1970 in the Soviet Union

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

Incumbents

 * General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: Leonid Brezhnev
 * Premier of the Soviet Union: Alexei Kosygin
 * Chairman of the Russian SFSR: Mikhail Yasnov

Events

 * May 24 – The scientific drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins.
 * June 1 – The two-man spacecraft Soyuz 9 is launched.
 * June 15 – Operation Wedding: Fifteen refuseniks try to escape from the Soviet Union by hijacking a plane.
 * October 6 – French President Georges Pompidou visits the Soviet Union.
 * October 8 – Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
 * 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.

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)
 * August 26 – Olimpiada Ivanova, race walker

Deaths

 * January 10 – Pavel Belyayev, Soviet cosmonaut (peritonitis; born 1925)
 * June 11 (in the United States) – Alexander Kerensky, revolutionary and politician (born 1881)