Russia: Putin names his successor - timeline
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Timeline
September 2007. In a surprise nomination, President Vladimir Putin names Viktor Zubkov, former director for financial monitoring, as prime minister. July 2007. The Russian authorities continue to pressurise opposition figures; tensions with the UK government remain high following the poisoning of former Russian security services agent Aleksandr Litvinenko in London. March 2007. Unified Russia wins 46 per cent of the vote in local elections alleged to have been stage-managed by the authorities. Yabloko, the liberal party that previously held a majority in St Petersburg, is excluded from the ballot. January 2007. The Russian authorities inform UK detectives that they are not allowed to return to Russia to question witnesses in connection with the murder of Litvinenko. December 2006. The UK police travel to Russia to investigate Litvinenko’s poisoning. They claim to have found radioactive traces, left by the killers, on flights to back to Russia. November 2006. Fuelled by wealth from energy exports, Russia enjoys impressive economic growth, but the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicts negative impacts from state consolidation of strategic industries. November 2006. Litvinenko (an associate of the oligarch Boris Berezovsky) is killed in London after being poisoned by the radioactive substance polonium.October 2006. Anna Politkovskaya, investigative journalist and critic of the Chechen Wars, is shot dead in front of her apartment. January 2006. Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom, threatens to shut off Ukraine's gas supplies if the country refuses to meet a demand for a fivefold increase in the price of gas. December 2005. Gazprom signs a treaty to build a pipeline from the Russian port of Vyborg, under the Baltic Sea to the German city of Griefswald. September 2004. Chechen separatists perpetrate a catastrophic attack, besieging a school in Beslan, North Ossetia. April 2004. The Russian prosecutor general accuses Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, major shareholders in the oil company Yukos, of tax evasion and fraud. January 2004. Russian prosecutors announce that they requested international arrest warrants for 10 of Yukos's major shareholders and senior managers on charges of tax evasion. April 2003. Sergei Yushchenkov, prominent opposition leader who had delivered scathing critiques of the military establishment is shot and killed. In the previous 10 years, nine Duma members had lost their lives and many more were injured in political violence. April 2003. The Russian government opposes the US- and UK-led invasion of Iraq. October 2002. The Russian government issues an arrest warrant for oligarch and media executive Boris Berezovsky. His political party, Liberal Russia, expels him in absentia after the Russian authorities refuse to register it for the upcoming election. August 2002. Vladimir Golovlyov, the co-chairman of the opposition Liberal Russia party, founded by Berezovsky, is assassinated. March 2002. Berezovsky maintains that the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk--prompting the second Russian invasion of Chechnya--had been orchestrated by the Russian authorities to provide an excuse for the invasion. September 2000. Berezovsky and media baron and oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky face intense pressure from President Putin to relinquish control of their media outlets, both of which are critical of the Putin administration, including having condemned its handling of the loss of the nuclear submarine, the Kursk. August 2000. The Kursk, Russia’s largest atomic-powered submarine, founders 108 metres below the Barents Sea. The Russian government rejects foreign offers of aid and covers up the incident, which cost 180 sailors their lives. Putin refuses to call off his vacation until six days into the crisis. May 2000. New Russian President Vladimir Putin takes office. Berezovsky’s Kommersant-Daily newspaper publishes what it claims is a policy document leaked from the presidential administration, proposing the use of the Federal Security Service (FSB--a successor to the KGB) to control the political process and silence opposition media. December 1999. Boris Yeltsin resigns as president after an overall failure to end the Chechen rebellion. He appoints Putin prime minister and endorses him to be his successor to the presidency. September 1999. Attacks on apartment buildings in Moscow and in the Russian Caucasus kill nearly 300 and prompt the authorities to launch the second Chechen War. August 1999. After six prime ministers in as many years, President Yeltsin selects Putin as prime minister-designate and as his preferred successor for the presidency. April 1999. Berezovsky is arrested on charges of money laundering. March 1999. Berezovsky is dismissed by President Yeltsin as the executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). January 1999. Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov announces that he is stepping up a campaign against the so-called "oligarchs". December 1998. The Russian State Statistics Committee announces that inflation in Russia was 84.4 per cent in 1998, compared with 11 per cent in 1997 and 21.8 per cent in 1996. September 1998. The legislature's failure to select a prime minister destabilises governmental institutions; Yeltsin nominates compromise candidate Yevgeny Primakov as prime minister. September 1997. Disputes over the post-Soviet economic assets by banks leads Yeltsin to predict more state control in the future. August 1997. Acquisition of a mining company in an allegedly rigged bid leads to a scandal, causing the removal of the Alfred Kokh, chairman of the State Property Management Committee, after criticism of the way in which he had handled the sale. April 1996. Belarus and Russia sign a "union treaty," expanding economic and military co-operation. Demonstrators in Minsk (the capital of Belarus) protesting against the treaty are suppressed. December 1994. Three Russian divisions, including ground troops with armoured and airborne support, move on Grozny, the capital of the breakaway province of Chechnya, initiating the first Chechen War. September 1993. President Yeltsin crushes an attempted coup by the legislature that included former vice president Aleksandr Rutskoi, in a 10-day operation. April 1992. President Yeltsin thanks the legislature for letting him keep extra presidential powers and warns of chaos if they are removed. December 1991. The Soviet Union collapses; Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigns; the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is formed, with 11 former Soviet republics as members. August 1991. An attempted coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev fails after Yeltsin opposes the coup and calls for Gorbachev's restoration. October 1989. Soviet influence subsides in central European satellite states as refugees are allowed to move from the eastern bloc into Western Europe. April 1988. Gorbachev launches a policy of openness (glasnost) to expose corruption and waste. June 1986. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster is the largest of its kind to date. December 1985. Gorbachev implements a series of reforms, including economic restructuring (perestroika). March 1985. With the death of Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev, 54, is elected general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). March 1984. Yurii Andropov dies; Chernenko succeeds him as CPSU general secretary and as president. December 1979. The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. April 1979. Politburo membership is dominated by such elderly men as Yurii Andropov, 64, President Leonid Brezhnev, 72, Konstantin Chernenko, 67, Viktor Grishin, 64, Andrei Gromyko, 69, Andrei Kirilenko, 72, and Alexei Kosygin, 75. May 1977. A new constitution for the Soviet Union replaces the "Stalin constitution" that originated in 1936. April 1969. Soviet and Chinese frontier guards engage in battle on a remote island in middle of the Ussuri River, which divides the two countries after 10 years of disagreement over the border. September 1968. The Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia to suppress an uprising. August 1963. Relations between the Soviet Union and China worsen. November 1962. CPSU First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev leads the Soviet Union to the brink of war with the USA over installation of medium range missiles on Cuba. November 1957. The Soviet Union launches a satellite carrying a live dog into outer space aboard the Sputnik II. December 1953. Lavrenti Beria is found guilty and executed for high treason by the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union. September 1953. Nikita Khrushchev becomes secretary general of the CPSU. March 1953. Joseph Stalin, secretary general of the CPSU, and the dominant personality in Russian political life since the death of Lenin, dies aged 73. January 1949. The foreign ministry denounces the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which has the mission of confronting Soviet expansion. September 1948. The Soviet Union blockades the Western portion of Berlin with the intention of subsuming it into the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) May 1945. Stalin, in a speech to the nation, celebrates the surrender of Nazi Germany. July 1941. Stalin gives a radio address two weeks after the Nazi invasion. July 1940. The Baltic States--Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia--become Soviet republics after losing their independence. June 1939. The Council of People's Commissars cracks down on farmers for "misappropriating" their land for personal use. March 1938. Twenty-one prominent Soviet leaders are convicted and sentenced to death in show trials having been charged with espionage, treason, colluding with a foreign power, and murder. March 1937. Trotskyism is deemed by Stalin to be an "unprincipled organisation of wreckers, spies, and murderers employed by foreign capitalist states". October 1936. Karl Radek, a journalist who earlier helped the communists gain power, is arrested in connection with the so-called "Trotsky-Zinoviev Plot". March 1934. Stalin’s collectivisation policies focus on eliminating private ownership of farm assets, and establishing state control over the food supply. January 1924. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin dies after suffering several cerebral hemorrhages. June 1918. French, UK, and US troops land in Murmansk and occupy Arkangelsk, attempting to set up a puppet government in an effort to weaken the (communist) Bolsheviks; serious fighting ensues.October 1917. Bolshevik leader Lenin leads a coup that takes control of both Moscow and Petrograd, driving Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky out of the country.February 1917. The people of the city of Petrograd rebel and its garrison mutinies, leading to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. A short-lived democracy ensues under Kerensky.October 1905. In response to chronic civil disturbances and strikes, Tsar Nicholas II allows the formation of an assembly, the Duma, and the appointment of a prime minister.January 1905. Russian army units fire on a crowd seeking to issue a set of demands to the Tsar, killing 70 people.
