was announced.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1980 Dec 14, After four days of
meetings, members of NATO warned the Soviets to stay out of the
internal affairs of Poland, saying that intervention would effectively
destroy the detente between East and West.
(HN, 12/14/98)
1980 Dec 18, Former Soviet Premier
Alexei N. Kosygin (1964-80) died at age 76 of a heart attack.
(AP, 12/18/97)(MC, 12/18/01)
1980 Dec 20, The government of the
Soviet Union confirmed that former Premier Alexei N. Kosygin had died
two days earlier at the age of 76.
(AP, 12/20/97)
1980 Dec 23, A state funeral was
held in Moscow for former Premier Alexei N. Kosygin, who had died Dec.
18 at age 76.
(AP, 12/23/97)
1980s Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich,
a small-time thief and counterfeiter, made millions from Jews leaving
the Soviet Union. He later ran a prostitution ring in Budapest and in
1991 set up a company, Arigon in the Channel Islands, to launder money.
Arigon acquired YBM Magnex which became a public corp. in 1994.
(SFEC, 7/25/99, p.A20)
1980-1982 Alexander Lebed commanded a Russian
battalion fighting in Afghanistan.
(SFC, 10/18/96, A18)
1980-1989 During the 1980s the US purchased millions
of Type 56 rifles from China to arm the Afghan Mujahedeen in their war
against the Soviet army. The rifles were copycats of the AK-47s used by
Russian soldiers. The US gave an average of $500 million in military
aid annually to the Mujahedeen. The US also purchased Chinese and
Polish AK-47s to supply the Contra guerillas in Nicaragua.
(SFC, 5/27/96, p.A9)(SFC, 9/23/96, A9)
1981 Mar 7, Kirill Petrovich
Kondrashin (b.1914), Russian conductor, composer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiril_Kondrashin)
1981 Apr 24, The US ended a
16-month grain embargo against the USSR.
(www.orwelltoday.com/grainembargo.shtml)
1981 May 13, John Paul II was shot
and seriously wounded in St. Peter's Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet
Ali Agca. The shots hit the pope’s hand and penetrated his abdomen.
John Paul forgave Agca 4 days later. In 2006 an Italian report said the
Soviet Union was behind the attempted assassination.
(TMC, 1994, p.1981)(AP, 5/13/97)(SFC, 6/14/00,
p.A12)(AP, 3/2/06)
1981 May 26, Russia’s Soyuz T-4,
launched on March 12, landed.
(http://space.kursknet.ru/cosmos/english/machines/st4.sht)
1981 Aug 19, Two U.S. Navy F-14
jet fighters shot down a pair of Soviet-built Libyan SU-22s in a
dogfight over the Gulf of Sidra.
(AP, 8/19/06)
1981 Nov 30, The United States and
the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva aimed at reducing
nuclear weapons in Europe.
(AP, 11/30/97)
1981 Dec 29, President Reagan
curtailed Soviet trade in reprisal for its harsh policy in Poland.
(HN, 12/29/00)
1981 Russian Archeologist Yuri
Mochanov of the Yakutish Academy of Sciences announced the discovery of
human habitation in northern Siberia that dated back to at least 30,000
years. More precise techniques later measured the stone artifacts at
the site to 250k-300k BC.
(SFC, 2/28/97, p.A15)
1982 Jan 22, President Reagan
formally linked progress in arms control to Soviet repression in
Poland.
(HN, 1/22/99)
1982 Mar 1, Russian spacecraft
Venera 13 landed on Venus and sent back data.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_13)
1982 Mar 5, Russian spacecraft
Venera 14 landed on Venus and sent back data.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_14)
1982 Mar 8, The U.S. accused the
Soviets of killing 3,000 Afghans with poison gas.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1982 May 13, Soyuz T-5 was
launched at Baikonur. Berezovoi & Lebedev spent the next 211 days
in space.
(http://space.kursknet.ru/cosmos/english/machines/st5.sht)
1982 Jun, "Farewell," a C.I.A.
campaign of computer sabotage, stayed secret because the blast,
estimated at three kilotons, took place in the Siberian wilderness,
with no casualties known. "The pipeline software that was to run the
pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed,
"to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far
beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result
was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from
space." "At the Abyss," by Thomas C. Reed, was published by Random
House in 2004.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/opinion/02SAFI.html)
1982 Jul 2, Soyuz T-6 returned to
Earth.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_T-6)
1982 Jul 4, USSR performed nuclear
test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_9.htm)
1982 Aug 19, Soviet cosmonaut
Svetlana Savitskaya became the second woman to be launched into space.
