1970 in the Soviet Union

The following lists events that happened during 1970 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

← 1969 1968 1967 1970 in the Soviet Union → 1971 1972 1973
Decades:	1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
See also:	History of the Soviet Union List of years in the Soviet Union

Incumbents

• General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: Leonid Brezhnev^[1]
• Premier of the Soviet Union: Alexei Kosygin^[2]
• Chairman of the Russian SFSR: Mikhail Yasnov

Events

• May 24 – The scientific drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins.^[3]
• June 1 – The two-man spacecraft Soyuz 9 is launched.^[4]
• June 15 – Operation Wedding: Fifteen refuseniks try to escape from the Soviet Union by hijacking a plane.^[5]
• October 6 – French President Georges Pompidou visits the Soviet Union.
• October 8 – Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[6]
• October 15 – The domestic Soviet Aeroflot Flight 244 is hijacked and diverted to Turkey.
• October 20 – The Zond 8 lunar probe is launched.
• November 9 – Luna 17 is launched.
• November 12 – Soviet author Andrei Amalrik is sentenced to three years imprisonment for 'anti-Soviet' writings.^[7]

Births

• January 2 – Oksana Omelianchik, artistic gymnast
• January 17 – Genndy Tartakovsky, Russian-born American animator
• March 16 – Oleg Pavlov, writer (died 2018)
• June 11 – Dmitry Utkin, army officer (died 2023)
• July 3 – Serhiy Honchar, Ukrainian racing cyclist
• July 13 – Igor Kirillov, army general and war criminal (died 2024)
• August 26 – Olimpiada Ivanova, race walker^[8]

Deaths

• January 10 — Pavel Belyayev, Soviet cosmonaut (b. 1925)^[9]
• March 31 — Semyon Timoshenko, 2nd People's Commissar for Defence (b. 1895)
• April 1 — Polina Zhemchuzhina, politician and wife of former foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov (b. 1897)
• April 17 — Patriarch Alexy I of Moscow, 13th Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' (b. 1877)
• June 11 — Alexander Kerensky, revolutionary, lawyer and politician (b. 1881)^[10]
• June 21 — Lev Kassil, writer (b. 1905)
• August 22 — Vladimir Propp, folklorist and scholar (b. 1895)
• September 9 — Konon Molody, intelligence officer (b. 1922)
• November 17 — Nikolai Lunin, admiral in the Soviet Navy (b. 1907)
• November 19
  • Andrei Yeremenko, military leader and Marshal of the Soviet Union (b. 1892)
  • Maria Yudina, pianist (b. 1899)
• December 8 — Abram Alikhanov, experimental physicist (b. 1904)
• December 24 — Nikolai Shvernik, 2nd Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (b. 1888)