December 21, 1879: Â·birth of Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, later known as Stalin

September 1888: Â·Stalin enters Gori Church School

September 1894: Â·Stalin enrolls in Tiflis Theological Seminary

March 1898: Â·First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

May 29, 1899: Â·Stalin is expelled from the Seminary

April 5, 1902: Â·Stalin arrested for the first time, exiled to Siberia

Summer 1903: Â·the Social Democrats split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

January 5, 1904: Â·Stalin escapes from Siberia, the first of many escapes from exile in the following decade.

1905: Â·Revolution in Russia. Nicholas II announces constitutional reforms, and the creation of the Duma, or elected assembly. Stalin marries Yekaterina Svanidze.

December 1905: Â·Stalin goes as a delegate to Bolshevik conference in Finland, meets Lenin for the first time.

March 1907: Â·Birth of Stalin's first child, Yakov

October 1907: Â·Death of Yekaterina

January 1912: Â·Bolsheviks officially separate from Social Democrats, Stalin appointed to the Party's Central Committee by Lenin.

January 1913: Â·Stalin co-writes, with Lenin, "Marxism and the National Question"

August-September 1914: Â·Outbreak of World War I.

March 1917: Â·Beginning of Russian Revolution. The Tsar's government falls, replaced with a Provisional Government. Bolsheviks, including Stalin, hasten to St. Petersburg

April 1917: Â·Lenin returns from Switzerland, rebukes Stalin for taking a conciliar line with the Provisional Government.

November 1917: Â·Bolsheviks overthrow Provisional Government, seize power. Stalin plays only a minor role.

February 1918: Â·Stalin marries Nadezhda Alliluyeva

1918-1920: Â·Civil war in Russia. Trotsky organizes Red Army; Stalin commands forces in Tsaritsyn, Petrograd (St. Petersburg), and elsewhere.

1921: Â·Birth of Stalin's second child, Vasily

1922: Â·Official founding of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

April 1922: Â·Stalin elected General Secretary of the Communist Party

May 25, 1922: Â·Lenin suffers his first stroke

January 4, 1923: Â·Lenin, in a postscript to his Testament, warns the Party to remove Stalin from his position of power.

March 7, 1923: Â·Lenin suffers final stroke, loses his powers of speech

January 21, 1924: Â·Death of Lenin. Stalin survives the reading of the Testament by the Central Committee in May.

1924-25: Â·Stalin publicly attacks Trotsky for being unfaithful to "Leninism."

December 1924: Â·Stalin publicly articulates his theory of "Socialism in One Country."

December 1925: Â·Allied with Bukharin and the "Rightists," Stalin begins attacks on Zinoviev.

February 28, 1926: Â·Birth of Stalin's third child, Svetlana

October-November 1926: Â·At the Fifteenth Party Congress, Stalin attacks the "United Opposition" of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky.

1927: Â·Beginning of the first Five-Year Plan

November 1927: Â·Kamenev and Zinoviev expelled from the Party; Trotsky expelled and sent to Central Asia.

April 1929: Â·Stalin begins assault on Bukharin

November 1929: Â·Bukharin removed from the Politburo

December 1929: Â·Stalin announces "liquidation of the kulaks as a class"; collectivization begins in earnest.

1931-32: Â·Terrible famine across the Soviet Union; millions die

November 8, 1932: Â·Suicide of Nadezhda

December 1, 1934: Â·Murder, by Stalin's agents, of Sergei Kirov. Beginning of "Great Terror," which continues until 1938.

January 1935: Â·Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others are arrested, accused of complicity in Kirov's assassination.

August 1936: Â·First "Show Trial." Zinoviev, Kamenev, and their allies confess and are executed.

January 1937: Â·Second Show Trial

June 1937: Â·Purge of the army begins, top generals are tried and executed

March 1938: Â·Third Show Trial, conviction and execution of Bukharin, Rykov, others.

March 1939: Â·At Eighteenth Party Congress, Stalin announces end of the Great Terror.

August 23, 1939: Â·Nazi-Soviet Pact is signed in Moscow

September 1939: Â·Outbreak of World War II

August 20, 1940: Â·Trotsky assassinated, by Stalin's agents, in Mexico City.

June 21, 1941: Â·Hitler invades Soviet Union

August 1942-February 1943: Â· Battle of Stalingrad. Germans are defeated, marking the turning point in the war.

November 1943: Â· Stalin meets with Roosevelt and Churchill in Teheran

February 1945: Â·Stalin meets with Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta

April 31, 1945: Â·Hitler commits suicide in bombed-out Berlin, ending war in Europe. Red Army controls all of Eastern Europe.

August 1945: Â·United States uses atomic bomb against Japan, bringing an end to the war in the Pacific.

February 1948: Â·Communists seize power in Czechoslovakia, cementing Soviet control of Eastern Europe.

Summer 1948: Â·Soviets blockade East Berlin.

1949: Â·Communists, under Mao, are victorious in Chinese Civil War.

September 1949: Â·Soviets explode their first atomic bomb.

December 1949: Â·Stalin celebrates his seventieth birthday.

February 1950: Â·Sino-Soviet Treaty signed

1950-53: Â·Korean War

January 1953: Â·Announcement of Jewish "Doctors' Plot" against Stalin, plans for new wave of terror.

March 5, 1953: Â·Death of Stalin

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