(AP, 8/19/07)
1982 Nov 3, In Afghanistan a
Soviet tank engine exploded in the Salang Tunnel and 178 Soviet
soldiers were killed along with as many as 800 Afghans.
(SFC, 12/13/01,
p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salang_tunnel_fire)
1982 Nov 10, In Russia Soviet
leader Leonid I. Brezhnev died at age 75 and the Kremlin command passed
to Yuri Andropov. Brezhnev had suffered from arteriosclerosis of the
brain. See the 1997 book by Michel Dobbs "Down with Big Brother, The
Fall of the Soviet Empire."
(TMC, 1994, p.1982)(SFEC, 2/2/97, BR. p.1)(AP,
11/10/97)
1982 Nov 12, Yuri V. Andropov was
elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of
the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.
(AP, 11/12/97)
1982 Nov 15, Funeral services were
held in Moscow's Red Square for the late Soviet President Leonid I.
Brezhnev.
(AP, 11/15/97)
1982 The Friendship Bridge over
the Amu Darya River, connecting Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, was built
by the Soviets during the Soviet occupation of that country. The bridge
was closed in May 1997 when the Taliban forces took control of the city
of Mazari Sharif, forcing Uzbek rebels to retreat back to Uzbekistan.
It reopened on December 9, 2001.
(http://tinyurl.com/2qbrbd)(WSJ, 11/21/01, p.A11)
1983 Jan 23, Cosmos 1402, a
Russian nuclear powered satellite launched in 1982, fell into the
Indian Ocean.
(www.space.com/news/spacehistory/dangerous_reentries_000602.html)
1983 Mar 2, The USSR launched
spacecraft "TKS-M" to "Salyut-7" space station, which was named
"Cosmos-1443".
(www.videocosmos.com/calendar-march0110.shtm)
1983 Mar 8, Pres Reagan called the
USSR an "Evil Empire."
(http://www.ronaldreagan.com/sp_6.html)
1983 Apr 5, France threw out 47
Soviet diplomats accusing them of espionage..
(http://tinyurl.com/2n2m92)
1983 May 14, Fyodor Abramov
(b.1920), Russian playwright, died in Leningrad. His plays included
“Brothers and Sisters.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Abramov)(Econ,
10/21/06, p.96)
1983 May 23, Radio Moscow
announcer Vladimir Danchev (35) praised Afghanistan Muslims standing up
to Russia. He was removed from the air. Soviet sources said that
Vladimir Danchev, the Radio Moscow news announcer who twice in six days
described Soviet troops in Afghanistan as an occupying force, had been
dismissed and was under investigation.
(http://tinyurl.com/3dv7cx)
1983 Jun 16, Yuri Andropov
(1914-1984, USSR party leader, was elected president.
(www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9272865)
1983 Jun 27, The Russian Soyuz T-9
spacecraft launched from Baikonur carrying 2 cosmonauts to the Salyut 7
space station.
(http://space.kursknet.ru/cosmos/english/machines/st9.sht)
1983 Jul 7, Samantha Smith (11) of
Manchester, Maine, left for a visit to the Soviet Union at the personal
invitation of Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov.
(AP, 7/7/97)
1983 Jul 22, Samantha Smith (11)
and her parents returned home to Manchester, Maine, after completing a
whirlwind tour of the Soviet Union.
(AP, 7/22/03)
1983 Aug 25, The US and USSR
signed a $10 billion grain pact.
(http://tinyurl.com/2twapx)
1983 Sep 1, The KAL flight 007 was
downed by a Soviet jet fighter after the airliner entered Soviet
airspace. 269 people were killed aboard the Korean Air Lines Boeing 747
including sixty-one Americans, among them Georgia Representative Larry
McDonald. The order was given by Soviet Gen’l. Anatoly Kornukov who
held that the plane was part of a hostile US operation. In 2005 the
History Channel featured a TV documentary on the tragedy.
(SFC, 5/29/96, A3)(AP, 9/1/97)(WSJ, 1/23/98,
p.A1)(TV, 12/22/05)
1983 Sep 6, The USSR admitted to
shooting down KAL 007 on Sep 1.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_007)
1983 Sep 12, The USSR vetoed a UN
resolution deploring its shooting down of South Korea’s KAL flight 007
plane.
