CHRONOLOGY - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 426

1944
(January) Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
(May) Crimean Tatars banished to Siberia.
(June) Allied landings at Normandy Beach (D
day) establishes “Second Front” in Europe.
(August-October) Warsaw Uprising.

(June) Stalin-Tito split; Cominform expels Yugo-
slavia;
Berlin Blockade begins (lasts until May 1949).
(August) Zhdanov dies.

1949
Industry and agriculture restored to level of
pre-World War II output.
Chinese Communists defeat Nationalists in Chi-
nese civil war.
(April) NATO organized.
(August) Soviets explode atomic bomb.

1945
(January) Yalta Conference.
(April) Soviets attack Berlin.
(May) Germany surrenders to Soviet forces.
(July-August) Potsdam Conference.
(July 24) United States successfully tests atomic
bomb.
(August) USSR enters war against Japan.
(September) Japan surrenders.
Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible , part 1, wins Stalin
Prize.

1950
Sino-Soviet agreement between USSR and new
China communist government.

1950-1953
Korean War (June 1950-July 1953).

1946
(February) Stalin's remobilization speech to
Supreme Soviet.
(March) Churchill's Iron Curtain speech in Ful-
ton, Missouri.
(August) Zhdanov begins attack on Zoshchenko,
Akhmatova, and other cultural figures.
First elections to Supreme Soviet since 1937.
First session of United Nations opens.
Communist government in Bulgaria.

1951-1955
Fifth Five-Year Plan.

1952
(October) Nineteenth Party Congress meets, first
since 1939.

1953
(January) Alleged doctors' plot is uncovered and
followed by arrests seen by many as a prelude
to another campaign of mass terror.
(March) Stalin dies.
Malenkov appointed prime minister.
(June) Beria is arrested and executed later in the
year.
Berlin uprising in East Germany.
(September) Nikita Khrushchev officially named
first secretary of the Communist Party.

1946-1950
Fourth Five-Year Plan.

1947
Soviet currency reform requires citizens to
exchange old rubles for new rubles at a rate
of 10:1; Cominform founded.
Wartime rationing abolished in USSR.
(March) Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan
announced in United States.

1954
(March) Khrushchev begins Virgin Lands cam-
paign that will run through 1956.
(April) The Crimea transferred to the Ukraine.
(October) Khrushchev and Bulganin visit China;
sign friendship treaty.
Ehrenburg's The Thaw published.

1948
(February) Communist takeover in Czechoslo-
vakia.
Czechoslovakia joins Soviet bloc.