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] 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] : 140 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 )
^ 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 ^ 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. ^ "Soviet dissident Yuli Daniel; imprisoned for publishing abroad" . The Los Angeles Times ^ Voren, Robert van (2010). Cold War in psychiatry: human factors, secret actors ISBN 978-90-420-3046-6 ^ Harvey, Brian (2007). Russian Planetary Exploration History, Development, Legacy and Prospects . Springer-Praxis. pp. 94–97. ISBN 9780387463438 ^ Christian F. Ostermann (2008). Inside China's Cold War ^ 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. ^ 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 ^ "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 .
