1918: Czar Nicholas II, his wife and their children are killed by the secret police of the Bolsheviks 

1918: Lenin orders the secret police to arrest and/or kill the anarchists 

1918: Lenin signs a truce with Germany and accepts territorial losses 

1918: Lenin nationalizes the factories, collectivizes the farms and outlaws the church 

1918: Civil war erupts between the Red Army of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks (helped by Britain, Japan, USA) 

1918: Lenin changes the name of the Bolshevik party to Russian Communist Party 

1921: The civil war ends with Lenin's victory (millions have died of starvation, the population of Petrograd has dropped from 2.5 million in 1917 to 0.6 in 1920) 

1921: Lenin enacts the New Economic Policy 

1921: Ukraine is annexed to the Soviet Union 

1922: The Soviet Union is created by uniting Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Transcaucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbajan) 

1924: Lenin dies and is succeeded by Joseph Stalin 

1928: Stalin enacts the first Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union 

1929: Stalin orders the persecution of "kulaks" (capitalist farmers), 15 million peasants are deported to the Arctic regions and 6.5 million die 

1937: 2.5 million Soviet citizens are arrested and 700,000 are executed during the "great purges" 

1939: Stalin and Hitler sign a non-aggression pact including the partition of Poland 

1939: World War II begins with the invasion of Poland by Germany 

1939: Soviet troops invade eastern Poland 

1939: Russian aviator Igor Sikorsky invents the helicopter 

1940: The Soviet Union invades Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia 

1940: Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City 

1941: Germany invades the Soviet Union 

1943: The Soviet Union launches a counteroffensive 

1944: Finland surrenders Karelia to the Soviet Union 

1944: eastern Galicia is conquered by the Soviet Union and eventually annexed to Ukrainia 

1945: The Soviet Union enters Berlin and Germany surrenders 

1945: Germany and Berlin are divided in four sectors, soon to be come "western" and "easter" (Russian) sectors 

1953: Stalin dies and is succeeded by Nikita Krushev 

1956: Krushev denounces Stalin' crimes in a secret speech to the Communist Party 

1957: The Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite, the Sputnik 

1959: The communists led by Fidel Castro win the civil war in Cuba 

1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first astronaut 

1961: The Soviet Union builds a wall between East and West Berlin 

1962: Krushev and Kennedy risk a nuclear war over Cuba 

1964: Krushev is replaced by Leonid Brezhnev 

1985: 21-year old Garry Kasparov becomes the youngest world champion of chess of all times 

1986: A nuclear accident in Chernobyl spreads nuclear radiations around Europe, causing the death of 8,000 people in Ukraine 

1989: the Soviet Union holds the first free elections since 1917 

1989: In Poland the communist government and Solidarity agree to share power 

1989: In East Germany mass demonstrations force the communist government to resign 

1989: The Berlin Wall is destroyed by millions of ecstatic Germans, thus leading to the reunification of east and west Germany 

1989: The communist government of Bulgaria resigns 

1989: The communist government of Czechoslovakia resigns 

1989: The communist dictator of Romania is executed 

1990: Boris Yeltsin is elected president of the Russian Federation 

1991: Ukraine declares its independence 

1991: The Soviet Union is dismantled and Russia becomes an independent federation under Boris Yeltsin 

1996: Boris Yeltis wins the first presidential elections 

1996: Russia withdraws from Chechnya, after tens of thousands of people died, and leaves Chechnya de facto independent 

1998: The Russian economy collapses 

1999: Yeltsin resigns and appoints Vladimir Putin as his successor 

2004: Chechen terrorists bomb the Moscow underground, killing 39 people 

2004: Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov are killed by terrorists 

2004: Chechen rebels kill 92 people in neighboring Ingushetia 

2004: Chechen terrorists blow up two Russian airplanes, killing 89 people 

2004: Chechen terrorists take more than 1,000 hostages in a Beslan school and kill 335