1913: Russia in 1913 was a large country rich in natural resources and with a sizable population. Estimates suggest, however, that Russians before the 1917 Revolution were generally poorer, even significantly poorer, than Americans or citizens of major European countries. Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, in Russia, for example, stood at $1,163 per capita in 1913, compared to $10,108 in the United States and $8,212 in the United Kingdom. (1) (2) But Russia’s economy was on an upward trajectory. In fact, growth in industrial production in Russia outpaced that of the U.S. and other major countries in the 1880s and 1890s. (3)
August 1914: Russia enters World War I.
1917: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $989; United States: $9,769; United Kingdom: $8,665
Spring 1917: February Revolution: Mass protests, known as the February Revolution, result in the abdication of Czar Nicholas II and the fall of the imperial government. A provisional government is established.
Fall 1917: October Revolution: Bolshevik forces overthrow the Provisional Government established after Nicholas II’s abdication. The new Bolshevik regime embraces official atheism and soon begins a campaign against organized religion, with the Russian Orthodox Church as a principal target.
Late 1917: The United States refuses to recognize the new Bolshevik government. President Woodrow Wilson directs U.S. representatives in Russia to refrain from direct communication with Bolshevik officials.
1917–1922: Russian Civil War: The Bolshevik Red Army fights a collection of anti-Bolshevik White armies, nationalist forces, peasant movements, and foreign forces. Vladimir Lenin heads the Bolshevik government. Leon Trotsky plays a leading role in organizing and directing the Red Army.
1918: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $722; United States: $10,471; United Kingdom: $8,630
January/February 1918: Decree on Separation of Church and State: The Decree targets religious institutions directly, declaring, “Church and religious societies have no right to own property,” and “All property in Russia now owned by churches and religious organizations is henceforth the property of the people.” Churches could only be used for religious purposes “by special arrangement with the central or local [Soviet] authorities.” (4) By 1920, Leon Trotsky was heading an antireligious commission that worked to seize church property and valuables. (5)
March 3, 1918: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: Bolshevik Russia withdraws from World War I.
July 1918: Bolsheviks execute former Czar Nicholas II and his family by firing squad.
1918–1921: War Communism: The Bolshevik government imposes increasingly centralized economic controls, nationalizes major industries, and places severe restrictions on private commerce. Nationalization later extends to many smaller enterprises. (See the related Kyshtym Case Study, available here).
1919: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $664; United States: $10,450; United Kingdom: $7,605
1920: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $637; United States: $10,153; United Kingdom: $7,017
Late 1920–1922: The Bolsheviks prevail in the Russian Civil War. The armed conflict continues, however, in parts of the former Russian Empire, particularly the Far East, until 1922.
1921: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $567; United States: $9,675; United Kingdom: $6,792
1921–1922: Famine spreads across Russia. Estimates of famine and epidemic-related mortality vary, with some historical estimates approaching five million deaths. (6) In March 1922, Lenin asserts that the famine presents an opportunity to seize church property and crush clerical resistance, writing privately to a Soviet official: “We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary.” Lenin says the time has come to “smash” church leaders “most decisively and ruthlessly and put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades.” (7)
March 1921: The New Economic Policy: At the tenth congress of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin announces he will tax farmers’ grain trade, rather than expropriate all their grain, a signal that the Bolshevik regime will allow some private market activity. Other changes come in the years that follow, including some that allow private ownership; this softening comes to be called the “New Economic Policy.” (8)
1922: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $679; United States: $10,010; United Kingdom: $7,391
December 30, 1922: TheSoviet Union is officially established.
1923: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $775; United States: $11,071; United Kingdom: $7,587
1924: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $901; United States: $11,127; United Kingdom: $7,844
January 21, 1924: Vladimir Lenin dies. A power struggle for leadership follows. During the remainder of the 1920s, Joseph Stalin emerges as the new leader.
1925: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $1,062; United States: $11,150; United Kingdom: $8,199
1926: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $1,207; United States: $11,648; United Kingdom: $7,868
1927: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $1,243; United States: $11,532; United Kingdom: $8,472
1928: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $1,282; United States: $11,451; United Kingdom: $8,539.
1928: Persecution of churches and clergy continues. Some 20,000 churches had been closed of the approximately 50,000 that existed before the 1917 Revolution. By 1939, only one to two percent of churches in the Soviet Union will still operate. (9)
1928: First Five-Year Plan: Stalin abandons the New Economic Policy and launches the first Five-Year Plan, emphasizing industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. (10)
1929: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $1,301; United States: $11,954; United Kingdom: $8,772
1929–1930: Forced Collectivization and Dekulakization: The Soviet government launches mass collectivization of agriculture and a persecution campaign against “kulaks”– farmers who were relatively prosperous, property-owning, or perceived to be resisting Soviet agricultural policies. Dekulakization involved confiscations, deportations, imprisonment, and executions. (11)
1930: GDP Per Capita: Russia: $1,345; United States: $10,695; United Kingdom: $8,673
1930–1933: When the state confiscates grain, farmers and their families starve. An estimated five to eight million people die of starvation. The death toll is particularly high in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. (12)
November 16, 1933: American President Franklin D. Roosevelt formally recognizes the Soviet Union and establishes normal diplomatic relations, reversing the policy of non-recognition maintained under Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover.
GDP per capita data comes from: Bolt and van Zanden – Maddison Project Database 2023 – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “GDP per capita – Maddison Project Database – Long-run data in constant international-$” [dataset]. Bolt and van Zanden, “Maddison Project Database 2023” [original data]. Retrieved September 18, 2026 fromhttps://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260730-020804/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-project-database.html (archived on July 30, 2026).
Note: GDP per capita data in this timeline has been adjusted for inflation and differences in cost of living across countries. The figures in this timeline are presented as the underlying source data (Bolt and van Zanden, from the Maddison Project Database) presents them, in international dollars at 2011 prices.
Sovnarkom, “Decree on Separation of Church and State,” February 5, 1918, trans. Emanuel Aronsberg, in James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1918: Documents and Materials (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1934), 590–91, Marxists Internet Archive,https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/revolution/documents/1918/02/5.htm
Dickinson, Anna, “Quantifying Religious Oppression: Russian Orthodox Church Closures and Repression of Priests 1917-41,” Religion, State & Society, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2000, Available at: https://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/rss/28-4_327.pdf.
Stephen G. Wheatcroft, “Famine and Epidemic Crises in Russia, 1918–1922: The Case of Saratov,” Annales de démographie historique (1983): 329–352, https://doi.org/10.3406/adh.1984.1583.
David L. Hoffmann, “The Great Socialist Experiment? The Soviet State in Its International Context,” Slavic Review 76, special issue 3 (Fall 2017): 619–28, https://doi.org/10.1017/slr.2017.169.
