1966 in the Soviet Union

← 1965 1964 1963 1966 in the Soviet Union → 1967 1968 1969
Decades:	1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s
See also:	History of the Soviet Union List of years in the Soviet Union

The following lists events that happened during 1966 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Incumbents

• First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:

Leonid Brezhnev

• Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union:

Nikolai Podgorny

• Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union:

Alexei Kosygin

Events

February

• February 3 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.[1]
• February 10 – Soviet fiction writers Yuli Daniel[2] and Andrei Sinyavsky are sentenced to five and seven years, respectively, for "anti-Soviet" writings.
• February 20 – While Soviet author and translator Valery Tarsis is abroad, the Soviet Union negates his citizenship.[3]: 140 

March

• March 1 - Soviet space probe Venera 3 crashes on Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.[4]
• March 29 – The 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is held: Leonid Brezhnev demands that U.S. troops leave Vietnam, and announces that Chinese-Soviet relations are not satisfactory.[5]
• March 31 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10, which becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.[6]

April

• April 8 - Leonid Brezhnev becomes General Secretary of the Soviet Union, as well as Leader of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.
• April 27 – Pope Paul VI and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko meet in the Vatican (the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and the Soviet Union).[7]

May

• May 4 - Fiat signs a contract with the Soviet government to build a car factory in the Soviet Union.

July

• July 16 – British Prime Minister Harold Wilson flies to Moscow to try to start peace negotiations about the Vietnam War (the Soviet government rejects his ideas).

October

• October 7 – The Soviet Union declares that all Chinese students must leave the country before the end of October.[8]
• October 11 – France and the Soviet Union sign a treaty for cooperation in nuclear research.

Births

• 3 March – Mikhail Mishustin, Prime Minister of Russia
• 15 August – Marat Minibayev, former Russian professional footballer
• 17 July - Taras Nahorniak, Ukrainian geographer

Deaths

• January 14 – Sergei Korolev, rocket engineer and spacecraft designer (b. 1907)
• March 5 – Anna Akhmatova, poet (b. 1889)
• May 7 – Usman Yusupov, 7th First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan (b. 1901)
• September 14 – Nikolay Cherkasov, actor (b. 1903)
• September 19 – Vladimir Fyodorov, scientist and general (b. 1874)
• October 17 – Zhumabay Shayakhmetov, 4th First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (b. 1902)
• October 28 – Nikolai Belyaev, 8th First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (b. 1903)
• November 14 – Nikolai Ignatov, 6th & 8th Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR (b. 1901)
• December 19 – Betty Kuuskemaa, Estonian stage and film actress (b. 1879)
• December 31 – Elena Stasova, Russian Soviet Revolutionary and Old Bolshevik (b. 1873)

See also

• 1966 in fine arts of the Soviet Union
• List of Soviet films of 1966

References

1. Siddiqi, Asif A. (2018). Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016 (PDF). The NASA history series (second ed.). Washington, D.C.: NASA History Program Office. pp. 1–2. ISBN 9781626830424. LCCN 2017059404. SP2018-4041.
2. "Soviet dissident Yuli Daniel; imprisoned for publishing abroad". The Los Angeles Times. 1 January 1989.
3. Voren, Robert van (2010). Cold War in psychiatry: human factors, secret actors. Amsterdam—New York: Rodopi. p. 140. ISBN 978-90-420-3046-6.
4. Harvey, Brian (2007). Russian Planetary Exploration History, Development, Legacy and Prospects. Springer-Praxis. pp. 94–97. ISBN 9780387463438.
5. Christian F. Ostermann (2008). Inside China's Cold War. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. p. 370.
6. Siddiqi, Asif A. (2018). Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016 (PDF). The NASA history series (second ed.). Washington, D.C.: NASA History Program Office. p. 1. ISBN 9781626830424. LCCN 2017059404. SP2018-4041.
7. O'Sullivan, John (2009). The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World. Regnery Publishing. pp. 94–5. ISBN 978-1-59698-016-7.
8. "Search IHT Retrospective SEARCH IN OUR PAGES 1966: Russia Expels Chinese". The New York Times. International Herald Tribune. October 7, 1966. Retrieved 23 March 2022.