It is a series of documentary films about the history of Russia in the twentieth century, broadcast on the state television channel Rossiya from October 4, 2003, to April 25, 2013.

According to the creators, “The aim of this series is to show how closely the fates of Russia and each individual are intertwined, through the example of famous historical figures.” Each film is devoted to one year in 20th-century Russia, and—except for three exceptions—is associated with a well-known figure from the world of politics, science, or culture whose life underwent a major event that year, significant both for them and for the Russian people. “Thus, not only are the most important and impactful historical events selected, but also minor yet interesting facts that help paint a comprehensive picture of the lives of Russians during a given year.”

From the very first films, one is struck by the personal involvement of Nikolai Svanidze, the creator of the series, director of its television broadcasting, and narrator of each film. A historian and journalist, he puts his storytelling talent at the service of his passion for the history of his country, which he strives to recount with the objectivity of a historian independent from propaganda—whether Soviet or Russian.

The series was discontinued in 2013. The last year covered is 1993, and the series includes 96 films, as two films are devoted to each of the years 1917, 1941, and 1993.

The official reason for the 2013 interruption is unknown. It came one year after President Putin's re-election, one year before the annexation of Crimea, and at a time when efforts to rehabilitate the image of Stalin were multiplying—efforts that contradicted the series' objective of honoring historical truth as faithfully as possible.

To this day, the “Historical Chronicles” have never been rebroadcast on Russian television, despite the absence of official censorship, but they remain available on YouTube.

The program won the 2005 TEFI award in the category of “Best Historical Program.” Many reviews of the series were highly positive, though others were critical, accusing Nikolai Svanidze of anti-Soviet bias.

Our bibliography includes a sample of reviews, which we are happy to supplement with additional ones that our readers may wish to share with us.

The bibliography also contains all the scripts from the years 1913 to 1953, which were written—like most of the others—by Marina Zhukova (Svanidze), who was Nikolai Svanidze’s wife. For each of these years, the corresponding film file contains a link to the complete screenplay in Russian, French, and English. Each screenplay in French and English contains a summary of approximately one page. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Arsenii Velikorod for introducing us to this series and for helping us to compile and document this page.




Bibliography

The portraits displayed at the beginning of each section are those of the personalities chosen for each year described in the series. By clicking on a portrait, you will be taken to the page of the website dedicated to that person.

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Chronology:

The first decade and a half of the 20th century in Russia was marked by deeply contradictory phenomena. On the one hand, it was a period of flourishing human intellectual potential amid ongoing socio-political reforms. On the other hand, those very reforms divided the Russian Empire’s government in its aspirations and plans.

The rapid development of industry, agriculture, trade, and integration into the European economy were the result of reforms led by Sergei Witte and Pyotr Stolypin. However, it was precisely this progress that enabled Russia to take bold action in foreign policy — including participation in wars that ultimately proved to be the fatal mistakes leading to the fall of the government and the monarchy.

This was also the twilight of the “Silver Age” of Russian literature. The great literary figures Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy were still alive — the former died in 1904, the latter in 1910. The year of Chekhov’s death (1904) also saw Academician Ivan Pavlov awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. By 1905, the Russian Empire entered into war with Japan — a catastrophic failure for Russia, which played a significant role in sparking the 1905 Revolution.

After losing the war, the new government turned to the agrarian question, whose resolution had become imperative. Starting in 1906, Stolypin launched numerous reforms and achieved notable successes — the most prominent being in agriculture and the colonization of Siberia. Russia became Europe's leading supplier of butter and eggs. The colonization of Siberia also marked the beginning of the construction of the railway to the Pacific Ocean. These changes — and many others — gave a powerful impetus to Russia's economic and intellectual development during this period.

However, Stolypin’s assassination marked a turning point. Russia gradually squandered its potential through involvement in two Balkan wars, followed by its entry into World War I. The war triggered a severe economic and social crisis, eventually culminating in the October Revolution of 1917, which left nothing of the old Russia behind.

Among Stolypin’s famous statements, two proved prophetic:
“They need great upheavals; we need a Great Russia,” and
“Give the state 20 years of internal and external peace, and you won’t recognize today’s Russia.”
Russia chose upheaval. That choice would shape its destiny for the next 70 years.

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Bibliography

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Chronology of Russia (1917–1928)

February 1917 – February Revolution: fall of Emperor Nicholas II; end of the Russian Empire.

March 1917 – Provisional Government led first by Lvov, then by Kerensky; dual power with the soviets.

April 1917 – Lenin returns from exile; publication of the April Theses calling for “all power to the soviets.”

