1. World War I Begins
2. Food Riots break out in St. Petersburg (later named Petrograd)
3. Czars troop side with the rioters (March 8, 1917)
4. Czar Nicholas II abdicates (March 15, 1917)
5. Provisional government created and calls for elections to form a constitutional assembly.
6. Soviets establish support from the masses with the slogan "Peace, Bread, and Land"
7. Lenin returns to Russia adding to the slogan "All power to the Soviets"
8. First attempt of the Soviets to overthrow the Provisional government and Kerensky. This fails because of support of the French (June 1917)
9. Bolshevik's coup d'etat against the Provisional government at the Winter Palace called October Revolution (guns of Aurora were aimed at the Palace)
10. Elections for a new government held (420 seats went to the Social Revolutionaries; 255 to the Bolsheviks)
11. Newly elected assembly met in January 1918 and was dissolved by an attack of Bolshevik soldiers.
12. Russia signs the Treaty of Brest-Litov, a peace treaty with Germany and leaves WWI
13. Middle class liberals, Moderate Socialists, and the Royalists (Whites) although they have different idealogies join together to fight the Bolsheviks (Reds).
14. Czar Nicholas II and his family are killed (July 16-17, 1918)
15. Civil War over by 1921 thus beginning Lenin's control with terror.
16. Checka, or secret police created, modeled after the Czars secret police.
17. Famine and decreased production plagued the nation.
18. Lenin institutes his New Economic Plan or NEP. This is a return to some capitalistic practices.
19. Lenin manages to lure the Russians into a sense of security under which they expected greater freedom than they had under the Czars.
20. Lenin has a heart attack and effective control of the newly created USSR is in the hands of Stalin who outmaneuvers Trotsky.
21. Upon Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin exiles Trotsky using his role as Secretary General of the Communist Party rules the USSR until his death in 1953.