Timeline

1906 – Birth of Shostakovich on September 25^th, St.Petersburg
1914-1918 – World War 1
1924 – Death of Lenin
1926 – Symphony No.1 premiered to great acclaim
1929 – Stalin becomes leader of the USSR
1932 – Shostakovich marries Nina Varzar

Shostakovich with Nina and Ivan Sollertinsky
 

1936 – Birth of daughter, Galina
1936 – Pravda attacks Opera, Lady Macbeth as 'chaos instead of music'
1937 – Stalin's year of terror
1938 – String Quartet No.1 (aged 31)
1938 – Birth of son, Maxim
1939-1945 – World War 2
1940 - Receives Stalin Prize for Piano Quintet

With the Glazunov Quartet in 1940

1944 – String Quartet No.2 (aged 38)
1946 – Churchill declares 'an Iron curtain has descended across the continent'
1946 – String Quartet No.3 (aged 40)
1948 - Zhdanov Decree - Dismissed from his posts at Moscow and Leningrad.
1949 - The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb
1949 – String Quartet No.4 (aged 43)

In 1949

1952 – String Quartet No.5 (aged 46)
1953 – Death of Stalin
1954 – Death of Nina Varzar
1956 – Shostakovich meets and marries his second wife Margarita Kainova
1956 – String Quartet No.6 (aged 49)
1956 – Hungarian uprising
1959 – Divorces Margarita Kainova
1960 – String Quartet No.7 (aged 53)

1960 – Shostakovich joins the Communist party
1960 – String Quartet No.8 (aged 53)
1961 – Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space

With Kabalevsky and Gagarin
 

1962 – Cuban missile crisis
1962 – Marries his third wife, Irina Antonia Supinskiya
1964 – Leonid Brezhnev becomes leader of the USSR
1964 – String Quartet No.9 (aged 57)
1964 – String Quartet No.10
1965 – Death of Vasili Shirinsky, second violinst of the Beethoven Quartet
1966 – String Quartet No.11 (aged 59)

with Britten in 1966

1966 – Shostakovich suffers his first heart attack
1968 – String Quartet No.12 (aged 61)
1968 – Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
1970 – String Quartet No.13 (aged 63)
1971 – Shostakovich suffers his second heart attack
1972 – Death of Vadim Borisovsky, original violist of the Beethoven Quartet
1972 – Undergoes radiation treatment for lung cancer
1973 – String Quartet No.14 (aged 66)
1973 – Shostakovich's name appears on a document in Pravda denouncing Sakharov

1974 – String Quartet No.15 (aged 67)
1974 – Death of Sergei Shirinsky following a rehearsal of Quartet No.15
1974 – Taneyev Quartet give the premiere of Quartet No.15
1975 – Death of Shostakovich on August 9^th, Moscow