Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
(July-August) Summer Olympic Games in Mos-
cow; 64 countries boycott to protest Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan.
Gorbachev promoted to full member of Polit-
buro.
Death of popular bard, Vladimir Vysotsky.
(August) Solidarity trade union legally estab-
lished in Poland.
(October) Kosygin resigns as premier; dies a few
months later.
Gorbachev introduces policy of
perestroika
(restructuring).
(November) Geneva summit with U.S. President
Reagan.
1986
(February-March) Twenty-seventh Party Congress.
(March) Boris Yeltsin becomes member of Polit-
buro.
(April) Nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.
(October) Reykjavík, Iceland, summit with U.S.
President Reagan.
(December) Sakharov released from internal
exile in Gorky (Nizhnii Novgorad).
Ethnic riots in Kazakhstan.
Gorbachev's anticorruption campaign begins.
1981
Twenty-sixth Party Congress.
(December) Martial law declared in Poland; Sol-
idarity trade union banned.
1981-1985
Eleventh Five-Year Plan.
1986-1990
Twelfth Five-Year Plan.
1982
(November) Brezhnev dies. Yuri Andropov
elected general secretary of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee
and member of the Presidium.
1987
(February) Competitive elections for some local
soviets.
(June) New enterprise law adopted, effective
January 1988.
(October) Yeltsin removed from Politburo.
(November) Gorbachev publicly condemns Stalin's
crimes.
(December) Washington summit conference
between U.S. President Reagan and Gor-
bachev; INF treaty signed.
Moscow showing of Abuladze's bold film
Repen-
tance.
Joseph Brodsky awarded Nobel Prize in literature.
Mathias Rust, 19 years old, lands his Cessna 172
in Red Square; Air Defense Commander
Koldunov removed.
Soviet diplomats visit Israel for first visit since
1967.
1983
(January) Anticorruption drive begins.
Andropov elected president of the Presidium.
(September) Korean Airlines jetliner with 269
passengers shot down by Soviet air force off
Sakhalin Island.
1984
(February) Andropov dies. Konstantin Cher-
nenko elected general secretary of the Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union Central
Committee.
Soviet Union withdraws from Summer Olympic
Games in Los Angeles citing security concerns.
Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky emigrates to Italy.
1988
National conflicts break out in Transcaucasia and
in Baltic republics; national movements spread
throughout Soviet Union.
(February) Ethnic violence breaks out in Arme-
nia and Azerbaijan over contested Nagorno-
1985
(March) Chernenko dies. Gorbachev succeeds
Chernenko as party general secretary.
Antialcoholism program (“dry law”) initiated by
Gorbachev.
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