1922

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• After Lenin suffers a debilitating stroke on 26 May, Stalin becomes general secretary of the Russian Communist Party. On 30 December, the Soviet Union is formed.

• On 28 October, Italian Fascists, led by Benito Mussolini, stage a 'March on Rome' that persuades the threatened government to offer Mussolini the post of prime minister.

• In November, Mustafa Kemal abolishes the Ottoman empire and Turkey becomes a republic.

• The Conservatives decisively win the British general election on 17 November. Andrew Bonar Law becomes prime minister.

• Insulin is isolated and first used in the treatment of diabetes by Frederick Banting and C H Best in Toronto.

• In Paris, Irish writer James Joyce publishes Ulysses, a vast modernist novel that examines one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertisement salesman in Dublin.

• T S Eliot publishes The Waste Land, a fragmented modernist poem that captures the spirit of disillusionment after World War I.

• In Mexico, artists such as Diego Rivera begin painting large colourful murals.

• Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein publishes his Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, which becomes a central influence on modern philosophy.

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