Second Comintern Congress debates national and colonial questions

The Red Army entered Baku as the Azerbaijani Soviet government was established. The city’s oil and strategic position made it central to the region’s political economy. Soviet rule promised land and...

Britain, France, the United States and Japan recognized Admiral Alexander Kolchak as the “supreme ruler” of anti-Bolshevik Russia, while attaching conditions. The decision showed the international...

Red Army forces captured Omsk, a major center of Kolchak’s White government. Kolchak’s authority eroded amid military defeats, peasant resistance and the collapse of supply lines. The change of...

The League of Nations formally began operations. Soviet Russia was excluded from the postwar international order, while the new state denounced imperial arrangements and sought diplomatic recognition....

The Azerbaijani Democratic Republic fell as Soviet forces entered Baku and a Soviet republic was proclaimed. The new regime enacted social and land reforms, but the transition occurred under...

Polish forces halted and pushed back the Red Army near Warsaw during the Polish-Soviet War. The conflict involved competing claims over Ukraine and Belarus, revolutionary strategy and the borders left...

Poland and Soviet Russia and Ukraine signed a preliminary peace agreement ending major fighting in the Polish-Soviet War. The border settlement divided Ukrainian and Belarusian lands and constrained...

General Pyotr Wrangel’s remaining White forces evacuated Crimea after defeat by the Red Army. The evacuation ended the last major White military front in European Russia, but was followed by mass...

The Armenian Soviet government was proclaimed after Red Army entry and the fall of the independent Armenian republic, which had faced war, famine, displacement and territorial conflict. Soviet rule...

Strikes and demonstrations spread in Petrograd amid fuel and food shortages, with workers demanding supplies and political change. The government imposed martial law and the crisis escalated into...