The Soviet Union under Stalin, 1924–1953

Stalin’s Soviet Union map of key events

64 battles, turning points and sites of memory from The Soviet Union under Stalin, 1924–1953, chapter by chapter, each with its date, its story and a map…

Stalin’s rise to power

• Stalin as General Secretary ● 1922–29
• Georgian affair ● 1922–23
• Stalin’s Siberian grain tour ● 1928
• Trotsky’s exile to Alma-Ata ● 1928
• Trotsky’s expulsion from the USSR ● 1929

Collectivisation in the USSR

• Tulchyn peasant revolt ● 1930
• Gigant state farm ● 1928–30
• Sozak uprising ● 1930
• Kulak deportations to Kotlas ◆ 1930–31
• Narym special settlements ◆ 1930–33

Holodomor and the Soviet famines

• Kharkiv and the Holodomor ◆ 1932–33
• Holodomor in Kyiv oblast ◆ 1932–33
• Deportation of Stanitsa Poltavskaya ◆ 1932
• Volga famine ◆ 1932–33
• Kazakh famine ◆ 1930–33

Stalin’s Five-Year Plans

• Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works ● 1929–32
• Kuznetsk Metallurgical Combine ● 1929–32
• Dnieper Hydroelectric Station ● 1932
• Stakhanovite movement ● 1935
• Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ) ● 1932

Gulag forced-labour camps

• Solovki prison camp ◆ 1923–39
• White Sea–Baltic Canal ◆ 1931–33
• Vorkuta Gulag ◆ 1932–53
• Norilsk Gulag (Norillag) ◆ 1935–56
• Kolyma Gulag camps ◆ 1932–53
• Karlag labour camp ◆ 1931–59
• Vladivostok transit camp ◆ 1938

Great Terror (Great Purge)

• NKVD Order No. 00447 ● 1937
• Levashovo Memorial Cemetery ◆ 1937–54
• Bykivnia graves ◆ 1937–41
• Kurapaty mass graves ◆ 1937–41
• Sandarmokh mass graves ◆ 1937–38
• Vinnytsia massacre ◆ 1937–38

Stalin’s ethnic deportations

• Deportation of Soviet Koreans ◆ 1937
• Baltic June deportations ◆ 1941
• Deportation of the Volga Germans ◆ 1941
• Deportation of the Kalmyks ◆ 1943
• Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush ◆ 1944
• Deportation of the Crimean Tatars ◆ 1944

Stalin’s cult of personality

• Stalin’s 50th birthday in Pravda ● 1929
• Stalin’s birthplace, Gori ● 1878 / 1930s
• Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad ● 1925
• Stalino (Donetsk) ● 1924–61
• Stalinabad (Dushanbe) ● 1929
• Stalin Peak (Ismoil Somoni Peak) ● 1933
• Pavlik Morozov ● 1932

Women and daily life under Stalin

• Women workers of Ivanovo ● 1930s
• Hujum unveiling campaign ● 1927
• ALZhIR women’s camp ◆ 1938–53

Stalin in World War II

• Evacuation to Kuibyshev ● 1941
• Siege of Leningrad ◆ 1941–44
• Tankograd ● 1941–45
• Fall of Rostov and Order No. 227 ✕ 1942
• Yalta Conference ● 1945

High Stalinism (1945–53)

• Tito–Stalin split ● 1948
• Leningrad affair ● 1946–50
• Soviet postwar famine ◆ 1946–47
• UPA insurgency in western Ukraine ● 1944–1950s
• Forest Brothers ● 1944–53
• Berlin Blockade ● 1948–49
• First Soviet atomic bomb test ● 1949

Death of Stalin and de-Stalinisation

• Khrushchev’s Secret Speech ● 1956
• Kengir uprising ◆ 1954
• Soviet invasion of Hungary ● 1956