TIMELINE-The Bolsheviks to Putin: a history of Russian defaults

By Jorgelina do Rosario

LONDON, June 27 (Reuters) - In 1918, Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky told Western creditors aghast at the Bolsheviks' repudiation of Russia's external debt: "Gentlemen, you were warned."

He reminded them that dismissal of Tsarist-era debt had been a key manifesto of the failed uprising in 1905. More than a century later, Russia stands on the brink of another default but this time there was no warning.

Few expected the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine to elicit such a ferocious response from the West, which has all but severed Russia from global financial and payment systems.

These are Russia's major debt events over the past century:

1918: REPUDIATION

Just before the 1917 revolution, Russia was the world's largest net international debtor, having borrowed heavily to finance industrialisation and railways.

But seeing the Tsarist industrialisation drive as failing the working class, the Bolsheviks repudiated all foreign debt.

"They said 'we are not paying and even if we could, we wouldn't pay.' And that was a political statement," said Hassan Malik, senior sovereign analyst at Loomis Sayles and the author of the book "Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution".

Despite Trotsky's reminder, the default shocked the world, especially France, whose banks and citizens suffered massive losses.

"Investors didn't take it seriously because they thought it would be so self-harmful," Malik said, estimating the debt to be worth at least $500 billion at 2020 prices and possibly more.

It took until the mid-1980s for Moscow to recognise some of that debt.

1991: USSR TO RUSSIA

Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991, Russia stopped servicing part of the overseas debt it inherited from former Soviet states.

Andrey Vavilov, Russia's deputy finance minister between 1994 and 1997, said the Russian Federation held around $105 billion in Soviet-era debt at the end of 1992, with its own debt amounting to $2.8 billion.

For accepting the inherited debt, the Paris Club recognised Russia as a creditor nation, Vavilov wrote in his book "The Russian Public Debt and Financial Meltdowns". And as Russia agreed with the group of nations to restructure $28 billion in debt in 1996, it was allowed to shift major Soviet-era debt payments to the next decade.

But with a financial crisis around the corner, it would take until 2017 to clear the Communist-era arrears.

1998: ROUBLE DEBT DEFAULT

By 1997, crashing oil prices slashed Russian export revenues. External debt, which stood near 50% of GDP in 1995, had swelled by 1998 to 77%, according to Vavilov, who blamed hefty IMF/World Bank loans for contributing to the pile.