1905 9th Jan Bloody Sunday - Tsarist troops open fire on a peaceful demonstration of workers in St Petersburg.
1905 20th Sept. A stike of Moscow printers starts the movement that will grow into the October General Strike.
1905 October With the General Strike sweeping Russia the Tsar is forced to issue the the October manifesto promising reforms.
1905 December In response to the suppression of the St Petersburg Soviet the Moscow Soviet organises a disastrous insurrection that the government suppresses after five days
1906 The promised parliament, the Duma, is dissolved when it produces an anti government majority even though elected on a narrow franchise.
1917 March 12th Abolition of the death Penalty
1917 April 18th Milyukov note. Milyukov tells allies that war aims unchanged.
1917 April 20 - 21 The April Days. Opposition to the Foreign Minister Milyukov boils over due to his refusal to renounce annexations.
1917 May Milyukov resigns. Members of the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries join the government.
1917 June 3 First All-Russia Congress of Workers and Soldiers Soviets opens.
1917 June 18 Offensive launched by Russia against Austria Hungary.
1917 July The July Days. (3rd and 4th) Workers and soldiers in Petrograd demand the Soviet takes power. Sporadic fighting results and the Soviet restores order with troops brought back from the front. Trotsky arrested. Lenin goes into hiding. A new provisional government is set up with Kerensky at it's head (8th).
1917 July 12th Death Penalty reintroduced for the front.
1917 Aug The Kornilov putsch. An attempt by General Kornilov to establish a right wing dictatorship is a disastrous flop. Chernov the leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries resigns from the government denouncing Kerensky for complicity in the plot.
1917 Sept The Bolsheviks win control of the Petrograd Soviet.
In the countryside peasant seizure of land from the gentry
continues and reaches the level of near insurrection in
Tambov.
1917 26/27 Oct Soviet proclamations on land and peace. Death Penalty abolished.
1917 30 Oct Kerensky repulsed outside Petrograd
1917 2 Nov Bolsheviks gain Moscow
1917 7th Nov Ukraine proclaimed independent by the Central Rada.
1917 Nov 12-14 Elections to the Constituent Assembly. Socialist Revolutionaries the largest party.
1917 12 Dec Left-SRs join Sovnarkom
1917 Dec (early) Congress of Socialist Revolutionaries results in victory for the left under Chernov. Likewise Menshevik Congress gives victory to Martov's Menshevik internationalists.
1918 Jan 5th The Constituent Assembly in which the Bolsheviks are a minority meets for one day before being suppressed. Earlier that day a demonstration is fired on by Bolshevik units and several demonstrators are killed
1918 10-18 Jan 3rd Soviet Congress
1918 Jan 28th Trotsky denounces the German Peace Terms as unacceptable and walks out of the peace negotiations at Brest- Litovsk.
1918 Feb 1/14 Russia adopts Western (Gregorian) calendar.
1918 Feb 18th The Germans invade Russia which is all but defenceless as virtually the entire army has deserted.
1918 March The Bolsheviks accept the dictated peace of Brest-Litovsk. The Left SRs denounce the peace and leave the government.
1918 April 12th Moscow headquarters of the anarchists surrounded and attacked by Bolshevik troops
1918 May 9th Bolshevik troops open fire on workers protesting at food shortages in the town of Kolpino
1918 July Fifth Soviet Congress. The left SRs assassinate the German ambassador and are in turn crushed by the Bolsheviks.
1918 16 July Gorky's Novaia Zhizn , the last opposition paper, banned.
1918 21st Sept Three ministers of the Siberian Government are arrested by
supporter of Mikhailov, the finance Minister, when they arrive
in Omsk. They are told to resign their posts. Two agree. The
third, Novoselov, refuses. He turns up later that day, hacked to death.
1918 22nd Sept Siberian Oblast Duma dismisses Mikhailov and is itself dispersed by Mikhailov
1918 18th November Kolchak, stages a coup against the Directory, the multi party government in Siberia, and establishes a counterrevolutionary despotism.
1918 Dec Perm falls to Kolchak's Whites
1919 Jan Mensheviks legalised and allowed to publish Vsegda Vpered in Moscow. Era of relative freedom begins in Bolshevik controlled Russia
1919 25 Feb The Cheka closes down Vsegda Vpered. This marks a return to despotic rule by Bolsheviks.
1919 White Armies attack the Bolsheviks from all directions but the Red Army is finally victorious.
1920 25 Apr Poland invades Russia.
1920 19th Aug Start of peasant insurrection in Tambov
1920 14 Nov. Last White army under Wrangel evacuates the Crimea.
1921 Peasant unrest sweeps Russia. These risings are suppressed
but the New Economic Policy is proclaimed that gives the
peasants the right to sell their grain surpluses.
1921 1-17 Mar The old Bolshevik stronghold of Kronstadt rises demanding free election to the Soviets but is suppressed.
1921 May Tambov insurrection suppressed
1924 Lenin dies. Trotsky is defeated by a triumvirate of Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev. Though Stalin stays in the background it is he who is the real power as the other two will shortly discover.