October 1917 – October Revolution: the Bolsheviks seize power in Petrograd.

November 1917 – Creation of the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) headed by Lenin.

December 1917 – Creation of the Cheka (ЧК), the political police initially led by Felix Dzerzhinsky; beginning of media control.

March 1918 – Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: Russia withdraws from World War I and cedes vast territories.

March 1918 – The Bolshevik Party becomes the Communist Party (Bolshevik); the capital is moved to Moscow.

1918–1921 – Civil War between Reds and Whites; foreign intervention (France, the United Kingdom, Japan, etc.).

1918–1920 – Implementation of War Communism: nationalization, requisitions, militarization of labor.

1919 – Founding of the Third International (Comintern) in Moscow. The Red Army counteroffensive begins, causing the Volunteer Army led by Anton Denikin to lose control of the territories.

1920s – Artistic effervescence: avant-garde, constructivism, Meyerhold’s theatre, Eisenstein’s cinema.

1920–1921 – Famine and uprisings (notably Kronstadt); crisis of the Bolshevik regime. The White Army led by Wrangel is forced to retreat.

1921 – In March Lenin introduces the NEP (New Economic Policy): limited return of market mechanisms and private property. Tukhachevsky becomes head of the Military Academy of the Red Army.

1922 – Official formation of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

1922–1923 – Lenin weakened by strokes; Stalin becomes General Secretary of the Party. Beginning of the power struggle between Trotsky, Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev.

1924 – Lenin dies in January; debates on his legacy; his body is embalmed on Red Square. Adoption of the Constitution of the USSR.

1925 – Stalin rises to power, promoting “socialism in one country.” Trotsky is gradually pushed out of power; the cult of Lenin develops.

1925–1928 – Period of NEP stabilization: limited commercial growth, cultural opening.

1926–1927 – Exclusion of the “United Opposition” (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev). Trotsky is expelled from the Party in 1927. Stalin consolidates his personal power. Dzerzhinsky dies of a heart attack in 1926.

1928 – End of the NEP; launch of the first Five-Year Plan and collectivization: beginning of the Stalinist era.

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Bibliography

Chronology of the USSR (1929–1953)

1929 – Stalin becomes the absolute master of the Party and the State; Trotsky is expelled from the USSR.

1929 – Beginning of the first Five-Year Plan: accelerated industrialization and forced collectivization of the countryside.

1930–1933 – Peasant resistance to collectivization; repression and mass deportations to the Gulag. In 1930, Vladimir Mayakovsky commits suicide. In 1931, Pyotr Kapitsa becomes a research professor of the Royal Society in London.

1932–1933 – Great Famine in Ukraine (Holodomor): several million deaths.

1932 – Establishment of socialist realism as the official artistic doctrine; end of the avant-garde.

1933 – The USSR is diplomatically recognized by the United States.

1934 – Assassination of Kirov, used as a pretext to launch the Great Purges.

1936–1938 – Moscow Trials, Stalinist terror: executions and mass deportations of real or supposed opponents.

1936 – New Soviet Constitution proclaiming the USSR a “socialist democracy”.

1937–1938 – Peak of the Great Terror: officers, intellectuals, artists, engineers eliminated.

1938 – Non-aggression pacts with various European countries; the USSR turns inward.

August 1939 – German-Soviet Pact (Molotov–Ribbentrop): secret partition of Poland and the Baltic states.

September 1939 – Invasion of Eastern Poland by the Red Army.

1939–1940 – Winter War against Finland; partial but costly success.

June 1941 – German invasion (Operation Barbarossa): beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

1941–1942 – Sieges of Leningrad and Moscow; total mobilization of the country.

1942–1943 – Battle of Stalingrad: decisive turning point of World War II.

1943–1944 – Recapture of Soviet territory; victory at Kursk; international recognition of Stalin.

May 1945 – Victory over Nazi Germany; the USSR becomes a world power.

1945 – Participation in the founding of the UN; occupation of Eastern Europe.

1946–1948 – Beginning of the Cold War: creation of the Cominform, ideological hardening.

1947 – Planned reconstruction and strengthening of political and cultural control.

1948–1950 – Launch of campaigns against “cosmopolitanism” and “bourgeois ideology” in the arts and sciences.

1949 – First Soviet atomic test; beginning of nuclear parity with the United States.

1950–1953 – Korean War: the USSR supports North Korea; peak tensions with the West.

1952 – 19th Party Congress: transformation of the VKP(b) into the CPSU; Stalin becomes increasingly isolated.

