1966 in the Soviet Union explained

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

Incumbents

February 3 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.^[2]
February 10 – Soviet fiction writers Yuli Daniel^[3] 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.^[4]

March 1 - Soviet space probe Venera 3 crashes on Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.^[5]
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.^[6]
March 31 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10, which becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.^[7]

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).^[8]

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

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 7 – The Soviet Union declares that all Chinese students must leave the country before the end of October.^[9]
October 11 – France and the Soviet Union sign a treaty for cooperation in nuclear research.

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)

Book: Chubarov, Alexander . 2003 . Russia's Bitter Path to Modernity: A History of the Soviet and post-Soviet Eras . . 978-0826413505 . CITEREFChubarov2003 . 60.
Book: Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016. 1–2. Siddiqi. Asif A.. 2017059404. 9781626830424. NASA History Program Office. second . 2018. SP2018-4041. The NASA history series. Washington, D.C..
News: Soviet dissident Yuli Daniel; imprisoned for publishing abroad. The Los Angeles Times. 1 January 1989.
Book: Voren, Robert van. Cold War in psychiatry: human factors, secret actors. 2010. Rodopi. Amsterdam—New York. 978-90-420-3046-6. 140.
Book: Harvey, Brian . 2007 . Russian Planetary Exploration History, Development, Legacy and Prospects. Springer-Praxis . 94–97 . 9780387463438 .
Book: Christian F. Ostermann. Inside China's Cold War. 2008. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 370.
Book: Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016. 1. Siddiqi. Asif A.. 2017059404 . 9781626830424. NASA History Program Office. second. 2018. SP2018-4041. The NASA history series. Washington, D.C..
Book: O'Sullivan, John . The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World . . 2009 . 94–5 . 978-1-59698-016-7 .
News: Search IHT Retrospective SEARCH IN OUR PAGES 1966: Russia Expels Chinese . 23 March 2022 . International Herald Tribune . The New York Times . October 7, 1966.