CHRONOLOGY - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 424

(March) Pravda article “Dizzy with Success” by
Stalin marks temporary retreat from forced
collectivization.
(July) Litvinov replaces Chicherin as commissar
of foreign affairs.
(Fall) Resumption of forced collectivization.

Birobidzhan, a territory in eastern Siberia,
becomes autonomous Jewish state.
(January-February) Seventeenth Party Congress,
known as the “Congress of Victors,” meets.
(January) Germany and Poland sign Non-
Aggression Treaty.
(August) First Congress of the Union of Soviet
Writers adopts policy of socialist realism.
(September) League of Nations admits Soviet
Union.
(December) Sergei Kirov, Leningrad party boss,
is assassinated; beginning of Stalinist purges.

1931
Trial of Mensheviks.
Renewal of neutrality treaty with Lithuania, first
signed in 1926.
(September) Manchuria invaded by Japan.

1932
Conspiracy led by M. N. Riutin uncovered.
Government introduces mandatory internal
passports for urban dwellers.
USSR signs nonaggression pacts with China, Fin-
land, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and France.
Sergei Prokofiev returns from abroad.
Soviet Union establishes relations with Nation-
alist Chinese government.
Dissolution of Russian Association of Proletarian
Writers (RAPP).
(December) Early conclusion of First Five-Year
Plan.

1935
Chinese Eastern Railway sold to Manchukuo,
Japanese puppet government in Manchuria.
Collective farm statute.
(May) Soviet treaties with France and Czech-
oslovakia.
(July-August) Seventh Congress of Comintern.
(August) Stakhanovite movement begins.

1936
Maxim Gorky dies.
(March) Hitler occupies Rhineland.
(June) Divorce made more difficult by new fam-
ily law; abortions outlawed except when a
mother's health endangered.
(July) Start of the Spanish civil war.
(August) First Moscow “show trial”: Kamenev,
Zinoviev, and other members of Left Opposi-
tion put on trial; prosecuted by Vyshinsky.
(September) Yezhov replaces Yagoda as head of
secret police (NKVD).
(November) Anti-Comintern Pact among Ger-
many, Italy, and Japan.
(December) New constitution—“Stalin Constitu-
tion”—adopted with 11 constituent republics.

1932-1933
Widespread famine in the Ukraine and other
regions of Soviet Union.

1933
(January) Hitler assumes the post of German
chancellor.
Ivan Bunin wins Russia's first Nobel Prize in lit-
erature.
(November) USSR officially recognized by the
United States.

1933-1937
Second Five-Year Plan (adopted January 1934).

1936-1938
Most intense phase of the Great Terror.

1934
Clauses added to Criminal Code sections deal-
ing with antistate, or “counterrevolution-
ary,” crimes.

1937
(January) Second Moscow show trial: Piatakov,
Radek, and others put on trial.