1953 (January) – Doctors’ Plot, anti-Semitic campaign and climate of terror.

March 5, 1953 – Death of Stalin in Moscow; end of the Stalinist era.

March 1953 – Collective takeover of power: Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev begin the early de-Stalinization.

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Bibliography

Timeline of the USSR (1954-1968)

1954
Transfer of Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Publication of "The Thaw" by Ilya Ehrenburg, symbolizing de-Stalinization. Beginning of a gradual relaxation of censorship.

1955
Creation of the Warsaw Pact.
Resumption of cultural exchanges with the West.

1956
20th Congress of the Communist Party: Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech denouncing Stalin’s crimes.
Hungarian Uprising suppressed by the Red Army.
Nikolai Semyonov awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Visit of Yves Montand and Simone Signoret to the Soviet Union; relative liberalization of the artistic climate.

1957
Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.
World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow; rise of Soviet jazz.
The film "The Cranes Are Flying" by Mikhail Kalatozov wins the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

1958
Khrushchev becomes head of government.
Boris Pasternak awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for "Doctor Zhivago" (which he was forced to decline).
Ilya Frank, Igor Tamm, and Pavel Cherenkov awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

1959
Historic visit of Khrushchev to the United States.
Continuation of the nuclear arms race.

1960
U-2 American spy plane shot down over the USSR; diplomatic crisis with the United States.
Emergence of a new generation of poets, including Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

1961
Construction of the Berlin Wall.
Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space.
Renewed dynamism of Soviet “Thaw cinema.”
Publication of the poem "Babi Yar" by Yevtushenko.

1962
Cuban Missile Crisis with the United States.
Lev Landau awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Publication of One Day in "The Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the journal Novy Mir.
Controversial abstract art exhibition in Moscow criticized by Khrushchev.

1963
Signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Intellectual debates over the limits of artistic freedom.

1964
Fall of Khrushchev; Leonid Brezhnev becomes General Secretary of the CPSU.
Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Trial of poet Joseph Brodsky, sentenced to five years of hard labor for “social parasitism.”
Return to stricter ideological control.

1965
Trial of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel; beginning of organized cultural dissent.
Mikhail Sholokhov awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1966
Stabilization of the Brezhnev regime.
Development of auteur cinema (Andrei Tarkovsky).
Death of Anna Akhmatova.

1967
50th anniversary of the October Revolution.
Filming of Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky (released in 1971).

1968
Military intervention in Czechoslovakia (Prague Spring).
Brezhnev Doctrine asserting the right of socialist intervention.
Increased surveillance of artists after the Prague Spring.
Publication of "Cancer Ward" and "The First Circle" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

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Bibliography

Timeline of the USSR (1969-1985)

1969
- Sino-Soviet border clashes.
- May: creation of the “Initiative Group for the Defense of Civil Rights in the USSR,” notably by P. Yakir and L. Plyushch.
- Clandestine circulation (samizdat) of banned works.

1970
- Treaty of friendship with the GDR. The USSR resumes diplomatic relations with Beijing.
- October 8: The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
- November 4: Foundation of the Human Rights Committee by Andrei Sakharov, Valery Chalidze, and Andrei Tverdokhlebov.
- Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky attains cult film status.

1971
- February 11: Signing in Moscow, Washington, and London of a treaty banning nuclear weapons on the seabed.
- 24th Congress of the CPSU. Approval of the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1971–1975), aimed at “significantly improving the well-being of workers.”
- Strengthening of ideological control.

1972
- May: Visit of President Nixon to Moscow; signing of the SALT I agreements limiting anti-ballistic missile systems.
- Increased surveillance of intellectuals; numerous arrests. Forced emigration of Joseph Brodsky.

1973
- Support for Arab countries during the Yom Kippur War and condemnation of Israel.
- Publication in the West of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
- Growing popularity of singer-songwriters (Vladimir Vysotsky, Alexander Galich).

1974
Arrest and expulsion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Emigration of writers Viktor Nekrasov, Vladimir Maximov, and poet-singer Alexander Galich.
July: On the occasion of President Nixon’s visit to the USSR, a U.S.-Soviet agreement on limiting underground nuclear tests.

1975
- Helsinki Accords on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).
- The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Andrei Sakharov.
1976
- Continuation of East-West détente.
- Emigration of historian A. Amalrik, mathematician L. Plyushch, and writer V. Bukovsky.
- Development of Soviet underground rock.

1977
- Brezhnev becomes Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
- New Soviet Constitution. It establishes the notion of the “state of the whole people,” replacing the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
- Reaffirmation of the Party’s leading role in culture.