(www.globalpolicy.org/security/membship/veto/vetosubj.htm)
1983 Sep 26, The Soviet Union's
early warning system wrongly signaled the launch of a US Minuteman
intercontinental ballistic missile. Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, in
charge of the system, decided the alarm was false and did not launch a
retaliatory strike. Because of military secrecy and international
policy, Petrov's actions were kept secret until 1998. In 2004 the
San-Francisco-based Association of World Citizens presented Petrov a
World Citizen Award.
(AP,
5/22/04)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov)
1983 Sep 26, Cosmonauts Titov and
Strekalov were saved by their escape system when the rocket that was to
carry their Soyuz T-10-1 mission into space caught fire on the
launchpad.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_disaster)
1983 Colin Thubron authored "Among
the Russians."
(Econ, 9/30/06, p.93)
1984 Jan 29, The Soviets issued a
formal complaint against alleged U.S. arms treaty violations.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1984 Feb 13, Konstantin Chernenko
was chosen to be general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's
Central Committee, succeeding the late Yuri Andropov.
(HN, 2/13/98)(AP, 2/13/98)
1984 Feb 19, The USSR
performed a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalitinsk.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_10.htm)
1984 Mar 21, A Soviet submarine
crashed into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1984 Apr 11, Konstantin U.
Chernenko (1911-1985) was named Chairman of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Chernenko)
1984 May 8, USSR announced it
would not participate in Summer Olympics planned for Los Angeles.
(HN, 5/8/98)
1984 Jul 10, Andrei Tarkovsky
(1932-1986), Russian film maker, defected from the USSR.
(DVD, Criterion, 1998)
1984 Jul 25, Soviet cosmonaut
Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space. She
carried out more than 3 hours of experiments outside the orbiting space
station Salyut 7.
(AP, 7/25/97)
1984 Aug 11, President Reagan
sparked controversy when he joked during a voice test for a paid
political radio address: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to
tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia
forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
(AP, 8/11/97)(www.yaf.com/Reagan.shtml)
1984 Aug 25, The USSR
performed an underground nuclear test.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_10.htm)
1984 Nov 18, The Soviets helped
deliver U.S. wheat during the Ethiopian famine.
(HN, 11/18/98)
1985 Feb 15, The World Chess
Championship match in Moscow between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov
was abandoned due to psychological strain. The match was resumed in
September.
(http://tinyurl.com/y9d9nd)
1985 Mar 10, Konstantin U.
Chernenko (b.1911), Soviet leader for just 13 months (1984-1985), died.
(AP,
3/10/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Chernenko)
1985 Mar 11, The Soviet Union
announced the death the day before of its leader, Konstantin U.
Chernenko. Politburo member Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed
him and became general-secretary of the Communist party and the Premier
of the Soviet Union. He liberated the Soviet Union from old Communist
structures and opened the door for Russian democracy.
(TMC, 1994, p.1985)(SFEC, 12/22/96, BR p.7)(AP,
3/11/98) (HN, 3/11/98)(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A6)
1985 Mar 11, Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev visited Lithuania.
(LHC, 3/11/03)
1985 Mar 12, The US and the USSR
began arms control talks in Geneva.
(HN, 3/12/98)
1985 Mar 13, Konstantin Chernenko
was buried near the Kremlin Wall in Moscow. Mikhail Gorbachev became
the new leader of the Soviet Union. He oversaw the dismantling of the
Soviet nuclear arms stockpile and the end of the Soviet Union itself.
(HN, 3/13/99)
1985 Apr 23, Mikhail Gorbachev
announced economic reforms (perestroika). This Gorbachev era in the
Soviet Union (1985-1992) is covered in the 2007 book “Seven Years That
Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective” by Archie Brown.
(Econ, 5/12/07, p.88)(WSJ, 12/1/07, p.A8)
1985 May 20, FBI arrested John A.
Walker. US Navy Chief Petty Officer Walker began spying for the Soviet
Union in 1968 for $1,000 per week. Walker’s ex-wife turned him into the
FBI.
(www.dss.mil/training/espionage/1985.htm)
1985 Jun 15, In St. Petersburg,
Russia, a middle-aged Lithuanian man pulled out a knife and slashed the
stomach and thigh of the nude woman, Danaë, depicted in the
Rembrandt masterpiece. He then hurled a jar of acid at the picture and
splashed a militiaman in the face. He was overpowered by guards who
found explosives strapped to his legs and trousers. The painting was
restored and put back on exhibit in 1997.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B5)
1985 Jul 10, A Soviet Tu-154
crashed in Uzbekistan and all 200 people aboard were killed.
