Timeline - 1920 - 1929

All efforts and all attention should now be concentrated on the next step — the search after forms of the transition or the approach to the proletarian revolution.

Lenin

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1920

• 10th January - Inauguration of the League of Nations held in Paris.
• 2nd February - Estonia declared its Independence from Russia (Dorpat Peace).
• 19th March - The US Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles for 2nd time refusing to ratify League of Nations' covenant (maintaining their isolation policy).

1921

• 4th March - Warren G. Harding became President of the USA.
• 1st July - The Communist Party of China was founded and Chen Duxiu was elected its leader

1922

• 28th February - Britain declared Egypt a sovereign state.
• 3rd April - Joseph Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party by an ailing Vladimir Lenin
• 23rd October - Andrew Bonar Law  (Conservative) became British Prime Minister.
• 30th December - The Treaty of Union formally joined Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasus into the Soviet Union.   

1923

• 23rd May - Stanley Baldwin (Conservative) became British Prime Minister.
• 6th July - The Central Executive Committee accepted the Treaty of Union, signed in Moscow in December 1922, and the Russian Empire became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
• 2nd August - Calvin Coolidge became President of the USA.

1924

• 13 January - The Soviet Union adopted a constitution based on the dictatorship of the proletariat and stipulating the public ownership of land and the means of production.
• 21st January - Lenin died and was replaced by Joseph Stalin.
• 22rd January - James Ramsay MacDonald (Labour) became British Prime Minister.
• 4th November - Stanley Baldwin (Conservative) became British Prime Minister.

1925

• 3rd January - Benito Mussolini dissolved the Italian parliament and proclaimed himself dictator of Italy, taking the title "Il Duce" (the Leader)
• 17th June - The Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in war was signed.
• 18th July - Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf (My Fight) (its original title was "Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice")
• 29th October - The Observer Corps was established in the UK. Within a year four  Groups covered South East England.

1926

• 28th May - The Portuguese monarchy was overthrown by a military coup, entering a period of dictatorship that would last until 1974.
• 19th October - The Russian Politburo threw out Leon Trotsky and his followers

1927

• 24th March - After six foreigners were killed in Nanking, and it appeared that Kuomintang and Communist Party of China forces would overrun the foreign consulates, warships of the U.S. Navy and the British Royal Navy fired shells and shot to disperse the crowds. The event is normally called the Nanking Incident
• 12th April - Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek began a violent counter revolution in Shanghai.

1928

• The USSR adopted the first Five-Year Plan, with the state setting goals and priorities for the whole economy, signifying the end of the New Economic Policy. USSR collectivisation of agriculture began; numerous relatively prosperous peasants, or Kulaks, were killed; millions of peasant households eliminated and their property confiscated. 

1929

• 4th March - Herbert Hoover became President of the USA.
• 5th June - James Ramsay MacDonald  (Labour) became British Prime Minister.