← 1977 1976 1975 1978 in the Soviet Union → 1979 1980 1981
Decades:	1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
See also:	History of the Soviet Union List of years in the Soviet Union

The following lists events that happened during 1978 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

• 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 Solomentsev

• 24 January – The Kosmos 954 ends its mission

• 14 April – 1978 Georgian demonstrations
• 20 April – The Soviet Air Force shoots down Korean Air Lines Flight 902, a civilian airliner That flew into Soviet airspace.^[1]
• 25 April – 18th Komsomol Congress

• 21 June – 1978 Iranian Chinook shootdown: 2 Boeing CH-47 Chinook belonging to the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces strayed into Soviet airspace over the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic during a training mission, resulting in the Shootdown of both aircraft by the Soviet Air Forces.^[2]

• 28 September – one of the last Forest Brother guerilla movement fighter August Sabbe was discovered and killed in Estonia.

• 25 January – Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine since 2019

• January 18 — Ivan Dzerzhinsky, composer (b. 1909)
• February 17 — Artemiy Artsikhovsky, archaeologist and historian (b. 1902)
• February 19 — Mikhail Zakharov, navy officer (b. 1912)
• April 4 — Semyon Kirlian, Russian inventor (b. 1898)
• April 28 — Roman Karmen, film director, war cinematographer, documentary filmmaker, journalist, screenwriter, pedagogue and publicist (b. 1906)
• May 1 — Aram Khachaturian, composer and conductor (b. 1903)
• May 26 — Tamara Karsavina, ballerina (b. 1885)
• June 24 — Mstislav Keldysh, mathematician (b. 1911)
• July 17 — Fyodor Kulakov, statesman (b. 1918)
• July 22 — Mikhail Pervukhin, statesman (b. 1904)
• July 31 — Prince Rostislav Alexandrovich of Russia (b. 1902)
• September 5 — Nikodim Rotov, Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod (b. 1929)
• September 27 — Sergei Aslamazyan, composer (b. 1897)
• September 28 – August Sabbe, Estonian anti-communist of the Forest Brother (b. 1909)
• October 18 — Ramón Mercader, Spanish communist and NKVD agent (b. 1913)
• October 21 — Anastas Mikoyan, statesman (b. 1895)
• October 23 — Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia (b. 1896)
• December 18 — Lev Uspensky, writer and philologist (b. 1900)
• December 30 — Mark Naimark, mathematician (b. 1909)

• 1978 in fine arts of the Soviet Union
• List of Soviet films of 1978