(SFC, 7/4/01,
p.A10)(http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19850710-0)
1985 Jul 19, British agents helped
Oleg Gordievsky (b.1938) escape from Moscow to Finland. He was the
highest ranking KGB defector in its history.
(AP,
11/25/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Gordievsky)
1985 Nov 19, President Reagan and
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met for the first time as they began
their summit in Geneva.
(AP, 11/19/97)
1985 Vladimir Putin, Soviet KGB
officer, was assigned to recruit spies in Dresden, East Germany.
(WSJ, 2/23/05, p.A14)
1985 In Russia Alexander Pajitnov,
a computer programmer, invented the game “Tetris” on an old Electronica
60 computer. He gave up the rights to the game to the State for ten
years.
(SFC, 7/7/96, C5)
1985 In the military town of
Bolshoy Kamen near Vladivostok a nuclear explosion at the Zvesda
nuclear submarine factory occurred and was hushed up. Waste from the
area has tainted an old landfill and the Primorye state government
forced the military to close the area in 1988.
(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A12)
1985 The United States leased
buildings in Moscow for a US embassy under a twenty-year contract
valued at 72,500 rubles a year, about $60,000 at the time. In 1999 the
United States proposed writing off the WW II “lend-lease debt” in
exchange for buildings used by the U.S. embassy, including an elegant
residence for the ambassador. An unnamed official said the United
States should pay $870,000 a year for the buildings.
(www.russiajournal.com/start/news/article.cgi?ind=1637)
1985-1986 In Afghanistan Soviet soldiers
failed to subdue the rebels. An alliance of 7 factions received US
arms. Moscow installed a new leader, Dr. Najibullah.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A8)
1985-1994 Aldrich H. Ames, a CIA counterintelligence
official, passed information over this time to the Soviet Union that
included the names of US agents. The deaths of at least 9 agents were
blamed on his disclosures. In 1994 Ames and his wife, Rosario, pleaded
guilty to spying for the Soviet Union.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)
1986 Feb 11, Activist Anatoly
Scharansky was released by USSR, and left the country after nine years
of captivity as part of an East-West prisoner exchange.
(AP, 2/11/04)
1986 Feb 19, The Soviet Union
launched the first component of its Mir space station. Mir meant peace.
(WSJ, 6/27/97, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/5/98, p.W14)(SFC,
8/26/99, p.A12)
1986 Mar 6, USSR's Vega 1 flew by
Halley's Comet at 8,890 km.
(www.iki.rssi.ru/ssp/vega.html)
1986 Apr 20, Following an absence
of six decades, Russian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed in the
Soviet Union to a packed audience at the Grand Hall of the Tchaikovsky
Conservatory in Moscow.
(AP, 4/20/06)
1986 Apr 26, The world's worst
nuclear accident occurred in Pripyat, Ukraine, north of Kiev, at 1:23
a.m. as the Chernobyl atomic power plant exploded. A
300-hundred-square-mile area was evacuated and 31 people died as
unknown thousands were exposed to radioactive material that spread in
the atmosphere throughout the world. An exploded at Chernobyl, Ukraine,
and burned for 10 days. About 70% of the fallout fell in Belarus.
Damage was estimated to be up to $130 billion. By 1998 10,000 Russian
"liquidators" involved in the cleanup had died and thousands more
became invalids. It was later estimated that the released radioactivity
was 200 times the combined bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It
was later found that Soviet scientists were authorized to carry out
experiments that required the reactor to be pushed to or beyond its
limits, with safety features disabled.
(WSJ, 11/8/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 4/27/98, p.A14)(SFC,
12/18/99, p.C4)(AP, 4/26/05)(Econ, 10/6/07, p.18)
1986 Apr 28, The Soviet Union
informed the world of the Apr 26 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, saying
the accident damaged a reactor and that aid was being rendered to
"those affected."
(AP, 4/28/02)
1986 May 1, Tass News Agency
reported the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
(HN, 5/1/98)
1986 Jun 5, A federal jury in
Baltimore convicted Ronald W. Pelton of selling secrets to the Soviet
Union. Pelton was sentenced to three life prison terms plus 10 years.
(AP, 6/5/97)
1986 Jun 15, Pravda announced that
the high-level Chernobyl staff in Ukraine was fired.
(http://tinyurl.com/ydptos)
1986 Aug 23, Gennadiy Zakharov, a
Soviet physicist employed at the UN Secretariat, was arrested In NYC as
he handed classified documents to a US defense contractor.
(www.dss.mil/training/espionage/1986-87.htm)
1986 Aug 30, Soviet authorities
arrested Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and
World Report, after he was handed a package by a Russian acquaintance.
