This week of January is marked by the death of the greatest ideologist of modern communism and a key figure in the origins of the USSR. We will also talk about war and military events: Russian troops managed to break the siege of Leningrad after more than two years of siege and a new Soviet bomber began its test flights. In addition, the President of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev, suffered an attack during a parade. Also, during January in the history of Russia, Tsar Peter II gave Moscow back the status of Russia’s capital city. And on the cultural side of history, one of the greatest operas in the world is played for the first time.

Operation Spark

In January 1943, the troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts the Operation Spark (ОперацияИскра) began. It successfully opened a corridor to bring supplies into the city of Leningrad, which had been under siege by the German Wehrmacht for 900 days. Despite this, the citizens of Leningrad would still suffer one more year of siege and German air raids. An unplanned but very useful outcome of this operation was the capture of an intact German Panzer I tank  for the first time, which was carefully studied by Soviet engineers.

Operation Spark

Bomber Bison starts flying

In the third week of January 1952 takes place the first flight of Myasishchev M-4, a long-range heavy bomber, capable of carrying nuclear weapons. It was known in the West as “Bison”, while the Soviets nicknamed it Молот (hammer). It was created around the same time that the Americans did the B52, and both aircrafts were designed with the same goal: to attack the enemy country and drop nuclear bombs on specific targets. With the development of intercontinental missiles, this aircraft was no longer necessary in the Soviet arsenal. The Bison was finally retired from service in 1994.

Heavy bomber M-4 "Bison"

Brezhnev assassination attempt

Russian soldier Viktor Ilyin, disguised as a police officer, tried to shoot the president of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev during a cosmonauts parade in 1966. He failed, but killed a driver and injured cosmonaut Leonov, who had been the first man to make a spacewalk. The incident was censored to the West and the Soviet public. It was not until the fall of the USSR that all the information about what happened that day was made public.

Lenin dies

In January 1924 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov dies. Better known as Lenin, he was the founder of Marxism -Leninism, the chief promoter of the October Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union. It all started in 1918 when, after a political rally, Lenin was shot by Fanni Kaplan, a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party. He fired three shots, two of which struck Lenin’s shoulder while the other hit a lung. Lenin refused to go to hospital fearing another attack and the doctors who took care of the wounds could not get all the bullets out. From that day on his health worsened until his death. Lenin's body was embalmed and can be seen at his mausoleum in the Red Square in Moscow, while his brain was removed for investigation purposes by the German neuroscientist Oskar Vogt.

Lenin

New capital of Russia: Moscow

Peter II, Emperor of Russia, moved the court and Russian government from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1728, where he is crowned. The Tsar Peter the Great had moved the capital of Russia to St. Petersburg only a few years earlier, in 1713. This new change from Peter II would not last long: St. Petersburg became he capital of Russia again in 1732, and this change would last until 1918.

Peter II became tsar at age twelve, and his reign lasted only three years, as he died of smallpox before he was 15. He is the only emperor that is buried in the Kremlin and with him the male line of the Romanov died. After his death, his successor was Anna Ioannovna, daughter of Ivan V and niece of Peter I “the Great".

Premiere of the opera Eugene Onegin

In 1881 the premiere of the opera Eugene Onegin (ЕвгенийОнегин) by Pyotr Tchaikovsky takes place at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre. Based on the novel of the same name by Pushkin. Tchaikovsky, fearing that the public would not understand his work, decided to play the opera two years earlier at the Moscow Conservatory with a group of students. Eugene Onegin is Tchaikovsky's most performed opera and one of the most played in the world.