1970 in the Soviet Union

← 1969 1968 1967 1970 in the Soviet Union → 1971 1972 1973
Decades:	1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
See also:	History of the Soviet Union List of years in the Soviet Union

The following lists events that happened during 1970 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Incumbents

• General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: Leonid Brezhnev[1]
• Premier of the Soviet Union: Alexei Kosygin[2]
• Chairman of the Russian SFSR: Mikhail Yasnov

Events

• May 24 – The scientific drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins.[3]
• June 1 – The two-man spacecraft Soyuz 9 is launched.[4]
• June 15 – Operation Wedding: Fifteen refuseniks try to escape from the Soviet Union by hijacking a plane.[5]
• October 6 – French President Georges Pompidou visits the Soviet Union.
• October 8 – Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.[6]
• October 15 – The domestic Soviet Aeroflot Flight 244 is hijacked and diverted to Turkey.
• October 20 – The Zond 8 lunar probe is launched.
• November 9 – Luna 17 is launched.
• November 12 – Soviet author Andrei Amalrik is sentenced to three years imprisonment for 'anti-Soviet' writings.[7]

Births

• January 2 – Oksana Omelianchik, artistic gymnast
• January 17 – Genndy Tartakovsky, Russian-born American animator
• March 16 – Oleg Pavlov, writer (died 2018)
• June 11 – Dmitry Utkin, army officer (died 2023)
• July 3 – Serhiy Honchar, Ukrainian racing cyclist
• July 13 – Igor Kirillov, army general and war criminal (died 2024)
• August 26 – Olimpiada Ivanova, race walker[8]

Deaths

• January 10 – Pavel Belyayev, Soviet cosmonaut (peritonitis; born 1925)[9]
• June 11 (in the United States) – Alexander Kerensky, revolutionary and politician (born 1881)[10]

References

1. Chubarov, Alexander (2003). Russia's Bitter Path to Modernity: A History of the Soviet and post-Soviet Eras. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 60. ISBN 978-0826413505.
2. Thomas A. Baylis (1989). Governing by committee: collegial leadership in advanced societies. State University of New York Press. p. 98. ISBN 9780887069444.
3. Королев, Владимир. "Подземное неземное". nplus1.ru. Retrieved 2021-08-08.
4. "Trajectory: Soyuz 9 1970-041A". NASA. 14 May 2020. Retrieved 18 October 2020. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
5. Beckerman, Gal (2010). When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pages 194–195.
6. Scammell, Michael (11 December 2018). "The Writer Who Destroyed an Empire". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2022-01-01.
7. "Report Prophet of Russ Doom Sentenced to 3 Years Labor", Chicago Tribune, November 13, 1970, p4
8. Olimpiada Ivanova at World Athletics
9. "Pavel Belyayev, Astronaut, Dead". The New York Times. 1970-01-11. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
10. "Alexander Kerensky Dies Here at 89". New York Times.

See also

• 1970 in fine arts of the Soviet Union
• List of Soviet films of 1971