The Nutcracker, with choreography by Lev Ivanov to music by Tchaikovsky, has its premiere in St Petersburg

Tchaikovsky's symphony no. 6, known as the 'Pathetic' or Pathétique, has its premiere in St Petersburg

Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky dies after a short illness, possibly from cholera or perhaps in sinister circumstances that remain the subject of controversy

France and Russia, alarmed by Germany's ambitions, sign a defensive Franco-Russian alliance

Swan Lake is performed in St Petersburg in its definitive version, with choreography shared between Lucien Petipa and Lev Ivanov

Lenin is arrested in St Petersburg, along with other members of the Union for the Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class

Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull has a disastrous premiere in St Petersburg (but is well received two years later in Moscow)

Rachmaninov's First Symphony has a disastrous premiere in St Petersburg, probably caused by the incompetence of Glazunov as conductor

Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Konstantin Stanislavsky, succeeds at the Moscow Art Theatre

Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya is directed by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre

Lenin and comrades launch in Munich a radical newspaper, Iskra ('the spark')

The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov keeps dogs alive almost indefinitely by severely curtailing their bodily functions

Sergei Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto gives him renewed confidence after the disaster of his First Symphony in 1897

Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters has its premiere at the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Stanislavsky

In his pamphlet What is to be done? Lenin argues for early action to promote revolution

Maxim Gorky's play The Lower Depths is performed at the Moscow Art Theatre

Lenin's supporters become known as the Bolsheviks ('majority') as opposed to the Mensheviks ('minority') after a split at the party's Second Congress

Anton Chekhov's last play, The Cherry Orchard, is staged by Stanislavsky just a few months before the author's death

Alexander Scriabin completes his Third Symphony, The Divine Poem, which is given its first performance in Paris in 1905

Troops fire on a demonstration in St Petersburg, in the event which becomes known as Bloody Sunday

Strikes and riots sweep across Russia in the wake of St Petersburg's Bloody Sunday

The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin becomes influenced by the theosophy of Madame Blavatsky

A complaint about maggotty meat on the Russian battleship Potemkin leads to thousands of deaths after troops fire on a demonstration

The first soviet ("council") of workers is set up in St Petersburg, introducing a word of great significance in Russian Communist history

Tsar Nicholas II reluctantly signs the October Manifesto, authorizing an elected duma or legislature