Timeline - 1930s

1931

• Enforced collectivisation

1932

• Famine (1932-34)

1933

• Second five year plan (January - December 1937)

1934

• Congress of victors - Stalin got less votes than Kirov
• Kirov murdered
• NKVD
• Great terror begins
• Gulags set up (forced labour camps)

1936

• Trial of the 16 - Zinoviev, Kamenev and the left

1937

• Trial of the 17 - Trotskyites and wreckers
• Order number 00447 - NKVD list of 250,000 people to kill
• Lots of targets - systematic purges
• Height of purges
• Killing red army

1938

• Trial of the 21 - Bukharin and the right
• Stalin showing no mercy (threatened to kill Bukharin's wife and new born baby)
• Yezhov resigns replaced by Beria as head of the NKVD

1939

• Outbreak of WW2 - Nazi Soviet pact - Red army attacks Finland