1966 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:
- Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union:
- Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union:
Events
February
- February 3 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.
- February 10 – Soviet fiction writers Yuli Daniel 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.
March
- March 1 - Soviet space probe Venera 3 crashes on Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.
- 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.
- March 31 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10, which becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
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.
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.
October
- October 7 – The Soviet Union declares that all Chinese students must leave the country before the end of October.
- 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
- March 5 – Anna Akhmatova, poet
- May 7 – Usman Yusupov, 7th First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan
- September 14 – Nikolay Cherkasov, actor
- September 19 – Vladimir Fyodorov, scientist and general
- October 17 – Zhumabay Shayakhmetov, 4th First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan
- October 28 – Nikolai Belyaev, 8th First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan
- November 14 – Nikolai Ignatov, 6th & 8th Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR
- December 19 – Betty Kuuskemaa, Estonian stage and film actress
- December 31 – Elena Stasova, Russian Soviet Revolutionary and Old Bolshevik