1978
- April 14: In Tbilisi, demonstration for recognition of Georgian as the official language of the Republic.
- April 27: Pro-Soviet coup in Afghanistan.

1979
- June 18: U.S. President Carter and Brezhnev sign the SALT II agreements in Vienna on strategic offensive arms.
- December: Military intervention in Afghanistan.
- Tarkovsky’s film Stalker becomes an international reference.

1980
- January 22: Sakharov is placed under house arrest in Gorky.
- Boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games by several Western countries.
- Death of Vladimir Vysotsky.

1981
- April 24: Ronald Reagan lifts the grain embargo against the USSR.
- November: Beginning in Geneva of Soviet-American negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF).
- Maintenance of a conservative official culture.

1982
- June 29: Opening in Geneva of new Soviet-American talks on strategic arms reduction (START).
November 10: Death of Brezhnev. Yuri Andropov succeeds him as General Secretary of the Communist Party.

1983
- February: Criticized for its abusive use of psychiatric internment, the USSR withdraws from the World Psychiatric Association.
- November: After deployment of the first Pershing II missiles in Europe, the USSR breaks off the Geneva negotiations, ends the moratorium on intermediate-range nuclear weapons deployment, and accelerates installation of tactical missiles in the GDR and Czechoslovakia.

1984
- January 17: Opening of the Stockholm Conference on Disarmament in Europe.
- February: Death of Andropov. Konstantin Chernenko becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, then in April Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
- Emigration of Andrei Tarkovsky. Yuri Lyubimov loses leadership of the Taganka Theatre and is stripped of Soviet citizenship.

1985
- Death of Chernenko. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party.
- November: U.S.-Soviet summit in Geneva attended by Reagan and Gorbachev.
- Beginning of perestroika and glasnost.

       

Timeline of the USSR (1986-1993)

1986
- Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
- Acceleration of reforms.
- Official publication of texts by Solzhenitsyn.

1987
- Signing of the INF Treaty with the United States.
- November 2: Gorbachev announces the creation of a commission of inquiry into Stalin’s crimes.
- November 11: Yeltsin is dismissed from his post as head of the Moscow Communist Party.
- Demonstrations in the Baltic republics against their incorporation into the USSR.
- Release of many dissidents. Explosion of Soviet rock (band Kino).

1988
- Gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan.
- Constitutional reforms. Release of previously banned archives.
- November 16: Estonia declares sovereignty, rejected November 26 by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
- June 4: Near Arzamas, explosion of a train carrying 120 tons of explosives, 91 dead. Another railway accident occurs in Sverdlovsk on October 4, causing 4 deaths.
- Public debates on Stalinism.

1989
- April: Official publication of Khrushchev’s secret 1956 report.
- May 18: Declarations of sovereignty by Estonia and Lithuania. Latvia declares sovereignty on July 29.
- November 9–10: Fall of the Berlin Wall.
- Near-total artistic freedom.

1990
- Mass demonstrations in major cities in favor of reforms.
- March: Constitutional reform abolishing the leading role of the Communist Party.
- Lithuania in March, then Latvia and Estonia in May proclaim their independence.
- May 29: Boris Yeltsin becomes President of the RSFSR.
- June 1990: The Russian Republic proclaims its sovereignty.
- July: Ukraine declares its sovereignty and the supremacy of its laws over those of the Union.

1991
- June 12: Boris Yeltsin is elected President of the Russian Republic by universal suffrage.
- Attempted conservative coup in August against Gorbachev.
- Official dissolution of the USSR on December 26. Creation of the CIS.
- Transformation of the cultural landscape. Full opening to Western productions.

1992
- The Russian Federation legally succeeds the USSR.
- Beginning of radical economic reforms, privatization of enterprises.
- Transition to a market-based cultural economy in the Russian Federation.

1993
- June: Collapse of the ruble’s exchange rate.
- September 21: Dissolution of the Russian Parliament by Yeltsin.
- October 4: The army storms the Parliament building; nearly 150 people are killed in the fighting.
- December 12: Alongside legislative elections, Russians approve the Constitution proposed by Yeltsin, notably establishing the primacy of the president over the legislative branch.

- Человек, который не боялся не молчать. Памяти Николая Сванидзе [À la mémoire de Nikolaï Svanidze] Мира ЛИДАВИНА, novayagazeta.eu, 2024
- Memory Politics in Contemporary Russia. Television, Cinema and the State Mariëlle WIJERMARS, Routledge, 2019
- Исторические хроники , Wikipedia, 2026