Stalin, at Yalta, promises free elections in post-war eastern Europe

The USSR declares war on Japan, two days after an atom bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima

Sergei Eisenstein completes Part 2 of his intended epic film trilogy Ivan the Terrible

The Soviet Union imposes a blockade on Berlin by denying the other powers access through the land corridor to the city

The British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean escape to the Soviet Union just ahead of their detection and arrest

Joseph Stalin dies, four days after suffering a stroke

Dmitry Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony has its first performance in Leningrad nine months after the death of Stalin

The first Soviet hydrogen bomb is successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan

Secret-police chief Lavrenti Beria is executed by the new Soviet regime

Russia forms the Warsaw Treaty Organization (or Warsaw Pact) with her east European allies, as a counterbalance to NATO

Konrad Adenauer negotiates the release of the last 10,000 German prisoners of war held in the USSR

Nikita Khrushchev denounces Stalin, dead now for three years, at a party congress in the USSR

Russian dancer Galina Ulanova proves a sensation on tour in Europe and the USA in her late forties

The ballet Spartacus, with music by Aram Khachaturian, has its premiere in Leningrad

Nikita Khrushchev's position in the Soviet Communist party is secure after the failure of a plot to remove him

The USSR launches Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite

Boris Pasternak's only novel, Doctor Zhivago, is first published in an Italian translation

The Russian spacecraft Sputnik II puts into space a living creature, the dog Laika

Soviet spacecraft Luna 1 goes into orbit round the sun, between the orbits of Earth and Mars

Vice-president Richard Nixon engages in a 'kitchen debate' with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev at a US exhibition in Moscow

Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 successfully strikes the moon, in the Palus Putredinus region

Soviet spacecraft Luna 3, passing by the moon at a distance of some 40,000 miles, is able to photograph the far side

Soviet forces shoot down a US high-altitude U-2 spy plane and capture the pilot, Gary Powers

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel in space, orbiting the earth once in Vostok 1

Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Kirov company at Le Bourget airport and seeks political asylum in France