He was later released.
(AP, 8/30/97)
1986 Aug 31, The Soviet passenger
ship Admiral Nakhimov collided with a merchant vessel in the Black Sea,
causing both vessels to sink; up to 448 people reportedly died.
(AP, 8/31/97)
1986 Sep 12, The United States
released Soviet physicist Gennady Zakharov. On Sep 29 the Soviet Union
released journalist Nicholas Daniloff. Both had been accused of
espionage.
(http://www.russianlife.net/article.cfm?Number=407)(AP, 9/29/01)
1986 Sep 29, The Soviet Union
released Nicholas Daniloff, an American journalist confined in Moscow
on spying charges.
(AP, 9/29/01)
1986 Sep 30, The US released
accused Soviet spy Gennady Zakharov, one day after the Soviets released
Nicholas Daniloff.
(AP, 9/30/97)
1986 Oct 3, The Soviet nuclear
submarine K-219 suffered an explosion and fire in a missile tube
northeast of Bermuda; the vessel sank three days later.
(AP, 10/4/06)
1986 Oct 4, The Soviet submarine,
K-219, began experiencing problems while on routine patrol in the
Atlantic. The submarine had collided with an American submarine just
days before a US-Soviet summit between Gorbachev and Reagan in
Reykjavik, Iceland.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, p.A14)(WSJ, 7/24/97, p.A16)
1986 Oct 6, The Soviet submarine,
K-219, with 16 ballistic missiles each carrying 2 warheads, sank about
600 miles east of Bermuda. One of its nuclear reactors had overheated
and seaman Sergey Preminin manually shut it down, but sealed his death
in the process. It was later revealed that highly radioactive plutonium
239 was released in the mishap.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, p.A1,5)
1986 Oct 11, President Reagan and
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened two days of talks concerning
arms control and human rights in Reykjavik, Iceland.
(AP, 10/11/97)
1986 Oct 12, The superpower
meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, ended in stalemate, with President
Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev unable to agree on arms
control or a date for a full-fledged summit in the United States.
(AP, 10/12/97)
1986 Nov 8, Former Soviet official
Vyacheslav M. Molotov (96), whose name became attached to the
incendiary bottle bomb known as a "Molotov Cocktail," died.
(AP, 11/8/06)
1986 Dec 12, Russian Tupolev-134
crashed in East Berlin and 70 of 82 people were killed.
(www.emergency-management.net/avi_acc_1979_1989.htm)
1986 Dec 19, The Soviet Union
announced it had freed dissident Andrei Sakharov from internal exile,
and pardoned his wife, Yelena Bonner.
(AP, 12/19/97)
1986 Dec 29, Andrei Tarkovsky
(b.1932), Russian film maker, died and was buried in Paris.
(DVD, Criterion, 1998)
1986 David Joravsky authored "The
Lysenko Affair," an account of the 30-year reign of the fanatical
Soviet agronomist.
(WSJ, 4/5/02, p.A13)
1986 Vladimir Voynovich (b.1932),
Russian dissident writer, wrote his satirical dystopian novel "Moscow
2042."
(WSJ, 7/15/97,
p.A18)(http://wapedia.mobi/en/Moscow_2042)
1986 The Soviets built a half-mile
concrete span, the Friendship Bridge, connecting Afghanistan and
Uzbekistan.
(SFC, 12/10/01, p.A12)
1986 Lazar Khidekel (b.1904),
Russian artist and architect, died. He sustained a radical utopian
vision and avant-garde aesthetic during decades of Soviet control of
cultural production.
(SFC, 2/22/05, p.E1)
1987 Feb 12, Friends of the poet
Boris Pasternak and of Russian culture agreed that the 1958 resolution
expelling Pasternak from the Writers' Union had to be rescinded. People
met and voted in the same ornate conference room where, thirty years
earlier, the great poet had been cast out of the union.
(www.thenation.com/archive/search.mhtml)
1987 Feb 14, Dmitry Borisovich
Kabalevsky (b.1904), Russian composer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Borisovich_Kabalevsky)
1987 Feb 26, USSR resumed nuclear
testing at Semipalitinsk in Eastern Kazakhstan.
(www.nti.org/f_wmd411/1987.html)
1987 Apr 14, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz met at the Kremlin with Soviet leader Mikhail S.
Gorbachev, who proposed the elimination of short-range nuclear missiles
in East Germany and Czechoslovakia as part of an arms control agreement
with the United States.
