Chronology: Key Events under the Russian Rulers, 1855-1964

1855 Accession of Alexander II - the 'Tsar Liberator'.

1861 Emancipation of the serfs.

1864 Zemstvo Law (1) and legal reforms.

1866 First assassination attempt against Alexander II.

1874-81 Growth of opposition groups: Land and Freedom, Peoples' Will.

1881 Assassination of Alexander II. (2).

1887 Execution of Alexander Ulyanov (Lenin's elder brother).

1892-1903 Witte's 'Great Spurt' (3).

1894 Accession of Nicholas II.

1898 Formation of Social Democrats (SDs).

1901 Formation of Social Revolutionaries (SRs).

1903 SDs split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

1905 Revolution. October Manifesto (4).

1906-11 Stolypin's reforms (5).

1906-14 Four Dumas meet (6).

1914-18 First World War.

1917 The February Revolution. The October Revolution.

1918 The Constituent Assembly.

1918-21 The Civil War.

1921 The Kronstadt Rising (7).

1921-27 New Economic Policy.

1924 Lenin's death.

1928-53 Stalin in power.

1928-29 Introduction of the first Five Year Plan and of Collectivisation.

1934-40 The Great Terror - the 'purges' (8).

1941-45 The Great Patriotic War.

1954-56 Khrushchev's rise to power.

1954-62 Virgin Lands Scheme (9).

1956 Hungarian uprising crushed. Five Year Plan ends Cominform.

Decentralisation begins. Regional councils given more economic freedom.

1958 Seven Year Plan starts.

1964 Khrushchev's fall from power.

1. The Zemstva were district and provincial assemblies elected by local people. They were the first form of democratic government in Russia.
2. The 'Reaction' was Alexander III's response to his father's assassination. He executed five of the assassins and then passed the Statute of State Security. It set up tribunals that operated independently of the law courts, removed liberal-minded judges and extended the powers of the Okhrana.
3. To modernise Russia's economy, Sergei Witte, the finance minister, invested capital raised from private and foreign investors and state taxation in heavy industry and transport. By 1903 there had been a massive increase in coal, iron and oil output, and the Trans-Siberian railway had been completed.
4. In the wake of rising opposition to his government, Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, which promised political and economic concessions if the disturbances ended.
5. Peter Stolypin was president of the Council of Ministers who believed the best way to prevent further opposition to the Tsar was to implement social reforms. He focused on agriculture and set up a Land Bank to help peasants buy land; he encouraged them to acquire larger properties instead of their customary strips of land; and he hoped many would repopulate the more deserted areas of Russia.
6. The Dumas were parliaments resulting from the 1905 revolution. They met in 1906, 1907, 1907-12 and 1912-17.
7. Kronstadt was Russia's leading naval base situated close to Petrograd. When striking industrial workers joined disgruntled dockyard workers and mutinying sailors, Trotsky used the Red Army to brutally suppress the demonstration. Lenin, however, knew that most of these demonstrators had supported Bolshevism in the past and their complaints against War Communism were probably justified. The uprising was 'the spark which lit up reality'.
8. In a series of show trials between 1935 and 1940 Stalin purged the Communist Party of alleged enemies of the state - old Bolsheviks, like Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, were arrested and sentenced to death; half the officer corps and hundreds of thousands of party officials and administrative officers were sacked, deported or shot.
9. Between 1954 and 1962, 145 million acres of land in Siberia and Kazakhistan were reclaimed, resulting in an increase in crop production but overproduction soon led to erosion and falling yields, and bread rationing and imports from Canada were features of the early 1960s.