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| 1926, July–Oct |
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| Victory of Stalin over the Leftist opposition bloc led by Trotsky. This bloc insisted on discontinuation of the NEP policy, the speeding up of “socialist construction,” and the active resumption of work for the world revolution. Trotsky held that a Communist regime in one country was an anomaly and that the proletarian revolution could be safe only when the whole world had been directed into the same channel. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek, and other leaders were now expelled from the political bureau of the party. | 1 |
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| 1927, Dec. 27 |
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| Definitive victory of the Stalin faction over the Trotsky group, when the fifteenth All-Union Congress of the Communist Party condemned all “deviation from the general party line” as interpreted by Stalin. Trotsky and his followers were banished to the provinces after expulsion from the party. In Jan. 1929 Trotsky was expelled from the Union and was obliged to take refuge in Constantinople. Later he moved to Norway and ultimately to Mexico. The same party congress made several decisions that signified the end of the NEP. | 2 |
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| 1928 |
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| NEW SOCIALIST OFFENSIVE INAUGURATED. A program of speedy industrialization was introduced in the form of several successive five-year plans (beginning Oct. 1, 1928). Considerable success was achieved in the development of heavy industries (primarily for purposes of national defense). The manufacturing labor force swelled with new workers from the countryside; huge new industrial cities grew up (Magnitogors in the Urals; Kuznetsk in Siberia). Over 1,500 new factories were built in the 1930s, as industrial output expanded 12–14 percent annually. But production of manufactured products still lagged behind the needs of the population, and the government was constantly faced with inefficiency, to say nothing of ill-will (in 1930 a series of trials of technicians began for mismanagement and sabotage). In the field of agriculture the government now returned to a policy of socialization by pooling individual peasant farms in large concerns, such as the collective farms (kolkhoz) and the state farms (sovkhoz). The collectivization campaign in the villages was carried out by means of both propaganda and coercion (drastic measures against the recalcitrant peasants and especially against the well-to-do farmers, or kulaks, who were completely wiped out). The objectives of the government were substantially achieved, and within a few years the great majority of the peasants were collectivized, the government controlling the output of the new farms. | 3 |
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| 1929, Nov. 17 |
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| Expulsion of Nicolai Bukharin and other members of the Rightist opposition. This group had advocated further concession to the peasants along the lines of the NEP. Stalin was now undisputed master of the situation and dictator of Russia. | 4 |
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| Dec. 22 |
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| An agreement with China brought to an end a prolonged dispute over the conflicting claims to the Chinese Eastern Railway. | 5 |
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