Key Dates

Bolshevik Revolution in Russia

October 1917

Nazi-Soviet Pact

August 1939

Winter War with Finland

1939-40

German invasion of Russia

1941

German attack on Stalingrad

1942

Failure of Germany at Stalingrad

February 1943

Tehran Conference

November 1943

Russia Fails to Support Warsaw Uprising

1944

D-Day sees start of Second Front

June 1944

Greek Civil War

1944

Soviet forces control Bulgaria through Allied Control Council

1944

Churchill and Stalin agree Percentages Agreement on Eastern Europe

October 1944

Yalta Conference

February 1945

Death of Roosevelt

April 1945

Soviet forces set up Provisional Government in Poland

June 1945

Potsdam Conference

July - August 1945

USA drops atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

August 1945

Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech

March 1946

Policy of containment starts

1947

Bizonia created

1947

Marshall Plan

June 1947

Comniform established

September 1947

Communist coup in Czechoslovakia

February 1948

Expulsion of Yugoslavia from Comniform

1948

Berlin blockade

1948-49

Comecon established

1949

Trizonia created

April 1949

NATO established

1949

Basic Law establishes West Germany

1949

Communist Party takes power in China

1949

USSR detonates atom bomb

August 1949

Korean War

1950-53

Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

1953

Death of Stalin

1953

Unrest in East Germany

1953

USA produces hydrogen bomb

1954

Warsaw Pact signed

1955

West Germany joins NATO

1955

Hallstein Doctrine

1955

Suez Crisis

1956

Hungarian rising

1956

Russia tests ICBM

1957

Sputnik launched

October 1957

Berlin Wall built

1961

First American in space

February 1962

Cuban Missile Crisis

October 1962

The Partial Test Ban Treaty

August 1963

Dubcek into power in Czechoslovakia

January 1968

Prague Spring

1968

Soviet forces invade Czechoslovakia

August 1968

Brezhnev Doctrine

1968

USA lands man on the moon

July 1969

Ostpolitik pursued by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt

1969

Moscow Treaty signed by Brandt and Brezhnev

August 1970

Basic Treaty between West and East Germany

December 1972

President Nixon visits China

1972

SALT Treaty

1972

SALY II signed in Vienna by Carter and Brezhnev

1979

USSR invades Afghanistan

December 1979

Ronald Reagan becomes US President

1980

Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of USSR Communist Party

1985

Fall of Berlin Wall

1989

Reunification of Germany

1990

End of USSR

1990

Slovenia and Croatia declare independence

1991