Japanese occupation forces leave northern Sakhalin

The USSR and Japan signed the Basic Convention establishing diplomatic relations and agreeing on the evacuation of Japanese troops from northern Sakhalin. The settlement restored Soviet sovereignty...

The first volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia appeared, part of a project to organize knowledge and define a new socialist account of society and history. The encyclopedia reflected real expansion...

The Tajik ASSR was formally proclaimed within the Uzbek SSR after national delimitation assigned Tajik-majority areas to an autonomous unit inside a larger Uzbek republic. The new institution gave...

The Fourteenth Party Conference debated the pace of industrial development and the prospects for building socialism within the USSR. Stalin and his allies argued that socialism could be built in one...

The Uzbek and Turkmen republics were formally admitted to the USSR as union republics. Their new status gave them constitutional institutions and a nominal right to secede, while union ministries...

The Soviet Union and Turkey signed a treaty of neutrality and non-aggression, extending diplomatic ties between two states formed from former Russian and Ottoman imperial spaces. The pact served...

The Fourteenth Party Congress opened amid conflict over the pace of industrialization and the party’s relationship with the peasantry. Delegates backed a program of industrial development while...

The Congress concluded after rejecting the opposition of Zinoviev and Kamenev and backing the party leadership’s industrialization line. Economic debates were increasingly settled through...

Germany and the USSR signed the Treaty of Berlin, pledging neutrality if either was attacked by a third power and reaffirming the Rapallo relationship. Both states sought room to maneuver after...

The Soviet and Afghan governments signed a treaty of neutrality and non-aggression, formalizing relations between neighbors whose frontier and security were shaped by Russian and British imperial...