(AP, 4/14/97)
1987 Apr 20, The United States
deported Karl Linnas to the Soviet Union, where he had been convicted
in absentia of Nazi war crimes and faced a death sentence. Linnas, who
maintained his innocence, died of heart disease in Leningrad the
following July.
(AP, 4/20/97)
1987 May 28, Mathias Rust, a
19-year-old West German pilot, stunned the world as he landed a private
plane in Moscow's Red Square after evading Soviet air defenses.
(AP, 5/28/97)
1987 May 30, Soviet Defense
Minister Sergei L. Sokolov and the chief of Soviet air defenses were
fired, two days after West German pilot Mathias Rust entered Soviet
airspace in a small plane and flew all the way to Moscow's Red Square.
(AP, 5/30/97)
1987 Jun 12, President Reagan,
during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, publicly
challenged Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the Brandenburg Gate:
"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
(AP, 6/12/97)(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.AW17)
1987 Jul 4, Bill Graham took
Santana, the Doobie Brothers and Bonny Rait to Moscow for an
American-Soviet peace concert.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A15)
1987 Jul 12, For the first time in
20 years, a delegation of Soviet diplomats arrived in Israel for what
was described as a "technical mission" to document Soviet citizens and
make an inventory of Soviet property.
(AP, 7/12/97)
1987 Jul 25, USSR launched Kosmos
1870, a 15-ton Earth-study satellite.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1987 Aug 7, Lynne Cox became the
1st to swim from US to Russia across the Bering Strait.
(http://tinyurl.com/lal2h)
1987 Aug, Magomedali Magomedov
(b.1930) became chairman of Dagestan’s State Council. Under his rule
(1987-2006) the government was run as a family business and police
served clan interests.
(Econ, 7/25/05, p.44)(http://rulers.org/russdiv.html)
1987 Sep 2, West German pilot
Mathias Rust, who flew a private plane from Helsinki, Finland, to
Moscow's Red Square, went on trial in the Soviet capital. Rust, who was
convicted and given a four-year sentence, was released Aug. 3, 1988.
(AP, 9/2/97)
1987 Sep 3, A Soviet prosecutor
accused West German pilot Mathias Rust of seeking "cheap popularity" by
landing a private plane in Moscow's Red Square, and demanded that Rust
be sentenced to eight years at hard labor. Rust was convicted, but
freed the following August.
(AP, 9/3/97)
1987 Sep 13, Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze arrived in Washington for talks aimed at a
possible superpower summit; Shevardnadze carried with him a letter from
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to President Reagan.
(AP, 9/13/97)
1987 Sep 18, US President Reagan
announced that he and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev would meet
later in the year to sign a treaty banning medium and shorter-range
nuclear missiles.
(AP, 9/18/97)
1987 Nov 11, Boris Yeltsin
(1931-2007), who had criticized the slow pace of Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev's reforms, was dismissed as Moscow Communist Party chief for
criticizing the slow pace of reform.
(AP, 11/11/07)(http://tinyurl.com/38s7ew)(Econ,
4/28/07, p.98)
1987 Nov 24, The United States and
the Soviet Union agreed to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles in
the first superpower treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear
weapons.
(AP, 11/24/97)
1987 Nov 30, In an interview
broadcast by NBC, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that his
country was engaged in "Star Wars"-related research, but said there
were no plans to build a space-based system against nuclear attack.
(AP, 11/30/97)
1987 Dec 6, In Moscow security
agents roughed up Jewish activists and journalists during
demonstrations over Kremlin policy one day before the arrival of Soviet
leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to the US where hundreds of thousands of
demonstrators pressing for free emigration of Soviet Jews marched in
Washington.
(AP, 12/6/97)
1987 Dec 7, Soviet leader Mikhail
S. Gorbachev set foot on American soil for the first time, arriving for
a Washington summit with President Reagan.
(AP, 12/7/97)
1987 Dec 8, President Reagan and
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a treaty under which the
superpowers agreed to destroy their arsenals of intermediate-range
nuclear missiles.
(AP, 12/8/97)
1987 Dec 9, On the second day of
their White House summit, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S.
Gorbachev grappled with differences over Afghanistan and cutbacks in
long-range nuclear arms.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1987 Dec 10, President Reagan and
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev concluded three days of summit talks
in Washington.
(AP, 12/10/97)
1987 The Soviet Oka car was
launched.
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.94)
1987 Russia recorded its first
case of AIDS. By 1997 the number rose to 7,000. By 2008 the number
reached 430,000.
(Econ, 11/29/08, p.14)
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