1940 in the Soviet Union

Decades:	1920s; 1930s; 1940s; 1950s; 1960s;
See also:	History of the Soviet Union; List of years in the Soviet Union;

The following lists events that happened during 1940 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.^[1]

Incumbents

January 17 – Mircea Snegur, 1st President of Moldova (d. 2023)
January 27 – Petru Lucinschi, 2nd President of Moldova
February 19 – Saparmurat Niyazov, 1st President of Turkmenistan (d. 2006)
March 4 – Vladimir Morozov, sprint canoeist (d. 2023)
March 7 – Viktor Savinykh, cosmonaut
March 9 – Larisa Golubkina, actress
May 24 – Joseph Brodsky, poet and essayist (d. 1996)
June 28 – Alina Vedmid, politician and agronomist (d. 2008)^[2]
June 29 – Vyacheslav Artyomov, composer
July 6 – Nursultan Nazarbayev, 1st President of Kazakhstan
July 19 – Anzor Kavazashvili, football goalkeeper
August 20 – Musa Geshaev, Chechen poet (d. 2014)
October 5
- Rein Aun, Estonian decathlete and coach (d. 1995)
- Viktor Pavlov, actor (d. 2006)
October 9 – Valery Nosik, actor (d. 1995)
October 20
- Hasan Hasanov, 1st Prime Minister of Azerbaijan
- Viktor Barannikov, Soviet and Russian Interior Minister (d. 1995)

January 27 – Isaac Babel, writer, journalist playwright and literary translator (b. 1894)
February 2
- Vsevolod Meyerhold, theatre director, actor and theatrical producer (b. 1874)
- Robert Eikhe, politician (b. 1890)
- Mikhail Koltsov, journalist, revolutionary and NKVD agent (b. 1898)
February 4
- Nikolai Yezhov, Head of NKVD (b. 1895)
- Mikhail Frinovsky, secret police official (b. 1898)
March 10 – Mikhail Bulgakov, writer, medical doctor and playwright (b. 1891)
August 21 – Leon Trotsky, politician and political theorist (b. 1879)
December 2 – Nikolai Koltsov, biologist (b. 1872)

^ Bloch, Leon Bryce and Lamar Middleton, ed. The World Over in 1940 (1941) detailed coverage of world events online free; 914pp
^ "Ведмідь Аліна Петрівна" [Vedmid Alina Petrovna] (in Ukrainian). Leaders of the Regions. Archived from the original on 15 March 2011. Retrieved 1 November 2022.